You likely want to be featured on a website that is #1 in the country, or the world, in your industry.
This could catapult your business astronomically through website and social media visits and bring in higher level business transactions. Do you have a plan to make this happen that doesn’t involve cookie cutter outreach and marketing?
Hold on, I’ll get to Eminem in a minute. As a marketing strategist and writer, it’s my job to make this happen. I facilitated getting clients on the biggest sites in their industry such as The NY Times, Newsmax, TechCrunch, and many more. If this is something most companies want, and all have really good information and ideas, how do you cut through the noise and get featured?
Here are two things I do:
First: Whatever it takes to access the dog-on-the-bone mentally that I will get what I want no matter what. This involves having an obsession with my mission for the client’s goal. In one case, it involved Eminem. I had a client that wanted to be on a way bigger website than they were worthy of. The competition was thick as an overgrown forest, gatekeepers did their jobs really well at not letting any emails reach the ones in charge, and if you did manage to get in, something in the company or information was written up negatively or simply wasn’t considered powerful enough to be written about and was not featured.
Most important was that the journalists on the site were, well, let’s just say ‘very proud of themselves’ and their power to read, accept and reject queries to be featured, rightly so. You had to construct your outreach in a way that was different from other companies and marketers and even if you succeeded at that piece, differentiating yourself is not always enough.
To be honest, I personally wanted to prove myself as a marketing strategist to add another notch to my professional belt, and wickedly enjoy an impossible challenge. Starting from no way in, and challenging obstacles, I needed to access a part of myself that was in the realm of the forbidden and rebellious, ride or die, I’m not stopping until my mission is complete.
The first step did not involve logic; it was through a different part of the brain. As music utilizes the opposite part of the brain, that was my way in for this monumental project.
How to access the ride-or-die mindset
As a kid growing up in a NY suburb, I was not allowed to listen to any music other than what was carefully selected by my parents and school. I had no iPhone, internet (Gen X) and our home did not have a TV for the purpose of keeping outside influences away.
Yet once I was old enough to buy a ‘Walkman’ for cassettes, I discovered it had a radio and it was small enough to keep hidden. The world of forbidden, punishable music opened up to me at the tail end of my teen years. Madonna, Michael Jackson and all the other artists of my generation were always in my ear, despite the fear of being caught.
Here’s where Eminem comes in. For this project of landing a journalist to write about a mediocre-deserving client on a worldwide top website, I knew this was my moment, my one chance, my opportunity to level up my concierge strategies.
To steal my mind, I listened to Eminem’s brilliant and motivating words in ‘Lose Yourself’ on repeat all day and night for three months, creating a driven and laser focus on my project.
“You better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”
The second step
This involved intense logic. I studied the information from the client, and read the content by the top 3 journalists on the site we were aiming to be featured on. I followed the journalists on all their social media and read every post they wrote, and every comment they wrote on other posts. I did this for three months and having a Master’s degree in Psychology, I was able to understand their personalities, and witnessed events in their lives they shared virtually.
I formed a plan that began with reading and commenting on their posts, sharing their posts and getting on their radar. I connected through carefully selected social media platforms or email, and spent time deciding what to say.
Eminem kept me company in the background, egging me on with music my parents and community would likely have disowned me for.
“You only get one shot.”
I found my way in through these two strategies and a stroke of luck that came unexpected in my efforts. When your mind is strong and you do the work, you are opening yourself up to synchronicities. I achieved my goal of getting the client featured in a powerful, positive, article that launched them stratospherically.
Use anything you need to first get your mindset to the place of self-belief, determination, and obsession. Focus on how the goal you are working towards will change YOUR life, and the life of your company or client. Think as if you only get one shot, one attempt at this goal. Music, working out, researching, running, imagining a pot of gold at the end of the track, select whatever outlandish idea works to motivate you at a laser focused level.
Next, comb through information until you get to know the people you need to assist you, feature you, or introduce you. Craft your request or message to them from a place of strategic analysis and laser focus.
And finally, recognize that there is a great deal of luck that comes into play, but you have to be present and ready. When you see your lucky shot, combined with your logic and steel mind, take it.
