Preparing Your Self Promotional Marketing Materials: Inventorying Your Unique Appeal

This page outlines aspects of niche and offer that you might otherwise overlook. Very often what others find most interesting about you is something you tend to take for granted and think that it doesn't deserve mentioning in your promotional marketing materials. It might even be something you are inclined to apologize for.

Be curious about how anything and everything in your experience and your aspirations might distinguish you in a way that helps your ideal clients to recognize in you a perfect match. It can be helpful to work through the outline below with a few friends or with members of a promotional marketing support group who can give you the benefit of their perspective.

Use this section to identify attributes to declare in your self promotional marketing materials and in your Rule of Threes work. It is also helpful for spotting newsworthy aspects of your business, should you choose to use press releases and public relations to market your work.

Establishing credibility
• Education
- Traditional Colleges and Universities
   - Trade Schools and Certification Programs
   - Seminars, Conferences, Workshops (CEUs)
   - Habits and practices of life long learning
   - Self-taught
• Experience
   - Related professional experience
   - Related volunteer experience
• Life Experience
   - Related
   - Pertinent
   - Unexpected

Articulating your unique point of view
• Traditional
• Expert
• Original/new
• Revolutionary
• Controversial
• Other

Your unique business characteristics
• Location of work (at home, mobile unit, on site)
• Nature of investments
• Shoestring start up
• Leveraged on the collaborative efforts of others
• Family involvement and support

Approach to work
• Lone ranger
• Collaborator
• Team Builder
• Leader
• Entrepreneur
• Service delivery
• Product development

Announcements/possible topics for your releases
• New emphasis in long-standing work
• New partnership or affiliation
• New project
• New address
• New service or product
• New Web page
• New email address (newsletter or journal)
• Awards
• Certificates
• Accomplishment
• Community Service

Entrées to a particular publication and its readership
• Your home location (you live in the readership area)
• Your work location (you work in the readership area—either your office is there or you work with people who live/work there)
• Your previous profession (write a column or a letter to the editor of a previous network’s trade journal)
• Your academic and training affiliations (alumni news, professional newsletters)
• Your volunteer work (your volunteer organization lists news about members)
• Your hobby and worship communities
• Recent work experience (you coach an auto industry exec and get an article published in an industry magazine)

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Learn more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood. Find out about those aspects of your work you might otherwise overlook and not use in your self promotional marketing materials.

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Self Promotion Index || Self Promotion, Small Business Marketing, and Your Business Values || Expand Your Vision of Your Small Business Marketing and Self Promotion Practices || Your Effective Self Promotional Marketing Tool - The Rule of Threes || Preparing Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inventorying Your Unique Appeal || Preparing Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inquiries || Elevator Speech || Self Promotion Resources: Websites and Books || Reprint Terms for Self Promotion Articles

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Contact an acknowledged expert on self promotion Molly Gordon at:

Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com

As a business coach and small business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater Seattle Area and internationally