From Letterbox Drop to National TV Coverage

Just imagine, getting national TV coverage for your business.  How fantastic would that be, but it’d cost a fortune – right?

Actually, for the savvy marketer, gaining national TV coverage – for free – is certainly within the realms of possibility.  Take Steve Sammartino from Rentoid.com as an example.  This guy is a shining example of how a non-tech savvy guy can take the most basic of marketing ideas right through to gaining national TV coverage – all through his own entrepreneurial spirit.

He’s shown some pure genius in how he has taken an idea from the concept stage through to being talked about nationwide (and further).  Okay, so he had an ingenious concept to begin with.  But if you believe in your product – and you should – his story really does go to show that all it takes is some creative thinking, along with almost bulldog like tenacity, and the world really can be your limit.

If at First you Don’t Succeed…

Steve’s business is all about people renting out items they own to other people – for a fee.  Kind of an “eBay for the rental market” if you like.

Pretty cool idea, we must admit.  But an idea remains just that unless you act upon it.  And act he certainly did.

Determined not to let a limited (well, almost non-existent) marketing budget stop him, Steve decided to go for a run.  And whilst doing so, to do a letterbox drop with some leaflets he’d created on his home printer.

As luck would have it (because we all need a bit of luck now and again), one of these leaflets caught the attention of a person who worked for the local paper.  They ran a feature on him and his idea.  Never one to miss a trick, Steve then created a podcast, and posted his local paper feature everywhere he could – YouTube, Facebook etc. etc. – basically taking full advantage of the free resource of social media.

The gods must have been shining down upon him, because this led to a seriously happy chain of events, culminating in not just one, but multiple appearances on national TV.

• Letterbox drop – led to the
• Local paper – that led to the
• Podcast – that led to being featured on the website
• Tech Crunch – that led to literally going global, and led to being featured in various other…
• …magazines and website in the world of technology – and this led to features in
• Larger newspapers – including the nationals – which led to
• That all important phone call.  From the producer of one of the national TV channels, inviting him in for an interview to be broadcast to the nation.

Well now, isn’t that just a chain of events that’s a small business marketers dream?  Of course, it doesn’t show all the hard work behind the scenes, including the year or so of pitching his ideas to once particular magazine editor before they considered he had an angle to feature.  And plenty of other dogged determination that has got him to where he is today.

So if you only take one message home from this particular blog, it’s that if you believe in your product, then you should never give up.  Because it just takes that one lucky break…