Our first example of using St. Patrick’s Day as a way to generate some publicity is courtesy of the Bitter End Yacht Club. Normally, you’d have to connect a lot of dots in order to make the connection between yachting and the Irish (unless you’re yachting down the green waters of Chicago). The folks at Bitter End found a creative way to tie in their yacht club press release with the famous March holiday through an innovative way to also help clean up the environment (this is actually the reason why it’s so newsworthy).

Simply put, if you go out and help clean up the North Sound shoreline, you can receive a coupon for one free drink at a pub for each bag of rubbish collected. We love this because it’s not just publicity for the sake of publicity, but rather a creative way to highlight a good deed.

Our second St. Patrick’s Day press release for small business example comes to us from the Doggie Couture Shop. Who doesn’t love to see a cute pup dressed in an even cuter St. Patties Day-themed costume? Doggie Couture Shop is all about touting good fashion for dogs. If you’re a dog lover, you get it. Trust us. We love to spend on our furry little loved ones because we think they’re a real extension of our family – not just a pet that needs to be fed.

What better way to obtain publicity for a small business that caters to people looking to dress up their dog than to tie in a St. Patrick’s Day publicity opportunity for dog fashions. We’d like to see doggie Couture Shop bring in a little newsworthiness into their next press release, possibly by doing a survey on how many people will be planning on spending money on their pets this holiday.

Our third and final example of a press release for small business is via Jennifer Cary Designs, a jewelry designer who’s appropriately playing off the St. Patrick’s Day theme by touting their Irish styles through a press release. Although the press release is a tad bit light on any real newsworthiness and a little heavy on promotion, we’ll accept it here because of the fact they’ve got a strong tie into the holiday. But next time they might want to also think about doing a contest on letting people vote on the most authentic looking piece of Irish jewelry and then announcing the results. Here’s a hint, by hosting this contest on a blog they can build up a nice little bit of traffic which can be used for email marketing and other viral marketing in the future.

Are you planning any press releases for St. Patrick’s Day? Tell us about them here and please provide a link!

Also, keep in mind that UnderstandingMarketing.com now offers a press release writing service so if you’re an entrepreneur looking for a press release for small business, drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to help you.

The great thing about virtual showrooms is that they’re easy to integrate into other marketing strategies, especially social media. You can house your virtual tours on your Web site or blog, but you can also post them on a social media Web site such as YouTube. You can use other social media communities like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to drive traffic either to your Web site or to YouTube so that interested people may browse your virtual showroom (make sure to have them sign up so that you can collect email addresses – a staple of email marketing for small business).

Naturally, there will be a cost associated with developing a virtual showroom. After all, if it sounds like it may be cost prohibitive, you’ll have to weigh all of your budget options. However, if you shop around you may be able to find a freelance designer on Craigslist, or hire a company like Focus360 to develop one for you. If you’re panicking about the decision, simply compare the cost of putting up a virtual showroom with the cost of getting a sufficient amount of people into your brick and mortar showroom. For some, this will be a no brainer decision while for others it may be a more difficult decision.

Finally, let’s discuss the implications on your email marketing for small business opportunities. If you’ve been in business for a while, you already know the importance of sales prospecting and leads generation. A virtual showroom can do wonders for increasing the amount of leads you can capture to ultimately beef up your existing email marketing campaigns.

Home builders are able to place virtual showrooms on their Web sites, allowing people to navigate through and familiarize themselves with the products, services and options made available by the builder. If you want your customers to see something and let the visual representation do much of the selling for you, it’s critical to give them plenty of visual stimulation so that you can increase your sales conversions.

To integrate even more deeply with your email marketing, be sure to promote it on any relevant landing pages to drive more traffic. Also consider blogging about it to get others involved in the virtual tour (maybe hold a contest to have people spot things on your showroom that are out of place?). And of course, build virtual tour visits into your loyalty program where the more you view the tour the bigger reward or incentive a person has when making a purchase.

Have you tried using a virtual tour on your company’s Web site? What were the results?

Start out by taking a step back and analyzing your company’s products or services. Simply ask yourself how men and women view your company. Next, do a little research on any possible stereotypes that may be involved with men vs. women regarding your product or service. Once you’ve identified the opportunities as they relate to your business, do a little research by going “inside the numbers” of your business to extract some real-world data that you can plug into this angle. You can also accomplish this press release successfully by commissioning a survey (you can do your own survey but your story will carry a little more weight if you commission a third-party firm to collect the data). Oh by the way, if your data goes against the grain of typical stereotypes, this may actually be better for news value.

According to The PR Toolkit for Small Business, every small business press release must be compelling and well written, no matter the angle. Although a great angle and data can be the difference between great pickup and silence, you’ve still got to adhere to good press release writing. Let’s talk about a few examples so you can see this press release in action.

Here’s a good example of a survey that talks about online behavior of men vs. women as it relates to online behavior. Liberty Mutual, a global insurance group, included the results of a survey in a press release talking about what individuals deem to be appropriate online behavior for certain social media use in the workplace. The press release includes good data and discusses different ways men and women view acceptable social media behavior on popular Web sites like Twitter and Facebook. We like the fact that they include a “key finding” immediately in the first paragraph of the release to help shape the angle of the story – possibly helping reporters with the headlines of their stories.

Or you can have a little more fun with your “men vs. women” press release. Here’s another example of a battle of the sexes press release sent out by PopCap Games, where they cite some statistical differences between men and women that play games in a social media environment. This particular press release resulted in some really nice coverage for PopCap, as it was included in a USA Today gamers blog.

Whenever you include data from a survey or poll in a press release be sure to offer some details of your methodology so members of the media can get a taste for how you collected the data. A good example of working in a methodology sample can also be found at the bottom of both the Liberty Mutual and PopCap Games press releases.

UnderstandingMarketing.com recently launched a press release writing service for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Let us know if we can help you with your small business press release! If you already have a press release written and would like to send it out on the wire, check out a reputable service like Marketwire.

The leading reason for asking this question is the rise of social media marketing being used more frequently by small business and entrepreneurs. Arlene Satchell of the Sun-Sentinel tells the story of one entrepreneur that’s been having a lot of success using email marketing to drive traffic resulting in higher customers and more profits.

The story even points out that Forrester Research indicates there’s growth for email in the future, not contraction. According to the story, Forrester says there were 145 million active email users in 2009 and this number is estimated to grow to 153 million by 2014. Also, approximately 90 percent of Americans using the Internet use email as a “mainstream communication channel.”

You can’t argue with those numbers no matter how popular Twitter and Facebook get.

For those of you on the fence and wondering about a little thing called return on investment (ROI), you can decide for yourself after hearing from the gym owner quoted in the story. The owner of Powerhouse Gym recently sent out a free seven-day fitness promotion to more than 4,000 women in the surrounding area. According to the gym owner it cost him $250 to do the email campaign yet his ROI was above $10,000 (the value of 26 new memberships).

The writers of this blog are certainly impressed with those numbers (although we’re a little curious to know how the gym owner collected 4,000+ email addresses from women and if there was any additional expense in obtaining those emails). We often receive a lot of emails ourselves from small businesses wondering how to get so many targeted emails without incurring great expense – especially if you want to throw together an email campaign pretty quickly. After all, it’s always been our understanding that you either collect emails organically or through an integrated campaign tied in with other marketing initiatives like events, or you pay a service for email addresses – which we don’t advocate. Either way, one could make the argument that your total cost of expenses to do the email campaign would rise (bringing into question the gym owner’s investment of only $250).

UPDATE: Arlene Satchell tells us the gym owner was already tapped into the email marketing service provider’s database so there was no cost to purchase a list. The gym owner paid 5 to 6 cents per email sent (which is how he arrives at the $250 fee).

All that being said, there are enormous opportunities with email marketing for small business campaigns. Bottom line, tens of millions of people check their email inbox more than a dozen times each day giving companies a great chance at finding success with email marketing. But always remember to do your email marketing campaigns the right way, which means having people opt-in to receive, giving them an opt-out of they wish and always abiding by the canned spam laws.

Do you prefer email marketing over social media marketing? Let us know by leaving a comment here.

Meet Coolhaus, a Southern California start-up that merges architecture with sustainable frozen treats and stylish ice cream sandwiches. Natasha Case is the owner of Coolhaus and she started the company after several stints as an architect.

Now she’s peddling ice cream sandwiches and she has social media to thank for her initial – and growing – success story.

Natasha had an idea to merge the two worlds of architecture and food to start her business but it’s the way she uses social media that’s really helped launch her small business. She and her business partners refurbished an old post office truck to look like a sweet ride that offers even sweeter treats – all with catchy names, themes and, oh yeah, pretty darn good for the environment, too. The ice cream sandwich wrappers are sustainable because they’re made with edible materials. (photo credit clickz.com)

But Natasha and Coolhaus are all about three things – stylish, delicious treats; having lots of fun; and oh yeah that social media presence. Typically when entrepreneurs have this kind of combination it’s difficult not to be successful - and love what you do.

Tweet Treats

Coolhaus has had lots of success using Twitter to promote the business and daily specials. Natasha likes to send out tweets to create excitement for daily flavors and even has a little fun with her following with trivia. She’ll send out a tweet as a question and everyone that shows up at her truck with the flavor-themed answer to the trivia question will receive a daily discount. At almost 8,000 followers she has almost as many as some of the national ice cream retailers (who shall remain nameless).

For Natasha and Coolhaus, Twitter has been a no-brainer when it comes to marketing strategy. It’s a great way to quickly create a following, develop raving fans and extend her brand across all kinds of regional areas. When done correctly, Coolhaus can even send out tweets throughout the course of the day or even during stops. There’s even a bevy of other Twitter tools for small business that Coolhaus can use.

Feed Your Face(book)

Natasha also uses Facebook in her small business social media strategy because, like Twitter, time and creativity are really the only sources of investment. Facebook allows Coolhaus to create even more excitement leveraging her architecture side of the business. With Facebook, fans and customers take pictures of themselves standing next to the stylish ice cream truck and even pictures of the sandwiches. Those pictures usually end up on the Facebook page. Coolhaus has a little more than 2,000 fans on Facebook. Natasha’s success speaks to the rising trend of small business using Facebook for business.

Business has been growing at a healthy pace for Natasha and Coolhaus. She’s currently planning more trucks in areas like San Francisco, Texas and New York. And you’ll be seeing even more of her architecture designs blended into the business by using skyrise building designs into popsicles, for example.

Kudos to Coolhaus for finding success with their small business and social media strategy.

Related articles:

Social media helps some small businesses

Coolhaus in Los Angeles