So, I’m the Publicity Contributor to Kathryn Hocking’s awesome E-course Launch Formula and this week is promotion week. I’ve written a whole module for the team on how to do your own publicity and I’m getting lots of fun questions in the Facebook forum which is I’m loving, being a PR-nerd! One of the questions I got asked yesterday was:

How do I find which media I should be targeting?

As with any marketing activity you need to go back to your ideal client or your target market.

This is so key. I talk to business owners every day who say ‘I’m targeting small businesses’ or ‘women 25-35’. As a small business yourself this is still WAY TOO BROAD!!! Sorry! You really have to nail this part of your marketing strategy otherwise everything is going to be a struggle, expensive and way too time consuming.

Ask yourself these questions – who do I enjoy working with and really look at who you’ve worked with previously, what are your ideal client’s likes and dislikes, demographics, their drivers and their fears?

The key to this is splitting up your target market into ‘verticals’ as us marketers call them. If your market is other businesses single out a specific job role you would normally deal with eg If you’re VA you might be targeting PAs or administrators, if you deliver coaching for senior execs target CEOs only.

So let’s take my business as an example. My ideal client is a photographer, who is 32, a mum and lives in Sydney, she’s savvy and smart and markets her business online. She’s part of lots of women entrepreneur networks and reads Guardian online, Sydney Morning Herald on her tablet daily and monthly subscribes to Camera+ and Renegade Collective magazine. This is who I want to attract so suddenly I have a whole person to work with rather than the confusing and overwhelming label of ‘entrepreneur’ or faceless ‘small business’, I can target parenting mags, women’s mags, morning TV, city dailies and local newspapers and photography specific outlets.

I’ve also done some deeper investigation into my client list which was quite fun and took me five minutes! I may not have completely nailed my ideal client in my second year of business as my clients come from a whopping 12 different sectors ranging from 12 sectors from kids to IT, accountants to jewellers. Geographically, however, they are very slanted towards where I live, but a third come from interstate. Split male to female is actually 50/50, which again surprises me (I really should do this more often and not just for these blog posts!!).

So anyway, once you’ve found however many ideal clients profiles you’d like to work with you need to find out from them what they’re reading, listening to and watching every day. Send a quick email to your list, set up a SurveyMonkey and share link on your social media feeds and just ask away.

Also, do some internet research and find out who your competitors are communicating through and where your ideal client is ‘hanging out’.

Then, the next step is get all this information in one place. As an entrepreneur you are busy with a million other things so create a quick spreadsheet with tabs and plug in your data so you don’t lose this information over time and when you do have a story in six months’ time and can’t remember where you saved it (or is that just me…yikes!).

If your ideal client is based in Sydney and is in business find out the phone number of the Daily Telegraph and ask for the phone number and email of the Business Editor….and if you’re ready to talk to them get put through!

Also, connect with journos on social media – LinkedIn and Twitter are their preferred sites.

If your ideal client is a working young woman who loves fashion and design hit up Cosmo and Frankie.

If they are an administrator at a University talk to Campus Review magazine.

If they are a tech start-up talk to Anthill Online, Startup Smart and TechCrunch.

If they are a 20-something woman who loves yoga Wellness magazine and MindBodyGreen.

You get the picture!

So now you ask ‘How do I pitch to them?’ and I’ll cover in my next blog post. If you’d like to get a heads-up on when I’ll post that jump on down the page and subscribe 🙂