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Americas Angus Clark +1 917 650 1620 angus@songdivision.com	Asia Pacific Monica Dolso +61 433 111 024 monica@songdivision.com
UK & Europe Marsha Fahir +1 347 768 3326 marsha@songdivision.com	Middle East & Africa Andy Sharpe +1 347 768 3343 andy@songdivision.com

Small Business Promotion

August 26, 2009

Why pay for advertising? There’s too much out there already and marketing budgets are tight. Word-of-mouth is the obviously the best marketing, and I believe PR comes in second place for a small, growing business like Song Division. To generate both word-of-mouth and PR, you need a fantastic service or product, some very happy clients and a great story to tell.

Song Division has all three as a result of an amazing team and lots of hard work. On the PR front, it’s not easy getting the attention of journalists who are constantly bombarded with stories. Here’s a few tips that worked for us:

1) Read the appropriate industry publications, get familiar with them and the contributing journalists. Get to know them by replying to blogs or requests for information. Once you know who’s who, you’ll have a much better idea of who might be interested in your story.
2) Join the appropriate industry associations and go to the industry conferences you can afford to attend. That’s where you’ll find the journalists who cover your industry, introduce yourself.
3) Use resources like www.helpareporter.com and reply to any requests that you can contribute to. Don’t reply if it’s not really related to your business and story – the journalists are asking for specific help and if you can answer their question, they’ll include you.

The strategies above worked for Song Division – here are links to a few recent stories;

1) Bizbash – “Making a Corporate Group into a Rock Band”

2) Event Marketer Magazine – “Song Division”

3) Plannerwire – “Communication 101: Listen, Question, Rinse, Repeat”