This guest post is written by Mallory Whitfield, a proud resident of New Orleans, LA. She has been blogging at MissMalaprop.com since 2006 and also runs an online shop dedicated to the very best in handmade and eco-friendly gifts.

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I recently discovered a great post here at The Publicity Hound about 6 ways to promote your retail business before you open. It really struck a cord with me because I am currently working toward my dream of opening a brick and mortar boutique.

Rather than taking out massive debt to make my dream happen, however, I’ve decided to bootstrap and build my brand first before paying rent on a retail storefront. I’ve come up with four more ways to promote your retail business before you open:
 

1. Set up a website or blog, or both, prior to opening to start building buzz for your business.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing, and it has been instrumental in building brand recognition for my business. The earlier you launch a website, blog or even an online storefront before opening your retail space, the sooner you can start connecting with potential customers. 

The early adopters who find you during this phase are likely to become your best customers later on, so take good care of them. You can also start connecting with them via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media outlets prior to opening your new store.

Share with them the behind-the-scenes action of your store build-out, the new products that will be on your shelves, and other news to build excitement before opening day.
 

2. Connect with your local Yelp community. 

Local businesses CANNOT underestimate the value of Yelp these days. Many businesses even fear getting on the bad side of Yelp reviewers.

Avoid problems down the road by connecting early on with your local Yelp community. Be sure to take advantage of all of Yelp’s free tools and features offered to business owners, including Yelp Deals.

You can go one step further and seek out the local Yelp Community Manager and Yelp Elite. You can often find these folks milling about in the Talk section, a message board within Yelp. These are the movers and shakers on Yelp, and in many cities the Community Managers work with local businesses to throw parties exclusively for Yelp Elite.

How about throwing a pre-grand opening party, giving your Yelp Elite an exclusive sneak peek at your new business? It’s sure to create lots of buzz!
 

3. Create an eye-catching store window prior to opening.

Go one step further than simply putting up a banner or sign about your new business.

Create an appealing storefront window display to catch the eyes of potential customers and give them a glimpse at what you’ll soon be offering in your new space. A “Coming Soon” banner can take center stage, with colorful products and clever props surrounding it. Be sure to also include your website address as part of your Coming Soon window display.

You could even incorporate a QR code into your window display, and have it send visitors to your website or a link where they can sign up for your mailing list.

Need help creating a brilliant looking window display? Check out this Design*Sponge article on Creating Great Window Displays, written by a former Anthropologie display coordinator.
 

4. Participate in local festivals and other events with a booth promoting your business.

Getting the word out to your local community about the existence of your new business is key, and what better way to do that than face-to-face at local events like festivals?

Most of these events offer up booth space to local businesses, artists and food vendors. They can be a fun and affordable way for you to connect with customers and show them what you have to offer.

For retail stores, you can bring a small sample of what you sell.

Service-based businesses can also benefit. Hair stylists might offer simple yet festive services like hair braiding or feather clip extensions. Massage therapists are also popular at these types of events when providing brief chair massages as a way to promote their regular offerings.

Think creatively, and consider your target market when deciding what types of events will work best to promote your business. Maybe teaming up with another local business for a trunk show at their location is the way to go? Or perhaps if you sell comic books or video games, you could seek out nearby sci-fi and fantasy conventions?

Need more ideas? I’ve written a post on Where to Find Good Craft Shows that also includes other alternative venue ideas as well. Have you tried any of these ideas before? How did they work for your business?

Every December, Trendwatching.com publishes an annual list of a dozen crucial trends for the following year.

If you’re looking for a hook to hang a story onto, so you can pitch it to the media and bloggers, there are lots of opportunities.

Here’s the list of 12 Crucial Trends for 2012 (there are actually 13):

You won’t be able to determine instantly what each one means, so go to the website and read more. Trendwatching also has provided a helpful list of four tips you should read that helps you understand how you can use this list and actually make money from it: 

1. Influence or shape your company’s vision.
     
2. Come up with a new business concept, an entirely new venture, a new brand.
       
3. Add a new product, service or experience for a certain customer segment.
       
4. Speak the language of those consumers already “living” a trend.

How about a fifth? Tie a story idea from your company or nonprofit into one of the trends.

Here are some some examples I thought of that tie into items on the list above:

• 1. Red Carpet. Are you one of the department stores, airlines, hotels, theme parks, museums or cities that plan to roll out the red carpet for Chinese visitors and customers with tailored services and perks? If so, when? And how does this tie in with your overall marketing plan? A great story for local business journals. 
    
• 3. Dealer-Chic. What are you doing to reward thrifty consumers who love the thrill of chasing down bargains and deals? Have you started a Deal of the Day or a Deal of the Weak? What about membership clubs or rewards programs?
    
• 4. Eco-cycology. The media particularly love stories about making the environment cleaner. Pitch anything dealing with innovative ways you’re recycling, how you’re encouraging employees to offer their best ideas and even products you’re making, or packaging you’re using, from recycled materials. How does this affect the bottom line? Any time you can point to a dollars-and-cents savings, you’ve got a great tidbit to include in your pitch.     
    
• 8. Flawsome. What are you doing to be honest about your company’s flaws? How are you showing empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humor and character? Are you blogging and adopting a blog policy to address nasty comments head on? How are you showing your flaws on the social media sites? If you don’t have a social media policy yet, here are more than 80 free sample social media policies you can review. 
    
• 9. Screen Culture. What are you doing with your website or sales process to make it easier for consumers to connect with you by simply touching the screens on their tablet or smart phone or at the kiosk at the local malls? Nonprofits, are you making it easier for people to donate? 

Those are just a few ideas. I know you can think of more. Don’t miss Trendwatching’s 15 tips on how to best track and apply trends.

How will you use this list as part of your PR campaign next year? How will you be tying your pitch into these trends? 

Poor authors place their hopes, dreams, sweat, blood and money only into their books.

If the book fails, the author fails.

Rich authors use the book as a calling card to upsell readers to a wide variety of other products and services like: coaching programs, board games, wall calendars, membership programs, and more. That’s one of the key differences between rich authors and poor authors.

Learn the other six at a free 75-minute telephone seminar hosted by Steve Harrison of Radio-TV Interview Report, at 2 and 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 13. Even though the call is free, I promote it as a compensated affiliate because I’ve seen hundreds of authors miss this important distinction and tie up their life’s savings in cardboard boxes of books they can’t sell.

Register for the call, “How to Achieve A Lot More Success As An Author By Discovering The Seven Things Rich Authors Know That Poor Authors Don’t.”

Create a buzz all over town long before your store opens.

These days, in a sour economy, businesses opening just about anywhere are major news. So don’t shy away from publicity. Here six ways to promote your retail business before you open.

1. Display a large banner or sign outside your building letting people know you’ll be opening. Thanks to Alyson Stanfield, a business coach for artists and an art marketing expert, for this idea which I read at her blog yesterday.
   
   
2. Pitch the story to the local media. Contact a reporter at your local newspaper, business journal or business magazine and pitch a story about the opening. Angles can include why you chose this time, when the economy is bad, to open a new business.
   
   
3. Write a press release. Post it on a site like Craigslist, which gets millions of eyeballs. Post it only in one category and only in the city closest to where your business is located.
   
   
4. Plan a fun grand opening celebration. Publicize it on a local event sites like Yelp, EventCrazy.com and MeetUp.com.  This list of 27 questions to ask before promoting your event will stimulate ideas and help you plan a more interesting event. Please, no boring ribbon-cuttings. You can do  better than that. Here are some alternatives to ribbon-cutting events.
   
   
5. Just before you open, create a business profile on Google Maps.
   
   
6. Contact related businesses and offer to cross-promote. Ask them to display flyers about your grand opening at the front counter. Tell them that once you open, you’ll be happy to promote something they’re doing. If you’re opening a pet store, contact owners of dog kennels, dog obedience schools and veterinarians.

What other ideas can you offer for ways that retail businesses can promote long before they open? Any examples in your own community?

Publicity Hound Kate Farrall of San Diego, CA, writes:

“I need to get national/international publicity for my two muralist clients who are completing a five-story public art installation this November for the City of Davis, just outside of Sacramento. They have transformed a water tank into 360-degree kinetic art installation. You can see a short video that explains the project.

“My pitches have done well, thanks to your great advice. So far, I’ve gotten my clients a segment on our local PBS channel that will run for a year and a half, along with a few other news and print hits. The feedback on my pitches has been really good and I’ve tailored each one.

“How do I create a hook for national publications, especially art publications? Or even publications that are not so big but located elsewhere? Local has been a good hook for us so far, but that won’t work in the Midwest, New York or Europe. My clients want to be recognized as professional artists and to have a broader name recognition so they can expand where they work and the types of projects they do.

“You can read a press release about the project and see photos on Flickr.”

One of the biggest myths of press releases is that they must contain news.

That was true two decades ago when we wrote press releases primarily for journalists and we had to worry about insulting them with trivia about our business.

But now that we post them online, mostly to pull traffic to our websites, we’re free to write about whatever we wish.

Here, then, are 13 press release topics when your pockets are empty and there’s absolutely nothing newsworthy to write about. They’re excerpted from my free email course on 89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases. (PR people, take the course to sharpen your press release skills. And then use the tips below when you’re scrounging for ideas to publicize your clients.)

Publicity Hounds who have a subscription to Expertclick, The Yearbook of Experts, which lets you post up to 52 press releases a year, will find these tips particularly helpful.

1.  Take a Stand on a Controversial Topic

Controversial topics can include everything from the old standbys such as abortion and gun control to local issues like proposed zoning laws.

When you’re done with the press release, generate extra publicity by writing a letter to the editor of your local or national newspaper. How to Use Newspaper & Magazine Editorial Pages shows you all the ways you can rally support for your cause or issue by using editorial pages, from writing letters to asking for a meeting with the newspaper editorial board.

2.  Write About Your Blog 

If you’ve started blogging for business, write a press release about it so people who want information on your topic can find it. Or devote the release to some of the things you mentioned in a specific post.

This blog, for example, helps people solve problems writing press releases, and I encourage people to submit questions to me. It also teaches people how to use social media sites to self-promote. I could write two press releases, or more, just telling reades about ways they can use this blog. You can, too.

Visit other bloggers who blog on the same topic, or a similar topic, and post comments at their blogs. By linking back to your blog from your comments, you will improve the page ranking of your own blog.

3. Lead Readers to Free Articles at Your Website

If you have free articles that solve people’s problems, or entertain them, say so.

Are your articles arranged by category? Are they updated monthly? Do you let the media, ezine publishers, newsletter editors and bloggers reprint them? Do you feature articles from other industry experts?

4. Tell People Where to Find You on Social Media Sites

Smart Publicity Hounds use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Quora profiles to position themselves as the go-to sources in their industries.

Do you post your photos and videos to Flickr? Do you have a YouTube channel chock full of helpful how-to videos? (Here’s mine.)

5.  Create Your Own Holiday

Create your own day, week or month of the year, or your own holiday, at Chases Calendar of Events. The listing is free. You can then use that holiday as a springboard to even more publicity.

The topic doesn’t have to be serious. In fact, the more fun, the better. I love Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day.

6. Make a Prediction

Predict something that ties into your area of expertise—or not.

Predict when gasoline prices, the stock market or interest rates will rise and fall. For fun, predict who will win the Super Bowl or when the first snowfall will occur in your area. Predict the winner of local or national elections.

7. Issue a Proclamation

Congratulate the local high school football team for winning a state title, or a local business for celebrating its 10th anniversary.

8. Write Tips That Tie into an Upcoming Holiday

Professional orgnizers can write about how to stay organized during the Christmas holidays. A child safety expert can offer tips on how to keep kids safe during fireworks season on the Fourth of July.

9.  Identify A Trend You’re Seeing in Your Business or Industry

You don’t even have to think very hard to identify a trend you’re seeing. How has your customers’ behavior changed the way you do business? What’s happening with your orders? Is your nonprofit serving more people in a particular age group or income level?

If you want to cheat, Google “Top trends in the (fill in the blank) industry” and write about one of those.

10.  Comment on Breaking News

This one’s easy. The news can tie into your business or industry—or not. If you’re an expert who welcomes interview requests for radio talk shows, say so in the release. See 6 ways to tie your pitch to breaking news for PR and publicity.

11. What Event Are You Attending?

Most people don’t think it’s a big deal if they attend a trade show or industry conference. But why not turn this into a publicity opportunity?

Write a press release telling people that you’d welcome meeting them. Encourage them to ask you questions about problems they’re facing.

12. Take a Poll or Survey

Sites like Survey Monkey make simple polling a breeze.  You can also take a poll on Facebook. Don’t forget to write a follow-up press release that reports on the results of the poll.

13. Explain How to Solve a Problem

Press releases offering tips and advice are often the very best for pulling traffic to your website. That’s becauase you can dazzle readers with your expertise, help them solve their problem, and then link to a website where they can find more information about a product or service you sell that can help them even more.

What topics do you write about when the idea well is dry?

Tools to Help You:    

How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound

Keywords: The Magic Magnets That Pull Journalists & Consumes to Your Press Releases

The New Rules of Press Releases: How to Write them for Consumers, Not Only for Journalists

The Big Press Release Samples Ebook: Press Releases for Every Occasion and Industry

If you need a very simple, two-page website, you might want to consider giving a new service a whirl, by being a beta tester.

Lucky Badger, a tool developed by Bob Ricca, who designed my newsletter, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week, helps small businesses develop an online presence. He’s looking for a few beta testers to try the service at a discounted rate of $19.95 a month.

Lucky Badger is a one-stop-shop that consolidates everything a small business would need to get a simple website on the Internet without paying sky-high prices.  The monthly fee includes web hosting, domain name registration and a website design. All sites hosted by Lucky Badger are automatically SEO/mobile friendly and come with a complete, easy-to-use control panel that allows people who aren’t technically savvy to update their own websites instantly. 

During the beta period, Lucky Badger will help you choose a domain name and get you set up on its hosting, provide a custom two-page website design (homepage and products/menu page), and provide access to a easy-to-use control panel where you can make updates to your website using a drag-and-drop interface, even if you aren’t tech-savvy.  

A basic homepage will include your logo, locations, contact information and social media links.  You’ll also have a menu/products page which will consist of headlines and items (item name, description and price).

You can see examples of websites for Las Margaritas Mexican Restaurant and Toyo Japanese Restaurant.

If you’re interested, email Bob with your name, your business name, a sentence or two about your business, and your phone number.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

This guest post was written by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the author of the multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter (now in an updated and expanded second edition).  Also part of the HowToDoItFrugally series is the booklet The Great First Impression Book Proposal booklet, that helps authors convince agents or publishers of their understanding of spin-offs, retailing and marketing in general.  She also is the author of a series of books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions.

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By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

I can’t tell you how often I’ve thanked my lucky stars for my retail experience now that I’m an author. My husband used to say (ahem!) “Retail is 90 percent attention to detail!” If he’s right—and he always is—then the other 10 percent is marketing.

To reinterpret this, you need a great product—that’s the attention to detail part—whether that’s the store itself or the merchandise you sell. They’re both your “products.” (For authors the product is our book or books.)

But all the detail, product, merchandise, publicity or anything else—all that other stuff we’ve poured our little detail-oriented hearts into—goes for naught if we don’t do the marketing.

So how does Taylor Swift fit into this?

Well, the L.A. Times reports on her products (the way she is branding herself which is part of marketing). She has a signature fragrance, a poster by Peter Max (That’s Peter-the-Greatest-Artist-Marketer-Of-All-Time-After-Warhol!), a back to school package, a limited edition combo of a CD single and a souvenir T-shirt, headbands, a songbook, a tin box of guitar picks, boxed greeting cards, a keychain, and a journal. Yes, I’m out of breath!

So, we can learn a lot from her about branding, a big part of marketing. Each of these products fits with her image. But we can also learn that we just need to do it.
     
    
How to Brand with Spin-off Products

Your book proposal, as an example, might include a list of products (other than your book) that could be spun off from your book. Taylor’s journal idea is a good one for memoirists. T-shirts work for just about everyone. But each author’s list of possibilities will be different, just as the list would differ for different businesses on Main Street USA.

One of our stores was in Palm Springs and we had adorable little souvenir pin boxes made with “Carlan’s, Palm Springs” and palm trees hand-painted on them. They worked because they were more personal and specific than the usual souvenir with only “Palm Springs” machine stamped on them.

My poetry partner, Magdalena Ball, and I might someday have art posters of the covers of our poetry chapbook series featuring our collaborating artists—Jacquie Schmall, Vicki Thomas and May Lattanzio. Framed, of course! Learn more about how we promote that series  (including a special holiday card offer for the Christmas chapbook).
     
    
What About YOUR Idea?

So, what do you do with your product idea? Well, the obvious first choice would be to get a manufacturer with a HUGE customer base to make your product; they, in turn, get their sales representatives to sell them to retailers who then sell them to the general public.

But what if you’re eager to get started now? Try these ideas:

• Use your products as thank you gifts. 

• Use your products as souvenirs or parts of promotions, like gift baskets or contests.
 
• Use your products as walking, talking advertisements. As an example, every time someone compliments you on your rose-scented cologne, that’s an opportunity to mention your romance novel and maybe give them a bookmark. Your T-shirts are walking billboards. So are your totes.
 
• Use your products as part of the media kits you leave in the press rooms at tradeshows.
 
• Use your products as an integral part of parties and events you plan, like a store opening or a book launch.
 
• Offer your products to charities for their drawings or other fundraisers.

So, put your thinking cap on. What kind of a “Seller” can you be? What fits with your product, your store, your title—whatever that is?

Did you ever land at a blog, and spend more time staring at the clever graphic than you did reading the post?

I have. The same way you landed here and stared at the one above, wondering, “How did she do that?”

Easy. It’s one of the 10 free generators, most of them animated, at foday.com.

Here are some ideas for using these cool graphics in a publicity or marketing campaign.

The Talking Tomato

If you work in the food industry, use the Talking Tomato at your website. Let’s say you teach kids about healthy food. You can explain the nutritional benefits of tomatoes.

The Talking Cat

Humane societies and pet shops will love the talking cat. Simply insert the HTML code at your website. And then sponsor a contest to see who can come up with the most clever sayings for the cat. Award fun prizes.

Keep it fresh. Sponsor the contest again every few months.

     

The Newspaper

Bloggers, I’ll bet this newspaper generator will come in handy when you’re writing about a topic and can’t find a photo anywhere to accompany it. It isn’t animated. But you can create your own headline and write your own story:

The Cigarette Pack

Does your product or service help people to quit smoking?

Create your own cigarette pack and come up with a clever saying. You can use the graphic in your online press room and even offer it to journalists. I love the saying on the sample SMOKEME cigarette pack at their website:

Other Options

You can also choose from the Ninja (the one you were staring at at the top of this blog post), a clapper board perfect for people in the movie industry, talking squirrels, animated wizard text, talking flowers and talking owls.

Don’t forget Flickr, the social media site for uploading photos and videos. See 9 ways to use Flickr to promote your business.

OK, Hounds. It’s your turn. Use the generator to create a graphic that you could use in a publicity or marketing campaign. Post it in the comments section below. Or if it’s at your website or blog, link to it.

If for some reason it won’t show up correctly in the comments section, open a Notepad document, paste in the HTML code and send it to me as an attachment. Do not put it in the body of the email. If I get enough clever ones, I’ll feature some of them next week.

P.S. Comments at this blog are moderated, which means they won’t appear here until I approve them. What tools do you use that are similar to these? Did you find the free generator as easy to use as I did?

More Tools to Help You:

• Photofunia, another fun graphics tool, lets you place your photo on a bus shelter, on a billboard, in Times Square and in art museums, or give it all kinds of really neat artsy-fartsy treatments.
• Free generators are only one of 55 free things to offer you can offer to generate publicity or capture people’s email addresses.