Happy [Halloween] Holiday PR: Start 2007 Planning Today

As Halloween trends into a major holiday, why not tap into the promotion potential and be part of the revelry?

For the past two Halloweens, I’ve promoted my business by posing as a PR Witch. How do I get visibility? By judging the Glen Ellyn Chamber of Commerce’s costumer parade, of course. That’s me over there getting ready to size up the little ghosts and goblins in the 2005 parade.

I missed it this year. Because I chose to go to Big Seminar in Atlanta, I sent my first-line back-up judges: my bookends, the oldest and youngest of my three kids.

Seriously, I get a big bang out of this. But, I could get an even bigger PR pop than just showing up by sponsoring the parade and sending out a press relesase to publicize it.

What can you do to promote your business next Halloween? Consider these options:

– send out a press release [preferably with video] on or around October 1, at least 3 weeks in advance of your event or promotion

– participate in local events to raise your profile

– partner with collaborative businesses and brew up a bubbling promotion

– sponsor a spooky story, coloring/art or pumpkin carving contest and post the results on the Web

– use the keyword “Halloween” in your online releases with a relevant reference to the holiday and your event or special offer

– email your list with a limited time offer

– host a costume contest/party/reception for adults and/or children, depending on your audience -this could be virtual or real

– establish an annual tradition that your customers and communities anticipate each year

– decorate your store with a traffic-stopper like the flower-arranging gorilla that happened to inhabit a storefront in our downtown for a week or so

– send out a clever Happy Halloween mailing with a bewitching call to action

– take complimentary photos of kids in costume and set them up on your site with the parent’s permission

For some spooky Halloween retail stats [from 3.3 billion in 2005 to an expected 5 billion in 2006], check out the ABC News “Is Halloween the New Christmas?” story.

Then watch a video with a Halloween greeting from me . . . http://tinyurl.com/ympprc . . . using my magic webcam.

Like this article? Leave a comment below and sign up to receive more ideas like these at www.transformmarketing.com

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Big Seminar 8: Day Three Recap

Sylvie Fortin was first up with "Outsourcing Mastery," making a good case for the need for outsource management vs. outsourcing task by task. 

Sylvie said top Marketers have 4 things in common

–          have voracious appetites for information products, they can’t wait to see what’s coming next, they know it’s the only way to grow; the bottom line it they’re making money every single day without fail

–          enjoy multiple income streams

–          work fewer hours for better results

–          Take action and move FAST

Rich Schefren, author of the Internet Manifesto, spoke on "How to Turn Your Website into a Real Business."  Watch a video of Rich Schefren’s Business Building Presentation.

Armand’s talk was on "The SECRET Unfair Internet Business Advantage" with 8 laws of Internet success. He also covered the updated/upgraded AM2Gold program; now known as AM2.0.

Speaking of AM2.0, I’m on my way to an all-day meeting of the AM2.0 minds . . .

Big Seminar 8: Day Two Recap

Let’s start with the end of the evening – the awards dinner – and work our way backwards . . .

The big announcement . . . Alex Mandossian is leaving AM2Gold to form the Electronic Marketing Institute.  Name stays.  Armand stays. Updates today. Meeting tomorrow.

Is joining AM2Gold worth the $500 monthly membership?

Well, yes and yes.

On Friday night, nine of the AM2Gold members who entered the Better Your Best contest each gave a 5 minute presentation on their membership experience/contest entry.

All Big Seminar attendees got to vote. If my math is right, our vote counted for 10% of the judging.

Ray Edwards, who made a video about the Internet/world creation timeline (the Internet is 5 seconds old) won the Saturn Sky convertible.

Although Ray’s video impressed me, each of the winners had a powerful story to tell, a story about how being part of a group and using their leverage can get you where you want to go.

The contestants – all doers, movers and achievers would each make an insightful case study of their own. The runner up, Ellyn (spelled like Glen Ellyn), won a trip to Hawaii. Dell laptops went out as prizes to all of the competitors.

I lost track of how many iPods and HP laptops Armand gave out at dinner – he promised over $20,ooo worth of prizes in his promo emails.

After dinner and over networking, we talked about Armand’s generous spirit. While I won’t give away all of the stories here, I will say that this is one guy who leads by example. 

Networking nuggets . . .

– one person here bought every product offered, yep, every one of them. And no it’s not me. How much would that cost you? At least $10,000.

– the guru who told that story said this person asked for his advice on where he should start, where ever you need help the most.

– find one product you need and work on mastering it in between Big Seminars or conferences

Presentation Takeaways

Sylvie and Michel Fortin, The Money Magnet Method – the ideal business model is easy to build, maintain, grow and duplicate. Setting up many sites that continually produce passive income is one way to build a baseline cash flow.  Examples: petscanspeak.com, michelandsylvie.com. Visit Sylvie’s blog, www.breastcancervictory.com

Jim Edwards, Video Profit Explosion – "Watch a free video" is a compelling offer and an automatic viral marketing add-on. Examples: www.grandcanyon.com, www.igottatellyou.com

Mike Filsaime, im5 – What happens when you work on several projects at once? You delay your progress and profits. Three ways to increase profits: increase traffic, increase conversion, increase frequency. Examples: www.minisitesecretsrevealed.com

Matt Bacak, MIT: Millionaire Internet Training –  Matt sat at our table during lunch. Here’s what I learned: Matt’s into systems, testing and controls. Once he sets something up, it runs. His stuff works. Every one of his students I met talked about getting immediate and impressive results with his programs.

Alex Mandossian, Teleseminar Secrets – "Proven Strategies that Accelerate Your Online Profits by Unlocking the Revenue Generating Power of Your Telephone" Alex is a master presenter and the only one – so far – who’s left the stage to walk in the aisles or encouraged us to share our ideas with each other during his presentation. I like his style – and his product. I’m a "telesemarian" having completed the course earlier this year.

That’s it for now . . . gotta run downstairs.

Big Seminar 8: Day One Recap

How do I condense 23 pages of hand-written notes and an 8 page Word file into one post?

I can’t – not this morning anyway.

These events are pretty much all on, all the time. So, today’s schedule will be much like yesterday’s: meet up at 8:30 and turn in around 12:30 – a.m.

Armand opened Big Seminar by introducing the speakers. Good move to let them preview their topic and also let us see who they are.

Friday’s line-up included:

Armand Morin – The State of the Internet

Stu McLaren – Affilitae Inferno

Mike Woo Ming – The Last Secret in Internet Marketing

Ryan Deiss – Powerful Marketing Breakthroughs

Stephen Pierce – Make Your Next 365 Days Your Wealthiest 365 Days

Nine AM2Gold contest finalists presented a 5 minute speech after dinner. Networking followed.

Highlights to follow . . .

Big Seminar: Thursday Night Warmup

If I had any doubts about whether or not to come to Atlanta, they’re all gone. I just got back to my room after an opening reception hosted by Power Pay.

My traveling/teleseminar partner, Jenny Hamby – The Seminar Marketing Pro, had dinner with me before the reception to talk about our strategy and goals for this Big Seminar.

Mine: build my list, expand my blog reach by reciprocating with other blogs (especially AM2Gold members) and position myself as a PR expert/transformations agent with my freshly printed Panoramic PR and Marketing Transformations Network postcards.

So far, it’s working. People get PR.

Here’s a quick look at who we met tonight: Christina Hills, DJ Dave, John Rooney, Jeff Mills, Kevin Nations and Joel Comm.

"Can you believe it’s only Thursday night?" Alex Mandossian asked us as we reconnected.

Tomorrow’s session opens at 8:30 for AM2Gold members.  Talk to you then.

Free Press Release Distribution Services to Search Engines

Places you can still distribute an online press release for free:

24-7 Press Release

PR Leap

I-Newswire

PR.com

ClickPress

Express Press Release

Internet Marketing Newswatch

Add any others that you know about by clicking on comment and leaving the URL below . . .

Last Day for Free PRWeb

Today’s the last day to distribute a press release for free via PR Web.

According to David McGinnis’ letter, PR Web now offers 3 contribution levels:

SEO – $80 Basic with integrated SEO tools

SEO with Social Media – $120 Better with TrackBacks/PingBacks and PR Tag Clouds, Technorati tags, pull out quotes and social bookmarking. Releases also go through Pheedo’s RSS and Blog network and first-page position on PR Web is guaranteed on release day.

Advanced Online Visibility – $200 Best- with exclusive eBook creating and enhanced stats. This is the one we use for most of our clients because we love the tracking feature.

Our personal www.prweb.com experience?

It’s easy to get number one news placements – if you do the research first and write the release for your targeted keyword pick up.

In April, my Video Marketing 101 release was the top video marketing news story on Google out of 11,000 stories – for two weeks. Maybe starting the release with the word "Google" helped.

Did I get any phone calls or seminar registrations? No, but this was at a low contribution level that didn’t include a link to a URL or multi-media attachments. And the release was for a one-time only event. Taking out the date brought in an additional 20,000 reads and made the release evergreen. Tacking on a video preview would have upped my response.

Typically, our clients average over 50,000 estimated reads and 1500 pick-ups by media services and bloggers for each www.prweb.com press release distributed at the $200 level.

New Blog by The Godfather of List Building

If you read my previous post about Liz Ryan, whom I dubbed the mother of list building, then it’s only fair that I tell you about Tellman Knudson, the Godfather of List Building.

Founder of List Crusade, Tellman Knudson is also the creator of My First List, an information product that tells you how to – you guessed it – build your first list.

I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to take Tellman’s course.

Here’s how I found out about it . . .

Being the ever clever marketer, Tellman "called" [using broadcast voicemail technology] one day. Phoebe picked up the phone, smiled coyly and said, "Mom, Tellman’s calling for you."

[I admit my kids know way too much about Internet marketers – Warren insisted on listening to Tellman’s Death Match when he came home for lunch in 5^th grade. And when Alex Mandossian sent my Teleseminar Secrets course material to the house, the kids unpacked it all and displayed the manuals and CDs in the living room. "Wow! Alex is so nice to send you the whole boxed set!" they exclaimed.]

Now, back to the post . . .

Intrigued, I took the call and before I knew what hit me, I’d typed in my credit card number and registered for Tellman’s My First List.

For those of you who aren’t as familiar with buying information products online as those of us who have purposefully memorized our credit card numbers so we can take advantage of timely offers, here’s how these products work.

You pay for the opportunity to purchase any or all of these, depending on the product: one or a series of live teleseminars, mp3 recordings of a teleseminar or a presentation, DVDs of a video, transcripts of the information, a manual and bonuses.

In this case, I paid for the privilege of being one of the first to try out the "product" – a series of three phone calls with Tellman and his friends, all list building experts in their own right. A handout that outlined the call was also included as was access to recordings and transcripts.

The problem with me signing up without thinking was timing. Tellman scheduled the live calls to take place on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. While my family is accustomed to seeing me stroll around the house after dinner on weeknights wearing a headset listening to teleseminars, taking time away to study and listen on a weekend afternoon would present a challenge. 

One that I decided I would overcome by doing as often do – crossing the bridge when I come to it.

The first installment was captivating enough to keep me waiting in suspense for the next call. What was so great? Tellman and his colleagues were actually talking to people and giving them answers – and they stayed on the call until the questions ran out.

But I couldn’t get up the nerve to push 1 to get in line to ask a question.

For two days, I hesitated.

I did the homework, though.

And on day three, somehow I got up the courage to push 1 and share my progress, which you can see for yourself at www.transformmarketing.com, my first opt-in email page.

Amazingly enough, I got through to ask a question directly. One of Tellman’s colleagues, Harris Fellman, opted in to my email list and that opened the door to our PR projects.

Should you buy My First List?

If you’re looking for a short-cut, rapid-fire easy way to get your list going, yes. It’s up to you to decide whether or not to buy into the recommended products and services. If you do, your list will grow faster.

Because of all the personal interaction, this was one of the best courses I’ve purchased. Anytime an expert you trust offers and opportunity to participate and be part of a new product launch, don’t hestitate.

Why am I writing about all this almost six months after it happened?

To let you know that Tellman’s now blogging about list building.  Check out Tellman Knudson’s list building blog for ideas and strategies on how to grow your own list.

And, if you subscribe to Tellman’s email list, be prepared to pick up on some of the zaniest, brightest and most persuasive writing you’ll see in your email box. 

Have questions or comments on the way you grow your list? Thanks for sharing by clicking on the comments link!

Barbara

71 Marathons and Counting

Congratulations to Bruce on completing his 71st marathon – this one in Chicago.

Phoebe and I went downtown to surprise him at the finish line today.

Our La Salle Bank Chicago Marathon wristbands got us into the Medalist tent – and to a few other places we weren’t supposed to be. Like the Victory tent for the elite athletes.

Although the first guard let us in, the second sent us out with a quizzical look – not out back into the park but straight through to our intended destination: right beside the course a few hundred yards from the finish line.

Ten minutes later we cheered as Bruce cruised to the finish wearing an ABNAMRO La Salle Bank running team gear.

Getting back out to the park was more difficult. The security guards had to check to see if it was okay to let us leave.

While we were waiting, a women on the other side of the fence handed me a big blue foot-shaped balloon that said, "It’s a Boy!"

"Put it where the runners can see it," she instructed. "It’s an important message."

When we left the course, the balloon was bobbing next to the final mile marker.

Internet Video Update

“They’re too long. Go back to the video,” was one of the responses I got today when I asked my a few colleagues what they thought of my ezine.

Watch a sample video where I talk about “What’s on My Whiteboard.”

One of the demos we saw in our meeting was of me teaching the Video Marketing 101 course I created last April.

“Why don’t you do that again?” “Why don’t you sell it?” “How can I buy your Seminar PR course?”

All great questions that got me thinking.