#Press - Call to Action
Both Felix Kimaru and Brian Bett, the Co-founder of Totohealth and Illuminum Greenhouses respectively, learned the hard way that media attention is only as good as you make it. Seeing media attention as an end instead of a means to an end led to frustration and burnout. Making media work for them led to better sales, better reputation, and a real sense of achievement and progress. So what did they do differently?
##Going in with Goals
What made the difference for Kimaru and Bett? First, how did they use media early on. Ngalu found himself always saying yes, eager to get his business’ name out there. However, over time, he found this became exhausting. Media appearences disrupted his schedule and added stress to his work. At some point, he was forced to ask himself why he kept doing the interviews.
“Over time we asked: what we were gaining?”
Totohealth realized that they had to apply the same logic to his media appearances that they would apply to any other part of his business. They started asking themselves what Totohealth was gaining from each appearance. This changed their approach: they began only accepting interviews where they knew they could benefit. Furthermore, they entered each interview with a specific end goal in mind.
For example, if they wanted to get people to register with Totohealth, they would make sure to repeat that call to action as many times as possible throughout the interview. They would direct questions towards the topics they wanted to talk about instead of allowing the interviewer to do all of the topic choosing.
The result is that Totohealth does fewer interviews and gets more from each one. This approach allows them to better optimize his time and get better results for his business. Still, it isn’t always possible to see the direct results of your media work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth it.
##The Importance of Following Through
“Don’t burnout. You’ll get tired of telling the story. Media just gets your name out there, you still need to do the hard work.”
-Brian Bett, Co-founder of Illuminum Greenhouses
Bett had a similar experience to Totohealth early on. He gave so many interviews he risked getting sick of telling his own story. At some moment he knew he had to change his way of thinking about using the media. Interviews were exhausting him and not helping his business enough.
A big moment for Bett was when The Guardian wrote a story about him and his business. He thought this would be his big break. Ultimately, the article did open a lot of doors for him, but he realized he couldn’t rely on media to do the work for him. Even more than entering with a specific goal, what became important for Bett was having a plan to follow up and exploit the benefits of media exposure.
“The next step is to have you in mind, you need to call your sales team and have them do double work this week, go with your brochures, tell them you were on TV and what they can do for you.”
-Brian Bett, Co-founder of Illuminum Greenhouses
By thinking of media exposure as a kind of advertising, Bett realized that capturing potential customers at the moment they encountered his business through the media got him great results. So, after a major media appearence, he would follow up with a major sales push. Ultimately, this got him to the same place as Totohealth: both limited and optimized their media appearances. The result was less work and better results.
Can you relate to the stories we told here? How is your experience different? We’d love to hear from you. Your questions and comments are what will help us make better lessons in the future.