Getting Noticed: The Public Relations-Marketing Path to Money
If no one knows your business exists, you cannot possibly prosper. Smart small-business owners understand that there are affordable strategies for getting known, even in today’s media-saturated world. This is the encouraging message delivered at the afternoon publicrelations-marketing breakout at the New York Times Small Business Summit.
Who is your target customer? That was the question tossed to the audience by Bob Bloom, retired CEO of advertising giant Publicis Worldwide and author of The Inside Advantage. Maybe just as important, however, said Bloom, is knowing who your customer is not.
That becomes crucial when budgets are tight, because every dollar spent pursuing a noncustomer is, by definition, wasted money. Bloom also tantalized the audience with this challenge: “Grow or die. A flourishing business should double in size every five years.” Gay Gaddis, founder and CEO of T3 (The Think Tank), offered the next lesson: “You cannot outspend big corporations, but you can out-think them.” T3 is the country’s largest independent advertising agency wholly owned by a woman. “If you own a small business, you are the brand. Find out why brands succeed. Great ideas come from individual minds, not necessarily from large companies.”
