Several hundred responded – thank you so much – and here are the results:

(click each image to make it larger)



Where would you be happy to travel for a free one day PR & marketing seminar?

We’ve done a lot of seminars in London this year and clearly there is still a demand for more. We’ll be launching some central London events at the end of the year.

What are the biggest marketing challenges in your business right now?

No massive surprises there. Lead generation, website traffic and getting free publicity always seem to be the three biggest problems when I talk to business owners.

Have you previously invested in professional marketing to help you grow your business?

Would you prefer to learn how to significantly improve your marketing, or have it done for you?

This is reassuring. It tells me that business owners want to know what to do in their business, even if someone is doing it for them. This is good. Marketing and sales is the most important thing in your business. If you’re going to learn about one thing, make it marketing.

And your individual comments

Lots of positive feedback on the Tuesday PR & Marketing Tips, so thank you.

One business owner said: “Personally, I prefer workshops without the ice-breaking time-wasting exercises. You have so much useful information to impart, I would rather pay for full-on, in-depth strategy and specific techniques that give real benefit and justify my time, rather than a free day that gives some, but limited, benefit; and therefore less value.”

That’s a really good point, and it’s the reason why I recently launched the two day Intensive Business Focus event.

This brings a host of PR opportunities for your business.

Firstly, for the next 29 days, journalists are going to be very hungry for unusual election content. They’ll be looking for alternative angles about voting, why we vote, how we pick candidates, etc.

Already the UK’s radio stations have interviewed body language experts and speech analysts. Expect plenty more in the weeks to come.

The question is this: How can you take whatever it is that your business does and make it relevant to journalists who have to come up with new coverage about the election tomorrow?

Secondly, an almost bigger opportunity is generating story ideas that are NOT about the election.

For every story about the election, newspapers and radios will be desperately looking for non-political content. This is a huge opportunity for you. Quirky stories will especially be welcome, as journalists look for something to balance the dry political stuff.

The headline? Online condom sales rise despite stiff competition from retailers

See his blog entry here.

The first was in the toilets at Xscape in Milton Keynes (and yes I was the only person in there when I took this photo!). The poster is positioned just above the urinal.

A pretty risque advert and not one that you’d expect from a firm of solicitors. And that’s why people would talk about it.

Meantime, in London, it looks like a new bank is launching.

And with all the financial woes we have had over the last year, this is a good way to get people talking. We all want a good relationship with our bank, right?

This is a sign at what will presumably become a branch of the new bank. They’re setting expectations pretty high with this… will be interesting to see what actually happens.

Partly this is to try and keep the newspaper publishers happy. For example it has a new scheme that will allow papers such as The Times to let their content be indexed and appear in Google News, but require readers to pay for reading some of that content.

The latest experiment from Google is the Living Story idea.

It’s explained in full here.

The concept is brilliant. You will have a single page for each story that is constantly updating itself as a story changes and new content is added by publishers across the world.

A stunning idea. If it works and spreads to the UK it could make it easier for you to track what the media is saying about your business.

Found it on a media contacts database from the editor of a magazine:

“Chasing me about using press releases is the best way to ensure they go straight in the bin!”

You have been warned!

There are, of course, ways to make a follow-up phone call about a press release without the journalist feeling like they are being chased. The best way to go about it is revealed in the PR Success Programme.

In London today I did a double take… when I thought I saw a Smart car covered in grass.

It was a bit too speedy past St Pancras for me to see the name of the business, but a quick Google search found this photo and the company behind it.

Here’s the YouTube video of the Grass Bugs:

Stunning! There are lots of business that would talk about doing something like this, but very few would have the balls to actually do it. Easigrass deserves to do well.

It’s almost always about the story.

Good contacts can open doors and set up opportunities. But a great story gives you the biggest shot you’ll get at major PR coverage.

I caught the end of our regional BBC TV news tonight, where they did a live outside broadcast from an Indian restaurant that had introduced a curry so hot, no-one could eat a whole plate of it. And they had to fill in a disclaimer form before they did.

A classic publicity stunt. Getting plenty of valuable air time on a BBC TV show.

Fantastic.

OK, so it must be a slow news day. But you don’t get coverage like that “because you know a journalist”. You get coverage like that because you had a great story at the right time (exactly the timem the BBC had a slot to fill).