Riding a real time Amazon announcement to reach an influential journalist

Last week I delivered a keynote about Real-Time Marketing & PR at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Las Vegas.

(Watch this space -- I will be releasing a free video of my presentation in a few weeks.)

A few days after the talk, Richard Harrison, president of SMTP.com contacted me to say that he had just used one of the techniques I discussed in my talk. Richard leveraged something going on in the news in real-time to get his company noticed.

I'll let Richard tell you what happened:

"After walking out of your Las Vegas Email Summit session, I learned that Amazon had just made an announcement that they were entering the email delivery space," Richard says. "We decided to put out an immediate press release. Our urgency was motivated by your presentation."

Richard sent this release via Marketwire: SMTP, Inc. Welcomes Amazon to the Email Delivery Market.

He received a call from a reporter at ClickZ right away and soon a story appeared featuring his take on the announcement. Will Amazon's Commodity E-mail Service Harm ESPs?

This is a terrific example of the power of real-time. When something is happening in the marketplace, now is the time to react. Not tomorrow. Not after you talk to your bosses or staffers. Not after a meeting with the agency. Now.

"Its all about momentum," Richard says about what he's learned from this experience. "It's hard to create momentum on your own as the small guy. But if someone else creates it, the sooner you can ride it the more you can benefit. Like momentum stocks, you don't know how far they will go, but the sooner you buy the more you make."

Well done, Richard. And well said too. Thanks for sharing.

Comments

[Terri]

I don't know why, but I am intimidated by Press Releases, I had just been reading about riding the Google Trend wave and putting a squidoo lens together or blog, etc., is this the same concept?

Terri

[Harmony Wheeler]

Reminds me of the time my school, Biola University, responded to the growing trend of LikeaLittle.com.

[Richard Jurek]

This is a great idea, and a great way for a nimble firm to catch whichever wave is trending --- as long as the content (it always comes back to the content, doesn't it?)is a good fit, and doesn't come across as forced or like you are hijacking the other's PR JUST for your benefit. In this case, what Richard did was additive to the conversation, which helped make it a success. Sometimes, people try these and take a quirky take on the issue, or force a comment -- and it comes out either self serving at best, or at worse, a miss-fire....kind of like (but not exactly) like the Allstate Insurance screw up with their Underwriting by Astrology press release that they had to back-track on. Well done Richard -- not only being fast to market, but spot-on and relevant, too.

[internet marketing company]

Thanks for this information man…
Actually I have heard the same thing times before but didn’t tried to get deeper. Let me first bookmark this page for further information… :P

[Danielle Keister]

Hi Scott! Speaking of real-time leveraging, I have a question for you...

One of my clients, an entertainment law, licensing and litigation attorney, won a major victory regarding Jimi Hendrix's (yes, that Jimi Hendrix) publicity rights a couple days ago. His arguments on the opposing counsel side persuaded judge to rule Washington State's Publicity Rights Act unconstitutional which is huge. This is big in legal circles and AP picked up the story immediately and it's currently hitting the papers and airwaves.

We want to leverage this real-time exposure in his marketing to gain some traction and SEO for his website. At the same time, if we post comments to some of blogs and online newspaper sites, he doesn't want to come across as trying to influence anything.

Do you have suggestions on how we can leverage this opportunity? Phones are ringing on the hook at the moment!

[David Meerman Scott]

Danielle

What the heck are you waiting for? This sort of news has a half life of a day or two, Get out there NOW.

David

[Danielle Keister]

We are, we are, LOL!!!! :)

We've got a press release that went out and I immediately starting tracking links to all the places that started showing up in the search engines and we're now in the process of posting his commentary to those (where allowed).

Anything else we should be doing or diving into on this?

[David Meerman Scott]

How about a quick 2 or 3 minute YouTube video of him explaining the implications for the decision.

[Danielle Keister]

Oh, great, I'm on the right track! I actually was urging him today to take a quick video of him stating his comment so I can whip it up on YouTube and his website. This new media stuff is a bit foreign to him so he's balking somewhat, but I've got him coming 'round, LOL.

By the way, here's what I did on his home page: osinskilaw.com

Do you think that's helpful at all? I wanted to have his comment there right off the bat for any reporters, etc., coming to the site.

Thanks you so much!