Why not take the opportunity to convert seasonal benchmarks, such as the “holiday season” into marketing opportunities? And that’s precisely the tact taken on behalf of one of Tennessee’s leading chiropractors who, at the last minute, decided to send a “holiday newsletter” to his clients. Converting “holiday good cheer” into marketing messages is a prime example of squeezing every bit of opportunity out of your communications strategy through the use of “leverage marketing.”
On December 8th, Dr. Louis Obersteadt, the former multi-year president of the Tennessee Chiropractic Association and a distinguished two-time recipient as “Chiropractor of the Year,” decided he wanted a holiday newsletter. The case study below reflects the strategies deployed to maximize this singular marketing effort as a platform to create multiple marketing opportunities.
The Original/Primary Assignment: Create a Holiday Newsletter.
A big yawn and ho-hum is pretty much the way we can mostly characterize seasonal communications with customers, clients or prospects. The majority of snail-mailed post cards are generic “seasonal greetings” dripping with mundane off-the-shelf sentiment designed at best to be “warm and fuzzy.” Rarely, do you find a “call-to-action” and even less frequently does a “holiday card” strike such a resonant chord with the recipient that they can’t wait to not only share that unsolicited missive with family or friends, but even better, leave them anxious to make their next appointment.
The above was the self-imposed challenge the agency faced in creating this distinguished doctor’s newsletter. Click here to see the “snail mail” version of the Holiday Newsletter.
The Result: The most challenging task as marketers is to create a communications message that truly connects with customers, a message that makes them smile, one that is light and fun yet relevant, resonant and even humorous. If you can make people smile, or laugh, and gently, or subtly imbed your “sales message” it is arguably the most effective and powerful marketing approach. This goal was exceedingly accomplished. View the snail-mail version of the Holiday Newsletter.
Here’s what Dr. Obersteadt had to say about the “Holiday Newsletter”:
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Jeff, I am very pleased with your incredible imagination! Thanks, Dr. Louis Obersteadt |
Leverage Step 2: From Snail-Mail to Email
Finding ways to squeeze multiple uses out of your “marketing materials” is simply smart marketing. So the very next tactic we employed, as well as being extremely cost efficient for the client, was to reproduce the snail-mail newsletter into an email version. By simply reformatting the snail-mail version of the mailed print version of the newsletter, we were able to double up and reinforce our message to the doctor’s patients, increasing our “impressions” while reducing our cpm. Click here to see the email version of the email holiday card.
Leverage Step 3: The Press Release
Here’s where it gets pretty juicy, creative and fun. We decided to augment the holiday newsletter with some “practical holiday tips” and converted it into a potentially newsworthy press release. After all, the news media are always looking for “unique and interesting” holiday/seasonal-tie’in’s and stories. So, the approach we would take to the media would provide a consumer tie-in with the holiday season, best reflected in the following pitch line: “A Dozen Helpful and Healthy Ways to Shop During the Holidays without Putting A Crimp in Your Christmas or Your Back.” The goal was to get the attention of news editors in Nashville, TN with a Subject Line in Outbound Emails to the Nashville media that read: “Correct Shopping Posture: Don’t Let Christmas Shopping Put a Crimp in your Shopping or your Back this Holiday Season.”
Click Here to See the Press Release
The Result: Media Success
The agency was engaged less than two weeks prior to Christmas Day. Clearly a short fuse and for all practical purposes an impossibly truncated time-line to get anything meaningful done, especially as the media is concerned, during this pressure-packed time period. The fact is, news media stories require ramp and nurturing, especially if it isn’t a “hard news story.” And yet, despite these challenges, the “story” caught the attention of the editor of the Nashville Business Journal and was reproduced in whole in the Belle Meade Community Newspaper website (the newspaper being a weekly, the deadline had passed and no other issue was being “printed” until after the new year).
Critical PostScript & Important Public Relations Advice: News releases are intended to accomplish the following goals:
- Create interest in an editor (print or electronic media) about doing a “stand alone” news piece about your client (the subject of the release/story).
- A “story” may be picked up in whole, or in part.
- Other times a news release will trigger interest on behalf of the news media who will use “your news release” as a starting point to do another version or slant of a story they think is more fitting for their reader/viewer/audience. In this case, a client might be the sole subject of a story, but more often they are one part or one source, of whatever this “larger story” might be.
- Other times a “story” might fit in to some other notion or idea that is already “in the hopper” or in the “mindset” of an editor/writer/reporter.
Our media success was an example of the fourth scenario noted above.
The Nashville Business Journal
The editor of the Nashville Business Journal was, at the time of the story/release submission, working on a story about “marketing efforts on behalf of businesses’ in the face of a changing and declining business climate.” Dr. Obersteadt was quoted and featured in this story.
The Marketing Machine in Full Swing
So, what happens next with this media success? The principle of Leverage Marketing is further amplified below:
- A reprint of the article(s) will be posted to the Doctor’s website.
- At the Doctor’s discretion, a snail-mail version of a letter, along with a photo copy of the article will be mailed to his patients.
- Additionally and alternatively, an outbound (email) letter will be sent to his patients, which contain a link to the Doctor’s website where a copy of the “article” will live that proudly announces this recent “news” accomplishment.
Conclusion: The Big Payoff
Having established “contacts and connections” with the media in his market, going forward this first small but successful round of media exposure significantly enhances future opportunities to promote the doctor to media editors in his market.
The process of creating “branding” and implementing “name recognition” among the media is invaluable in advancing story ideas in the future. Just as with consumers, it takes time (frequency and reach) to establish “credibility and value” with customers; the media are no different. This (initial) marketing strategy and public relations approach has opened the doors for further dialogue with media.
