Whole Foods

How to generate publicity from Pi Day

Piggybacking publicity onto popular or obscure days, weeks and months of the year is one of the easiest ways to find your way into the media, and I give lots of examples in my ebook, How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound.

Here’s one of the more obscure days of the year. It’s Pi Day, and it’s today, 3/14. It celebrates pi, which is 3.141592653589793, the mathematical constant that goes on without any repeating patterns, right into infinity.

Columnist Jim Stingl of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a column in today’s paper about two local businesses that are celebrating:

Discovery World Museum is giving prizes to math wizards and Einsteins who can recite from memory the most digits of pi.
Each year, Whole Foods Market in Milwaukee gives away free slices of apple, cherry or blueberry pie, starting at 3:14 p.m. It also sells pies for $3.14.

Your business doesn’t have to be tied to food, or math, in order for you to generate a little publicity from Pi Day. What can you sell for $3.14? Or what challenge can you issue to your customers that ties into the numbers 3, 1 and 4?

Update:

Someone who commented on Stingl’s column another great publicity idea:

“When I used to work as a medical researcher, our department celebrated Pi Day every year by bringing pies into work on that day. A lot of people would bring in pies and we’d set up the pies on a credenza in the hall outside of the labs along with plates and forks, whipped cream, etc. On the wall above the pies there were fun facts about pie.”

This is something ANY business or nonprofit can do. Try it, and invite the local TV stations and newspapers.

For more ideas, see Special Report #45: How to Generate National Publicity from Your Own Holiday (or Day, Week or Month of the Year). Or if you don’t want to create your own day, you can always piggyback onto someone else’s.

How can grass-fed beef ranch connect with target market?

filet mignon2 Jeff Clear writes of Monument, Colo., writes:

“I do the Internet marketing for Lasater Grasslands Beef, a grass-fed beef ranch in Colorado.

“Our target audience consists of environmentally conscious people, moms who want to feed their families healthy beef, and people who have spent money on vitamins because they have already proven they will spend money on health.

“Our beef is sold in Whole Foods, so that will give you an idea of the demographics of our customer base. Our grass-fed beef has less saturated fat and is lower in calories than grain-fed beef, and has no hormones, additives or pesticides. It has higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and other vitamins.

“What’s the best way to reach our target market online?”