Publicizing Your Work
Every business owner understands the power of publicity. You might have a great product or service to sell, but without customers, you might as well as close up shop. Finding customers can be a challenge. Most successful business owners turn to publicists. For a few hundred dollars a month, you can buy a publicist's expertise. A lot of business owners look at having publicity and marketing as smart investments.
“The best form of publicity is to be a local expert,” says Wayne Schaffel, president of Public Relations for Less, a private public relations company in White Plains, New York. “To become known as the local expert, start off by writing a column in your local newspaper about pet care or dog training. See if you can line up an interview on a local radio or cable show. You can even teach a class on pet care at a local pet store.”
Volunteering can also bring in customers. “If you train dogs for a living, you might want to bring a few dogs to the local hospital or nursing home,” says Schaffel. “While you are volunteering, make sure to hand out cards to people. You can also have the store, hospital, or school where you volunteer post flyers about you and your talks. Make sure all literature has your contact name, numbers, and address prominently displayed.”
When you write a local newspaper or magazine column, give talks at pet shops, or demonstrate pet training at neighborhood centers, you are usually not making money. What you are doing is getting noticed. Make sure a tag line with your name, company name, and contact information follows each article. It can be one or two brief sentences. Hand out business cards, flyers, and articles you wrote when you make appearances. All of your handouts must have your company's contact information on them.
If you volunteer at a hospital or pet shop, alert the local papers to get your company's name publicized. People like reading feel-good stories, which will make them want to seek out your services when they need them. Likewise, if you are giving talks on pet care at the local shelter, call the press. People who attend your presentation and like you will be inclined to hire you to take care of their animals.
These voluntary appearances and time spent writing a short (600 word) column will bring clients to you. These are key ways to get you noticed. “What you are doing is developing a platform — a key word in the publishing world today,” says Schaffel. “Having a platform — an area of expertise — and growing a following is a sure way to have a successful business.”
Building a following takes time. While you are gaining expertise, it's important to develop a publicity plan. “In a forty-hour work week, I figure that ten hours of that should be for promotion,” says Rebecca K. O'Connor, a falconer, animal behaviorist, and animal trainer based in California. “This could be writing an article for a magazine, blog-ging, working on my website (
A newspaper article about your company carries more weight among readers than does an advertisement about your business. Readers especially like human interest stories about people who volunteer. Talk to the editor or publisher of your local newspaper to see if you can get coverage of your next volunteer gig.
O'Connor has worked at zoos and wildlife centers in various parts of the country. She most recently worked as a consultant at the Guadalajara Zoo in Mexico. One of her first big jobs was training animals at Disney's Animal Kingdom. She had some prior experience training falcons before working at Disney. From there, getting work got easier.
“Word of mouth makes a huge difference,” she says. “I have the experience, but the more people who know about you and hear that you do great work, the higher the likelihood of getting more work. So, I am a firm believer in networking.”
