I SAW YOU ON TV AS A SMALL BUSINESS EXPERT, HOW DID YOU MAKE THAT HAPPEN?
This is how…(video below)
About 4 years ago I recruited a marketing friend to work 1 day per week in the office. We had a crappy website, zero social media presence, actually, zero online presence. She got our brand updated, we worked on a fresher website, started regular email marketing, promote events and wrote regular blogs. Over the course of a year I had to write one article per week, which I stuck to.
This filled our website up with a lot of really good insightful articles. In fact my article titled ‘Why Is My Profit So Different To My Bank Balance?’ actually ranks #1 on Google for those search terms - still to this day!
BUT,
I didn’t get a flurry of new enquiries. I had to think more strategically.
I decided to brainstorm WHO had my clients. What other non-competing businesses have the same target as me. Sitting home on a Sunday watching daytime TV I switched on Kochie’s Business Builders, a show focussed on small business in Australia and I knew I had to connect. I hit Google and LinkedIn to find out who was the editor, came across someone I thought was the one, and shot off a quick email basically saying “Hey, I’m a small business advisor, I love your show, I write a lot of articles, thought you might like to use this one on your website, I know my small business clients loved it.”
That started a dialogue, they loved the idea and I started sharing an article once every two or so months, which they posted on their website, emailed to their list and shared on social media.
My strategy was ALWAYS to get on television and I saw that building my brand through writing articles first was where I should start.
After around 2 years, I was contacted by Kochie’s personal assistant to be interviewed as a small business expert on his podcast. Wouldn’t you believe it, the day of the podcast we had torrential flooding in QLD, I was up to my waste in flood water, so I had to cancel.
A few months later the call came in again for another interview and this time I was ready to talk all things succession planning. It went really well. Now I had a number of articles and a podcast interview under my belt.
I got busy in my growing business as we become oversubscribed so I turned down the marketing engines. Come early 2018 I decided to ramp them up again, and low and behold my contact at Kochie’s Business Builders was no longer working there. I called and emailed but couldn’t get a response from anyone and I had thought I had done my dash.
About 3-4 months later, I had a call from the producer of the TV program who asked if I could fly to Sydney, they’d like me to be the small business expert on an upcoming episode. She said that the new editor (whom I never heard back from) had recommended me! "YES I said, I would love to."
By the end of the week I was on a plane to Sydney, then sitting in a briefing with the camera crew and director, then in front of the camera and quickly enough it was all over and I was flying home. The episode was aired shortly after and I received a waterfall of exposure and business opportunities.
It might have taken a few years but I got that air time on television. The lesson is that nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you have come from, stay persistence. Even when you feel down and get smashed into the pavement, stay persistent.