WEBVTT 00:00.870 --> 00:06.960 In this video, I want to give you over ten ways, different ways to position your business, to be 00:06.960 --> 00:11.730 more attractive, to receive publicity and become more interesting to journalists. 00:11.730 --> 00:13.620 So let's get started right away. 00:13.770 --> 00:22.110 The first idea is that you just want to make your business more unique or add unique twists in a different 00:22.110 --> 00:27.150 part of this course, we talk about Seth Gordon's concept of purple cow. 00:27.360 --> 00:31.320 Obviously a purple cow does not exist, and that's actually what you want to do. 00:31.350 --> 00:37.410 You want to create something unique that just grabs attention and people, if they see a purple cow, 00:37.410 --> 00:41.790 they go like, Oh my God, wow, it's a purple cow because, you know, other cows, they're not that 00:41.790 --> 00:45.210 interesting because you've seen a million of them or it doesn't grab attention. 00:45.210 --> 00:49.020 But once you add a unique twist to something, it's more interesting. 00:49.170 --> 00:54.630 An example of that would be years ago I ran a group hiking website and, you know, hiking. 00:54.630 --> 00:56.130 It's plain old hiking. 00:56.130 --> 00:58.200 It's fun, but it's not so exciting. 00:58.200 --> 01:06.900 And then I found a hiking path that was along the ocean, from which during low tide, you can see shipwrecks 01:06.900 --> 01:09.240 from decades ago picking from the water. 01:09.570 --> 01:17.550 And then I created that hike like it was called shipwreck hike hunt during low tide or something like 01:17.550 --> 01:18.000 that. 01:18.000 --> 01:26.070 And that hike, the first time I posted it, the major newspaper of my city picked it up, published 01:26.070 --> 01:31.950 it, and it had like 200 people physically show up, whereas previous hikes had like five or ten people 01:31.950 --> 01:33.870 and they picked it up without me knowing. 01:33.870 --> 01:36.360 I was asking people, How did you know about this? 01:36.360 --> 01:38.670 Why is there 200 people at my event? 01:38.790 --> 01:43.920 And they're like, Well, the paper published it on the front page because it was that interesting. 01:43.920 --> 01:47.580 It's a true story all from unique positioning. 01:47.580 --> 01:53.220 It can be a plain old same thing that you've seen many times before, but just add a unique twist. 01:53.220 --> 01:54.510 And then what did I do? 01:54.510 --> 02:00.720 I started doing themed hikes hikes to see a statue of Yoda. 02:00.720 --> 02:03.990 People who are Star Trek fans were really into that. 02:03.990 --> 02:09.540 Then I started doing like military history hikes, nature hikes, all themed, all unique, and it drew 02:09.570 --> 02:12.120 really cool, unique crowds each time. 02:12.120 --> 02:18.480 And I was able to get a lot of publicity and the journalists started knowing me by name and started 02:18.480 --> 02:22.500 being more ready to publish my stuff because they knew more new, unique things were coming. 02:22.500 --> 02:27.390 This was many years ago for me, but that actually led to the success of that business. 02:27.420 --> 02:32.730 A lot of publicity for free just because the hikes were unique. 02:33.000 --> 02:37.290 Of course, you can also name drop like part of my hikes were name dropping. 02:37.290 --> 02:41.880 Like I would go to the Star Wars and Yoda themed things. 02:41.880 --> 02:47.040 And when people saw that fans of Star Wars, they saw that and they were like, Wow, amazing. 02:47.040 --> 02:51.840 But also you can name drop like if you have research that's backed by some university. 02:51.840 --> 02:54.300 Well, that university that's a big name. 02:54.300 --> 03:00.720 Or if you're doing something with celebrities or events, well, you can have names not in a cheesy 03:00.720 --> 03:06.360 way like name dropping can be cheesy in social contexts, but for marketing that grabs attention. 03:06.360 --> 03:07.920 And you don't have to change your business too much. 03:07.920 --> 03:11.070 You just have to change things a little bit in positioning. 03:11.310 --> 03:15.300 And of course, you can do things like current events piggybacking. 03:15.300 --> 03:22.830 So for example, during spring time I would do more about flowers because that's when flowers were blooming. 03:22.950 --> 03:24.570 And let's say you sell T-shirts. 03:24.570 --> 03:27.990 Well, you can create, let's say, T-shirts based on any current event. 03:28.200 --> 03:30.180 Something happens in the news today. 03:30.360 --> 03:35.460 Today you create a design, slap it on the t shirt, Tomorrow you're selling the t shirt online, and 03:35.460 --> 03:40.020 then you start being interesting because, well, it's topical. 03:40.200 --> 03:44.970 Or let's say you create content and let's say there's some major event. 03:45.240 --> 03:50.490 The first day of the major event is where the main stories are published about that event. 03:50.970 --> 03:57.540 The second day, it's like, what did the parents and the spouses say of the participants of the event 03:57.540 --> 03:58.740 the third day? 03:58.740 --> 04:05.160 The journalists run out of things to write about, and if you have something on it, piggybacking from 04:05.160 --> 04:10.470 that event, well, because the journalists ran out of headlines, but that event is still hot, they 04:10.470 --> 04:14.220 might pick up your stories and let's say something happens today. 04:14.760 --> 04:22.740 Well, almost anyone can immediately write a blog post and then you can take that blog post and share 04:22.740 --> 04:27.450 it on all kinds of social media sites, Twitter using the hashtag of that event. 04:27.600 --> 04:32.160 And maybe that will get reshared retweeted, get picked up by journalists, etc.. 04:32.520 --> 04:37.380 Now, moving on, there are other things you can do for your positioning. 04:37.380 --> 04:42.690 Like let's say you're in some niche like the pet niche and then of course, a natural thing to do would 04:42.690 --> 04:50.190 be to give some of your proceeds to pet charities so that you can get publicity for being a good player, 04:50.190 --> 04:54.000 not just a greedy company, but a company who actually cares about the pets. 04:54.000 --> 04:59.880 And so you maybe would donate some portion of your revenue to pet charities and that. 04:59.980 --> 05:02.980 Would actually bring you very positive attention right away. 05:03.010 --> 05:05.200 And something else you might do. 05:05.230 --> 05:09.730 Let's say you have clients and you help clients in some way. 05:09.760 --> 05:13.810 Well, successful client case studies are very powerful. 05:14.170 --> 05:19.930 Like, if you help people make money and you have a successful client, like I had a client who reached 05:20.260 --> 05:28.660 millions of revenue on Amazon and then everyone else who was curious about getting my coaching for selling 05:28.660 --> 05:34.030 products on Amazon after I told them about this one client case study and I showed them what that client 05:34.030 --> 05:34.510 did. 05:34.750 --> 05:42.880 It became so much easier to sell my coaching service and it was so much easier to get attention based 05:42.880 --> 05:46.030 on the big numbers that this client achieved. 05:46.360 --> 05:51.550 And all you have to do is just promote, promote, help, help, help extra to one client, make them 05:51.550 --> 05:56.740 extra successful, and then use them as a case study that really jumps out and grabs attention. 05:56.980 --> 06:02.530 And of course, anytime you can create something innovative and new, your whole company doesn't have 06:02.530 --> 06:08.140 to be innovative or new, but some twist can be innovative and new, and that will immediately attract 06:08.140 --> 06:13.420 curiosity from journalists and from people who blog and from influencers who might promote you. 06:14.050 --> 06:15.070 Now, moving on. 06:15.580 --> 06:22.090 Another very powerful thing you can do is you yourself can position yourself to become an influencer 06:22.090 --> 06:25.900 or a thought leader in your industry so that people reference you. 06:25.900 --> 06:30.310 So it wouldn't be like an influencer who like, Hey, here is my vacation pictures. 06:30.400 --> 06:36.250 Sure, that works for some people, but an interesting influencer who is also a thought leader who people 06:36.250 --> 06:39.580 reference is somebody who provides something valuable. 06:39.610 --> 06:43.120 Like, for example, one of the sharks from Shark Tank. 06:43.120 --> 06:44.040 If you watch that show. 06:44.050 --> 06:50.560 Barbara Corcoran back in the day when she ran her company, she used to create these Corcoran reports 06:50.560 --> 06:56.110 about the state of the real estate industry and the pricing and everything, and that industry would 06:56.110 --> 06:57.610 start to reference her reports. 06:57.610 --> 07:03.850 And so she became the top thought leader just through those reports she would make from the findings 07:03.850 --> 07:04.780 of her company. 07:04.990 --> 07:10.030 And then, of course, as the thought leader, all the journalists would want to interview her, get 07:10.030 --> 07:12.670 her opinion, and that would promote her company each time. 07:13.060 --> 07:19.030 And of course, that leads me to the next point is try to identify some interesting findings you're 07:19.030 --> 07:23.980 making as you're working in your industry, building your product, dealing with customers. 07:24.400 --> 07:26.790 Is there something unique or unexpected? 07:26.800 --> 07:33.640 For example, in my business, it became more apparent to me why people fail their companies. 07:33.650 --> 07:39.430 And so that would be a great report of like, Hey, here's data of like hundreds of thousands of people 07:39.430 --> 07:41.520 who use my mobile apps, who take my courses. 07:41.530 --> 07:43.900 Here's why things don't work for them. 07:44.020 --> 07:48.700 I never actually wrote such a report, but it would be a great idea, especially the more detailed, 07:48.700 --> 07:52.690 the more statistics there could be, the more it would be referenced. 07:52.960 --> 08:00.730 And so moving on every time, not only you launch your main business, but every time you launch some 08:00.730 --> 08:07.810 sub feature, some sub product, some product iteration you can pitch to write about your company and 08:07.810 --> 08:09.070 to write about this launch. 08:09.070 --> 08:15.340 And as long as you position the features in an interesting way, it would be more likely that the journalists 08:15.340 --> 08:15.940 would cover you. 08:15.940 --> 08:22.030 And of course, when your product planning, one additional thing you would plan for is does this stand 08:22.030 --> 08:22.240 out? 08:22.240 --> 08:23.560 Does this help us stand out? 08:23.560 --> 08:28.930 Does it make us more interesting because this is now an additional thing you want to think about If 08:28.930 --> 08:35.200 the things you're building are unique or innovative or stand out well, you will naturally get more 08:35.200 --> 08:36.520 publicity and attention. 08:36.520 --> 08:39.640 So now you can tie that right to your planning phase. 08:39.940 --> 08:42.790 And I also want to give you some bonus ideas. 08:42.940 --> 08:46.690 I wanted to stay with only ten ideas, but I wanted to give you a little more. 08:46.690 --> 08:54.190 You can also try to get publicity when you reach some milestone like 1000 customers, 1 million in revenue, 08:54.190 --> 08:57.220 100,000 in revenue, any kind of milestone. 08:57.220 --> 09:05.020 That's a good opportunity to do a publicity blast and reach out to journalists to see if that's interesting 09:05.020 --> 09:06.010 for them to cover. 09:06.340 --> 09:10.510 And lastly, I want to talk about leveraging your own uniqueness. 09:10.510 --> 09:15.790 So if there's anything interesting that you yourself are doing because of yourself, you know, because 09:15.820 --> 09:21.820 of your disadvantages or advantages or something you overcame, that's a great story because it's a 09:21.820 --> 09:23.200 personal story. 09:23.500 --> 09:29.140 So try to use any of these things and maybe multiple of these things to see how you can make your business 09:29.140 --> 09:34.540 more unique and better positioned to get publicity naturally and for free.