The Bait Piece Strategy Works Again

Hi all,

Three months ago I created a little report called "33 Keys to Thriving During a Recession," and set it up to be downloaded free from my site. Of course I let my list know about it, and a good number of my colleagues passed on the word about it to their lists, or offered it as a bonus gift during a book launch or Christmas giveaway.

In addition, I printed up a dozen nice 12-page 11 x 17 booklets of this report and sent it to editors of business magazines. I've just received word that Bottom Line/Personal is going to be running a blurb about my report in an upcoming issue and inviting their readers to download a copy.

In case you're not familiar with Bottom Line/Personal, it is a print newsletter with 500,000 subscribers. I understand that it's actually the largest-circulation newsletter in the country.

(By the way, if you didn't see the report, you can download it free at Recession-Proof Marketing | A Free Report from Creative Marketing Expert Marcia Yudkin )

This is a reprise of a strategy I first used in 1992. This was prior to the Internet, of course, and the way to give away stuff then was to tell people to send a self-addressed stamped envelope. I created a four-page booklet called "6 Steps to Free Publicity" and sent a copy to Bottom Line/Personal for their Freebie column. They liked it and printed a six-line notice. They told me to prepare for 500 SASEs, and I actually received 5,000! They said that as far as they knew, that was their most requested freebie ever.

I was able to parley that giveaway success into a book contract with Penguin USA, and my book "6 Steps to Free Publicity" is still in print, in a third edition from Career Press.

A few tips if you want to create a bait piece and seek media coverage for it:

1)Make sure your report is tightly written, thoroughly proofread and contains no more than 15% promotional information. In my recession marketing report, if you consider my author bio as promotional information, along with some paragraphs about related offerings at the end of the report, then my current report contains just 12.5% promotional material and all the rest is pure content.

2)Do not use a squeeze page. The media prefer recommending resources that are freely downloaded without any opt-in. Sure you sacrifice the ability to follow up, but the traffic from a major media hit will be more than worth the tradeoff. Make sure you include teasers for other information or services you have for sale at the end of your bait piece.

3)Mail it, don't email it. I know some of you will think that's crazy, but in my opinion, the chances of a busy reporter or editor putting something tangible aside on their desk for later use and actually getting back to it are far greater than the chances of them getting an email that seems promising and them getting back to that email, downloading the report and deciding to use it. Note that there was a three month lag from the time I mailed a hard-copy of the report to Bottom Line/Personal until they contacted me to use it. Be honest: how often do you go back to your email from three months earlier?

Anyway, I thought some members of this board would find the whole strategy useful. Let me know if you have questions. I have many other successful examples of doing this sort of thing, but this example gives you the keys to imitate it successfully.

Marcia Yudkin