Entrepreneurs and business owners are constantly looking to attract more ideal clients. One strategy that can do amazing things for small businesses is being featured in local media outlets. In this day and age where online businesses focus on working with clients and customers literally anywhere in the world, why would anyone spend time to attain local PR? Well, here are nine great reasons to add local PR to your marketing mix.

1. You Become an Instant Expert

Once you have been on television or featured in your biggest local newspaper or magazine, even your good friends and family will look at you differently! (Trust me on this one – I’ve experienced it myself!) Think about it. Who is featured in the media? Experts, right? As a business owner, you are an expert in your field. Once you are selected to be the expert, your business takes on an instant upgrade! People want to do business with experts, so you instantly increase your credibility by being covered in the local media. By the way, experts can charge more, too, because their perceived value is so high. Also, partnership opportunities can open up once others outside of our normal crowd learn of you.

2. It’s a Training Ground for Larger Media Coverage

Your local media outlets are great ways to hone your skills for more far-reaching coverage. Even if you live in a large metropolitan area, there are still neighborhood news papers, local TV shows and news programs, not to mention radio shows, web sites and magazines that would love to feature you! You can use these local experiences to boost your confidence and as a training ground of sorts for when Oprah or Donny Deutch call!

3. They Are Looking for You

Local media outlets are hungry for juicy, relevant and interesting stories from the community. In fact, they are looking for you every day! It is your job to make doing a story on you as easy as possible so they select you, and come back to you again and again. There are many stories you can pitch to the media. If you can tie your business or a portion of your business to a national story, they want to hear from you. Are you the hometown girl who made it big somehow? Do you offering something of value to local community? If so, they want to hear from you today!

4. Everyone Loves a Local Story

Even if your client base is not limited to the local community, you can benefit greatly from local press coverage. Do you really care about the exact location of your ideal clients and customers? An ideal client is an ideal client, whether they are within a five mile radius or 3,000 miles away. Sometimes local PR can attract better business for you than an article in USA Today.

5. Builds the Know/Like/Trust Factor

The more people get to know you, the more they will like and trust you. Being covered in the local media build the know, like and trust factor. The more people know, like and trust you, the easier it becomes to build the relationship.

6. Builds Your List

Getting local PR coverage can increase your list immediately. Your list includes those people who actively join your newsletter, become your friend on facebook, seek you out on LinkedIn and Twitter and so forth. These are hot leads for you!

7. Like Begets Like

Once you have a really good media exposure, other media outlets – local or not – are likely to contact you as well.

8. Builds Your Brag Book

You can build your press kit by showcasing your coverage to other media outlets. This shows that you are experienced at being interviewed, which many media outlets like – particularly for live TV or radio. Also, your media coverage is fodder for your web site, to highlight at trade shows, on your social media outlets, to announce at your networking groups and so forth.

9. It’s Attainable on a Very Modest Budget

You can get local PR without hiring a pricey PR agency. It does take some work, but if you are ready to make this year the year that you finally get local PR, you can do it yourself in a few simple steps, saving thousands of dollars!

One last thought: Once you get media coverage, you can publicize your publicity! Yes, there are ways to simply gain media coverage by publicizing your media coverage! My eworkbook, How to Get Local PR on a Micro Budget shows you how to do this and much, much more.

© 2009 Meredith Liepelt, Rich Life Marketing

Meredith Liepelt, President of Rich Life Marketing, publishes Smart Marketing, a free bi-weekly ezine featuring marketing tools and resources designed to help the busy entrepreneur attract more clients. Subscribe today at www.richlifemarketing.com.

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