Sylvia,

Yes, articles are a good tool. But, I encourage you to think small and targeted. Focus on who you want and where they are located. You can easily spend a lot of money advertising in the newspaper, on the radio and on TV and waste a lot of money. Or, you think think passionately and focus on just THREE RESOURCES to help you spread your message and practice the "pay it forward" approach. Remember, the BEST form of advertising is the "personal referral." Just one person to three people. Then, three people to nine...nine to 27 and so on. In just two weeks (14 days) it is mathematically possible to reach 4,782,696 people with a passionate message.

Keep in mind that when it comes to marketing yourself, cleverness counts. Remember the example of how Mike Huckabee won the Iowa for the Republican Presidential race. He teased the press about not running an attack ad and then drew that "line in the sand" and told the press not to cross it...AFTER he had shown the ad to them. The press wanted that ad to boost their ratings - not to help Huckabee win the race in Iowa. But, getting ahold of the ad helped both the press get what it wanted and Huckabee to get what he wanted.

If you would like to get a Fortune 500 company as a client, do this: 1) Create a buzz for your business with a stack of letters in a padded envelope sent to the Investor Relations Dept. of the company - include an open letter of explanation to the department. 2) Instruct the Investor Relations Dept. to send you an annual report and send the package back to the mail room to have its contents (individual letters) delivered. It is important you make the process a bit complicated so the company employees actually WANT to figure out what is REALLY going on here. 3) The individual envelopes do not have stamps on them, but are addressed to specific people by name and name only. No street address, city, state and zipcode. No, this needs to at least appear to be inter-office mail. 4) Hopefully, when all mail is delivered companty members will figure out that this is actually a cleverly executed campaign and will be eager to make the acquaintance of the person who was the mastermind behind it.

I have seen this approach work. That is why I encourage folks on a limited advertising budget to give it a try. You may be surprised at just how efficient a process like this can be...and at a very reasonable cost.

Lamar Morgan
CDMM
707-709-8605
Attract more customers!

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