Literature Marketing: Advertise without spending money

 

This may sound as a stupid term I have invented for another of those stupid ideas of mine. But this is a post I wanted to write for a long time. But in between I got some other ideas on which I could build up on more easily. So I ignored this topic for a while. That doesn’t mean this is a topic of less importance in any sense. This is about how most people (read 70%) form their opinions on the basis of what they read especially in magazines, websites, blogs and newspapers and not on the basis of what they experience or come face to face in everyday life. This happens because of the poor multi-taskers we are. Most of us just close our eyes and ears and concentrate entirely on the task at hand so that the chances for forming an opinion when executing the task are rare. We set apart separate time for reading and forming opinions while a few of us don’t form any opinion at all.

 

This thought reveals two distinct opportunities. One as an individual it identifies for you the need to keep your ears and eyes open at work as it is the best avenue for forming opinion about whatever you are into rather than depending on some magazine or newspaper or any electronic media which are not always reliable for the reasons I will mention later on this post. Second if you are an entrepreneur or own an established business it will make perfect sense to get favorable literature about your company or your product published in leading newspapers, magazines, blogs and forums so that you can also take advantage of the impact it can create compared to paid advertisements.

 

An effort to keep your eyes and ears open while doing your job is not as easy as just stating the advantages of the same. Many of us are not trained enough to make out what each fact or phenomenon we encounter means to us. This requires constant effort from our part and if possible a little bit of coaching from people experienced in the same. You should know what information to absorb and what to discard. If you are an employee this enables you to give important feedback to your employers on what is happening in the market. Your employer may be spending lot of money on those market research reports available in the market. He knows that none of them is as important as the feedback you can give since you are the person who can sense the pulse of what’s happening around you. But he doesn’t have any choice because there are very few people available for him to employee who can give such prompt and accurate feedbacks. Once you become one among them your importance increases manifold. If you own a business again it makes sense for you to learn a few techniques to sort the information you come against in the market. It will be easier for you to do than a normal employee as you have already started your venture banking on your capability to sense an opportunity. It will be more useful than those market research reports you spend money on.

 

Although the above stated ideas are important for business and professionals these are not the core ideas which constitute Literature Marketing as I perceive it. Literature marketing is the second opportunity I have mentioned earlier. It is how you take advantage of this habit or weakness of the people around you in multitasking.

 

 

 

There are different ways in which you can make use of this opportunity

 

1. Corporate Social Responsibility

In recent years CSR activities found a place in annual reports of almost all the companies, independent of their size or nature of business. But annual reports are not the only place you find those; they also come in your daily newspaper and weekly magazines. More and more importance is attributed by employees and customers to the CSR activity of the company. Special units are formed and experts are recruited to carryout CSR activities and to ensure proper coverage for the program. Don’t know whether it is good or bad but many of those CSR activities are camouflaged marketing but with much more impact on people. 

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1.  Guinness Books and other such events and associations

All of us have seen articles in the newspaper about the neighborhood pizza house making the largest pizza in the world and baker down the street making the tallest cake ever made. Many of us have noticed the fact that such feats propel the pizza house or baker to immediate fame. But how many of us have thought of implementing such an activity with proper coverage to gain the publicity.

 

1. Activities in collaboration with media

I know many media houses which earn a major part of their profit by hosting a shopping festival or a talent hunt event. In this process they employ several partners for these programs and such partners gain a lot of publicity through the media owned by the media houses. The fame you earn through such activities is much more superior in the customer mind compared to which you get from the advertisement for which you spent the same amount of money. How many brand names we can recall which are still pronounced when people refer to a popular talent hunt event or shopping festival.

1. Blogs and articles

The much hyped advantages of blogs by CEOs, other key employees are known to each of us. In addition to this the traditional way of an expert from your company writing articles for a popular magazine about a new product or new developments in the industry is still as good a technique as it has been before.

 

Among the methods mentioned above all may not suit your company, but you have to identify which all suit you better than others and employ them to gain the much needed mileage for your company.