Press Coverage is Irrelevant

At Beehive Media we do a terrible job of bragging about ourselves.  People ask me all the time "how do you market yourself?" and "where do your clients find you?"  And I always shrug my shoulders and sheepishly respond that we get a lot of repeat business from clients and some referrals and a decent amount of incoming leads from pay-per-click advertising and directories.  We advertise on AdWords and have our site listed on several directories like Haystack and Xemion and a bunch of others.

But I'm always embarrassed when asked the question because I have to admit that for the past 15 years or so we've had an almost entirely passive marketing and sales effort.  We don't push, we don't advertise much at all, we don't speak at or attend many conferences, we only apply for one awards show per year, we don't do PR and we don't brag.  It's not that we're without ego or that we don't believe that those things would be good for business.  We've just always been too busy. 

So imagine our surprise when in the past four weeks, we have managed to win a prestigious award, be featured in BusinessWeek magazine, and get quoted in Inc. Magazine.  As a marketer friend said to me, "Ok, so you don't need me, or anyone else, to tell you how to market or do PR ever again." 

But here's the interesting part.  So far, at least, we've seen almost no impact on our business. 

OK, it's only been a short while.  And we're not promoting it the way some might.  (Can you do a press release announcing that you've been mentioned in the press?  That feels like an endless loop!)  I've tweeted about it once or twice.  Of course I told my Mom and a few friends.  But we're not sending an email blast out about it, or scheduling 10 tweets over three days to make sure it gets to all of my followers.  And to be honest, that's what it takes to be heard in today's world.  You have to hammer things over and over and over again to get through the clutter.  Otherwise, press coverage, like anything else, is just a blip.  It made my Mom proud, and it prompted some friends to congratulate me, but it is not leading to more business per se.  That would take a sustained effort, more appearances in the press, more promotion, in other words, a real marketing effort. 

Guy Kawasaki, marketer-extraordinaire, is often villified for being a Twitter-spammer.  He tweets dozens of times per day.  And he has ghost-tweeters helping curate and tweet content.  And he lines up his tweets, scheduling them for regular posting throughout the day and night, including a schedule whereby every tweet runs three times.  And all links go through one of his pages, providing a constant stream of traffic to his own site, not just the destination content.  He has gone out of his way to explain the methodology and reasoning behind that choice.  And it all makes perfect sense.  It is good marketing from a solid numbers-driven approach.

Perhaps one day we'll take a more proactive approach to marketing Beehive but for us and our business, the softer approach is more appropriate.  But our new startup, buzub, will definitely require a bigger marketing effort.  I look forward to taking a more Guy-like approach for that effort (thought we probably won't take it quite as far as he does.)

And yes, the irony is not lost on me that here I am writing about how we don't promote, brag, etc., but the first thing I'm going to do when I'm done writing this blog post is tweet about it, post it to Posterous and Facebook and………