THE CHALLENGE:  

Many media syndication services do not accept news releases or content that promote financial products and services, such as mortgages, pay day, cash, short-term or long-term loan services. The same is true in other regulated industries such as insurance.

These are just some of many federally regulated markets and there are quite a few rules and laws that limit how their products and services are advertised.

Abiding by these rules and laws is also the responsibility of advertisers, including the media on which they are advertised, such as news channels. So, naturally, there is an abundance of caution in these markets and getting approval can be tricky.

The answer is to not promote products or services directly.

A news release is an announcement of news. If the content is written so that it’s about a topic that's in the news, or we frame it that way, then we should be okay. The key is to write an article that focuses heavily on newsworthy content.

SOME METHODS TO PROMOTE INDIRECTLY

• Write A Report About A Specific Problem or Solution
• Write About A Business Event or Issue
• Write About New Research Or Expert Opinions
• Feature Non-Profits, Charities and Fundraisers

We are especially focusing on Community-Minded Professional Advisers, such as Financial Professionals, as we seek more voices to be supported and heavily promoted via the 100 Voices Project.

So let's explore the category of Non-Profits, Charities and Fundraisers now...

If you are already actively engaged in community support, any type of fundraising efforts or charity events, then this method is perfect for you. If not, this might be a great time to consider implementing charitable donations and activities as part of an ongoing business promotion strategy.

It creates goodwill in the community and opens doors for collaboration with other businesses whose customers may also be interested in your services. There could also be great tax advantages as well.

[To supercharge this non-profit approach and also effectively recession-proof your business, we specialize in helping community-minded professional advisers to secure $10,000 to $100,000 per month in free Google Ads - guaranteed for life. We'll say more about that elsewhere].

One simple method is to create a page on your website to discuss or promote a charity, then promote the launch of that event with your news release. If your practice is already actively engaged in this type of activity, you can simply discuss what the charity stands for and what they hope to achieve. You can also write about a recent charitable event that has already taken place and report on how much they were able to raise or what they accomplished.

Alternatively, you can tie your products and services into raising money for a worthwhile charity in some way eg $100 from every sale goes to this cause. The news release will then be about your business helping to raise money for the charity.

“[Mortgage Broker] to Host Charity Golf and Social To Benefit Homeless, Disadvantaged Women and Children”

“[Event Name] Charity Food Drive Hunger Relief Fundraiser [City] Announced”

“[Financial Planner Event] Raises over [$xx] for World Without Cancer”

Important: we must not mention your products or services directly in the news release. We should only discuss the non-profit activities.

PUTTING THIS ALL TOGETHER

Now, let’s look at a real live example of putting these strategies into place.

There was a Mortgage Broker who appeared to be doing very well. They operated a local branch office of a large and reputable national mortgage lender. They maintain autonomy and control of their business with the parent company providing marketing, branding and lead generation.

The mortgage company also provides back-end administrative support so their loan officers and brokers can focus on doing what they do best, originating loans.

The broker and his team were very active in the community, sponsoring and supporting numerous charities, actively volunteering at local events, providing food and supplies for the local homeless population, and more.

This mortgage broker’s office was consistently a top producer within the company.

But they had one major problem.

This mortgage broker had hit a ceiling and was stuck at $7 million in monthly sales volume. Not bad, but they wanted to do a lot more and knew they were fully capable.

They understood their business and were great at it, but they did not know how to attract more clients.

They tried numerous ways to find and close more deals.

They knew they were losing money in lost opportunity costs but they were stuck in the dilemma of how much they could safely invest and whether that investment would provide a return.

And they were also getting burned out by the sheer amount of effort they were putting into finding new customers for their business.

They knew they could build the company, but the pace at which they were growing was too slow, too painful. And the revenue ceiling they hit was discouraging.

At one point, they considered just going back to work for the home office and going back to a cubicle again. Give up on the dream of running their own brokerage and being independent.

The idea of no longer having all the expenses and stress of running a business started to look very appealing.

One day, they were attending their local BNI (Business Networking International) meeting and another member gave a presentation about how much success they had been having and how they were able to do that.

After the meeting, the mortgage broker cornered the other member and grilled them about their success.

They were told “It’s about working smarter, not harder”.

They were not quite sure what the definition of “working smarter” was, but they had heard it before without giving it much thought.

Working harder and doing more is not smarter, in fact, quite the opposite. You have to do things differently.

That was their problem. They wanted to move forward but they were not making any changes, they were not doing anything different. They had been putting more effort (working harder) into the traditional methods most brokers use to promote their agencies.

At that moment, they decided that the traditional way of building a business was the wrong way. If they wanted different results, they would have to make different efforts.

Having heard what we had been able to do for other businesses in the area, including that other BNI member, they contacted us to see if we could help them.

ENTER OUR SOLUTION...

[Please note as we continue the story: this was initially using our most basic solution, without premium elements like our proprietary Multi-Channel Booster or Big 6 Distribution.]

After performing a quick analysis of their online presence, we showed them where they were going wrong and why their potential clients were unable to find them. They were almost invisible on the internet!

We also pointed out the things their competitors were doing right and explained how the prominent visibility of those competitors was driving most of their estimated traffic and sales.

The mortgage company’s corporate brand was a very strong brand and had a great online presence, but their ability to increase sales at any particular branch was severely limited by the rules and processes regulating the mortgage loan industry.

We set the client up on a basic 12-month news release campaign and agreed to evaluate the campaign at six months.

Because of the restrictions on advertising and promoting mortgage lenders, we had to request limited distribution of our news release articles.

Limited distribution refers to publication through media outlets whose guidelines are more relaxed in these categories. This means the articles we published would not get the same coverage as a standard news release.

At the start of the campaign, the broker was closing an average of $7 million per month in total loan (sales) volume and had been stuck at that level for many months.

Three months into their campaign, their loan sales volume had grown from $7M to $10M. They were ecstatic!

And so were we! We knew they would get great results, even with our basic service. Yet we were not expecting this much from a limited distribution campaign, even though we had performed a thorough analysis before launching the campaign.

Even though their (limited distribution) campaign was exceeding expectations, the client wanted to know if we could improve upon these results or maybe get more results even faster.

At this time, we added in the Multi-Channel Booster, which we call our "Secret Rainmaker Weapon".

We knew they were going to be more than pleased and we were excited to start moving this client to an even more powerful service.

After publishing just two multi-channel boosters, their loan sales volume grew from $10M to $15M.

The client was so happy that they wanted to discuss opening and promoting additional locations.
 

While discussing ideas with them, they mentioned an upcoming charity event they were hosting. And that’s when the idea of using our Big 3 Premium Distribution with Multi-Channel Boosters came together.

[Please note: we have only just added Bloomberg and other premium news sites in July 2022 to make it Big 6. Before this, it was Big 3 or more recently Big 5 - without the hyper-powerful Bloomberg.]

After combing through hundreds of search results featuring similar content, we knew it could be done. We just needed to make sure we were abiding by the strict rules and guidelines that the syndication services required for publishing restricted content and getting approval.

They already had a separate website specifically for their charitable organization, but we needed a dedicated page for this on their corporate website since that was the website we were promoting, not their charitable activities.

Once we had all the required information, we worked with the mortgage company to create the dedicated page on their corporate website all about their charitable work and community support.

Next, we had to work with our writing team to create the article so that it would comply with the strict syndication requirements. Our simplified instructions were:

“Do not use ‘mortgage’ in the headline. Don't mention anything about loans, mortgages or lending. We are going to link to a ‘community services’ page. We need this to sound like news, the kind of news you would see in a newspaper or on a news broadcast on television. Our client hired us to help them get into the Google 3-pack, increase traffic and attract additional new home mortgage loan borrowers.”

FINAL RESULT?

The news release was approved for full distribution! So we upgraded the article for a Big 3 premium distribution to accompany the Multi-Channel Booster syndication.

Neither we nor the client was expecting what happened next. 

Just 2 months later, after publishing one Big 3 release each month, the client’s sales volume doubled from $15M to over $30M!

This was a major victory for the client. And they’ve been able to increase their charitable contributions and volunteer efforts as well.

In summary, the most important element is to make sure that the news release article contains newsworthy content and that the headline emphasizes that point prominently. We must make sure we understand the media guidelines and best practices for news release content and format. The rest is just strategy.

[Please note: we now have even more powerful Big 6 premium distribution, including Bloomberg. We are seeing even faster, more significant results, especially when combined with community activities and our unique 100 Voices Project strategies. These proprietary methodologies supercharge arrangements like the above to achieve 10X or more over what has been described here.]