Having a strong publicity strategy is key to staying in business. With so many competing images in marketplace, it’s critically important to maintain a high profile. Maintain is operative word here – a start and stop effort won’t get you long term results or credibility in eye of your customers.

Be clear about objectives you want from your publicity campaign. You may want to increase your firm’s name recognition, bring in more clients, make a time-specific offer to existing clients or introduce a new product. Even if you’d like to achieve all of those goals, decide which one is most important to you and let others become incidental. Clarifying what you really want to achieve helps you make best use of your time and money.

If you think of your publicity campaign as a wheel, then consider speaking and writing to be two major spokes. And all they’ll cost is your time.

Begin with a demographic profile of your target market. What books do they read, what associations do they belong to and what magazines do they subscribe to? Starting with magazines, study a few back issues. The editorial will tell you a lot about magazine’s focus and approach and reading articles will give you a sense of typical style and length. Is article chatty or solemn? Is it directed towards beginners or those well-established in field? Check magazine’s website, request editorial guidelines and then think of an article that would fit those guidelines.

Once you have a solid proposal, send it to editor, telling him why you are qualified to write this article. Then follow up with a phone call three to four weeks later. While you can send out multiple submissions, it’s best to tailor each query to readership of a particular magazine. This approach takes a lot of patience but it’s well worth it in long run.

Another strategy is to target a specific company, ask for copies of their newsletter and offer to write a monthly column for them on e-commerce, customer service, publicity, marketing or whatever relates to your area of expertise. Or if your target market is found in your community, offer to write a weekly column for local newspaper.

You can also publish and distribute your own newsletter, of course. And you can maximize your exposure by going online with it. You can keep in touch with your clients or prospects on a monthly basis by giving them free information.

Contributing to ezines is a really effective way to get your name in front of thousands of people. Susan Sweeney, an internet marketing consultant at www.connexnetwork.com, suggests following resources for finding right ezine: http://www.infojump.com, http://www.ezinesearch.com, http://www.magazine-rack.com, http://www.etext.org/Zines and http://www.factsheet5.com. Having your name in print establishes you as an expert and gives you instant credibility. You can often include a brief bio along with your byline and possibly a photo as well at end of your article.

Below are eight ways pictures can give you an unfair advantage.

1. Customers Pictures - Show pictures of customers actually using your product. For example, if you were selling a muscle building video you could show one of your customers flexing his/her muscles and smiling.

2. Non Customer Pictures - Publish pictures of those who didn't buy your product. For example, if you were selling a muscle building video you could show one of your non customers looking very skinny and frowning.

3. Before and After Pictures - Show customer and non customer pictures side by side. For example, if your were selling a weight loss video show a picture of a person who is overweight and a picture of them after they used your product.