One of the hardest things to do in marketing is to get people’s
attention.
Controversy gets people’s attention.
Controversy not only gets other people’s attention, it also gets the
media’s attention.
The media knows that people love
controversy and so they jump at the chance to cover controversial
topics. A few months ago, my wife and I were at odds (friendly odds)
about our children sleeping in our bedroom.
I was pondering a
way to turn this friendly disagreement, into a “Media Event”.
As
I was sitting at my desk around 8pm one evening, I did some
brainstorming for a few minutes, and then it hit me!
I
decided to move to the roof of my house as a sign of protest against
my wife for insisting that our children sleep in our bed. So, I
immediately got on my computer and cranked out a press release
announcing my strike, and my online petition drive.
The
petition was used to collect email addresses, so I could “UPDATE”
visitors on my progress. This led to over 14,000 Opt-In emails. I
knew that this story had tremendous potential, because of the
unusual nature of my strike. As you can imagine, my wheels
were spinning a thousand miles per hour, as to the quickest way to
drive people to my Husband On Strike web site.
I knew the
quickest way to do that was through FREE Publicity! It took me
less than 20 MINUTES to write my press release.
The next
morning, I blasted my press release out to all the media outlets in
my state.
By 10am two days later, I received “THOUSANDS” of hits
to my HUSBAND ON STRIKE web site, people were signing my “petition”
by the thousands, because of several mentions on a local talk radio
show.
By the 2nd day, the site was getting 20-40,000 hits per
hour, to check on the signature count and view updates on my blog.
It was truly an incredible event! I had not paid ONE penny for all
this FREE publicity!
But it gets even better…
On the 5th
day after my press release was sent out, three local television news
stations, CNN, MSNBC, GERALDO, DR.Phil, and hundreds of other media
outlets did segments about my strike. As you can imagine, after
these outlets featured my story, I had thousands and thousands more
visitors coming to my site.
Now, many of you are asking
your-self what benefit I got out of this other than a bunch of
people visiting the web site. Well, let me tell you the simple thing
I did to generate thousands of dollars in product sales.
I put
text link ads to affiliate products and Google Adsense ads on my
homepage…
I knew that tens of thousands of people would continue
visiting my web site homepage, to check for updates on my strike.
This meant that every person who visited the web site, got to see my
text link affiliate product ads along with the Google Adsense ads.
I was getting “thousands” of click thru’s to my ads, without
spending ONE CENT on advertising. I sold thousands of dollars in
products and my Google adsense income was in the many thousands of
dollars. Best of all, it cost me NOTHING!
This is the power
of FREE publicity, and seeing opportunities that NO ONE else sees!
The Message I’m Trying To Convey: Think OUTSIDE THE BOX
Even
if you only get 50 visitors per day through FREE publicity, that’s
50 visitors that didn’t cost you one red cent!
