Publicity Hound Howie Rosenshine of Downington, Pa., writes:
“I invented the Shovelution, a shovel handle attachment that lets you greatly reduce the effort, strain and potential injury involved in shoveling snow or dirt.
“It attaches easily to any straight-shaft shovel or similar implement. When you add it to your standard shovel, you can switch sides easily when lifting and throwing. It’s particulary helpful for people who suffer from back pain, for tall people, for people who live in the northern states, and for gardeners.
“I auditioned for ‘Shark Tank’ but wasn’t chosen. How can I get publicity for this invention and drive traffic to my website at Shovelution.com? I demonstrate how it works in this video.”
If you have a publicity idea for Howie, share it in the Comments. Think back pain, tall people, northern states and gardeners. Have at it, Hounds.
Send your own Help This Hound question to me here. Include pertinent details, your town, and your website address.
Offer chiropractors (and massage therapists and others) everywhere a small percentage of each sale they send your way (via your website or phone). Assure them they’ll promptly receive their commission, and have a good system for determining where each sale comes from. (I simply ask each client how they heard about my service.) Then you just send the chiropractor their commission through Paypal or an online bank (Capital One 360 sends checks for free).
A personal recommendation from a trusted professional can seal the deal for a prospective client. And the professional will sing your praises because they want that little check and know they’ll get it for just 20 seconds of their time. Everyone benefits.
Make sure the professionals understand you pay for sales, not leads, and be scrupulously honest in remunerating them. You can decide for yourself if you want to pay them for follow-up sales from the same client or just the first sale.
Good luck, it’s a great invention.
Offering a commission to chiropractors is a great idea, Wendy. A fairly inexpensive shopping cart like eJunkie has an affiliate module. It will create an affiliate link that can be given to chiropractors or anyone else to use online. The link has a unique ID code. Anyone who clicks on the link and buys earns commission for the affiliate.
Wendy, Howie chose your idea as the best of the bunch. You get $50 in products from my website. My assistant will be contacting you to find out what we can send you.
I have a few suggestions:
• Plan a PR campaign now but wait until the snow starts to fall to approach TV and other media outlets. You could invite a TV personality on the news or a morning show to demonstrate how much easier it would be to shovel snow using your invention. When you approach them make sure to say that you can provide good visuals. It might make a great visual suggestion for a weather report on TV. Enlist the help of some older people who could demonstrate the benefits.
• http://www.spine-health.com/treatment/spine-specialists/primary-care-providers.
This site lists a variety of health providers that deal with back pain. Medical associations usually have their own newsletters sent to their members. Find out which ones do that and submit an article for distribution to members. I’m emailing you an article that gives you an idea of how I worked with one very talented client a few years ago to highlight the issue of dementia. I submitted the article, together with images of my client, to a hairdressing magazine that had 50,000 readers around the country. My client was an expert in dementia care and this article was specifically aimed at hairdressers to help them a) understand dementia better and b) provide hairdressers with some specific advice on how to deal with clients who suffered from dementia. Your latest discussion about thinking laterally and being creative about how you develop your PR campaign was very timely I thought.
• Schools often have newsletters that go out to parents. How about having an article in local school letters with the headline, “How to spend more time with your kids and less time shovelling snow this winter.”
• Contact some of the Unions that represent workers like construction workers and other workers that often end up with back problems and let them know about your invention. They may be happy to pass on the information through any online newsletters or mail outs. It could be part of their occupational health and safety campaigns.
• You could also approach local legislators who might be interested in letting their constituents know about this invention as a health issue (ie how to avoid back pain). Perhaps donate one to your local representative and suggest a photo opportunity to highlight how his constituents can avoid back pain this coming winter. In Australia, community groups can contact their local representatives and have some of their achievements highlighted.
• You could approach health insurance companies and submit an article about your invention, again coming from a health and safety perspective. They may be happy to help provide information about something that may reduce medical claims for back injuries.
Good luck!
Sophie Wajsman
Melbourne, Australia
Sophie, these ideas are fabulous. I particularly like the one about sending an article to medical providers. It can include a link to the YouTube video, as well as a photo of the handle on the shovel. Thanks for taking the time to submit all these.
Send a press release and link to a high-resolution (300 dots per inch) photo of the shovel with the handle to the New Products section of magazines for gardeners, tall people and people with disabilities. Also send it to magazines in the northern states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. You also might consider selling it at TallProducts.com. There’s a category for Garden/Patio/Yard.
Thanks, Chris. So many people forget about New Product sections. This product is also ideal for women’s magazines.
The key is in the delivery and taking off the blinders. Your invention is GREAT but you may be loosing people with the Science. Focus more on the benefits and less on the reason the benefits exist…
Don’t give up on Shark Tank or any other venue, but consider the fact you may be selling yourself short by “shoveling the snow”. I can even see using that here in Arizona – seems like it would work for a lot more than just snow (Clearing Horse Stalls, Digging Holes/Ditches, Shoveling Debris).
So rethink the pitch, put it on Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest then resubmit to Shark Tank. Walk in to your local Hardware Store, Call Home Depot/Lowes and any Mom and Pops you can think of (don’t forget Franchise Stores like ACE where the owners can make the decisions instead of corporate).
Jason, your suggestion to “take off the blinders” opens up so many other possibilities like cleaning horse stalls. Thanks for the ideas.