Recently, I’ve gotten restless, and I’ve decided to begin playing music professionally again. Trouble is, I don’t have a lot of contacts here in Amarillo. So I’ve decided to apply the same techniques I recommend to my marketing clients to my own situation. That means I’ve got to find ways to get myself noticed around town. What you see at the left here is a poster I whipped up in an hour or so this evening. I’ve secured a one-night gig – kind of a “let’s see if this works” kind of thing. Obviously, I’d like this to turn into a regular gig. So I’m doing everything I know how to do to make that happen. First, we’ll start with promotions. I’m going to print several of these posters and give them to Pizza Hut. I figure that the combination of a nice-looking poster along with taking the initiative to promote my appearance there will go a long way towards helping them see the possibilities. It won’t cost me much to do it, and it will help serve my larger goal of getting my name out there as a musician in Amarillo. With only two days before the gig, I don’t have much time to self-promote, but I figure that anything I can do is better than sitting around and waiting for something good to happen.
What’s the takeaway for you? Well, first you should ditch any negative self-talk, and look at the possibilities. Need to promote yourself, your company, your product? Have a limited budget? That’s not a deal-breaker…it just means you need to get creative. Next, start blue-skying…think up as many ideas for promotions as you can. Don’t discard any of them – yet. Just list them and come back to them later. After you’ve brainstormed, it’s time to start prioritizing your ideas, and putting the impractical ones on the back burner. Notice, I didn’t say “throw ’em out.” Just put them away for future reference. You never know when one might come in handy.
Now, implement and test like crazy. Did it work? Why? Why not? Can you fix it? Make it better? Testing gives you answers you can’t get from intuition and guesswork.
I’ll let you know how my quickie self-promotion effort turns out. In the meantime, when was the last time you promoted you?
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