I spent £1,000 on promoting my newsletter and made £0 👗
Part 2: When you can't walk your PR talk and how to join my first Substack live
Hiya! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. I send you one email a week to help you promote yourself in an easy and fun way. March is the theme of crisis PR.
Managing my crisis. Missing my creative stunt.
This is part 2 of an article I wrote in January. I set a big growth goal. And rather than following the usual Substack growth hack advice, I wanted to do it my way to inspire others and drive subscribers.
I planned my first creative PR stunt, which involved wearing an interactive outfit at the Enterprise Nation Start-Up Show.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen 🤦🏻♀️ .
But wait, it doesn’t end there. Want to know what happens next?
Please keep reading to see how I am rescuing it and the budget breakdown.
Full reveal:
I need to thank designer Lizzie Biscuits for bringing my dream to life.
Lizzie took my brief and ideas and gave me three options.
The choice we went for was a fun / Cyndi Lauper vibe. The base of the dress is made from velvet, with net skirting to give me a puffed-out look.
In addition, she has hand-sewn hundreds of small bulldog clips to detach the cards and reattach new ones as I meet new people.
I also created stickers using Adobe Express and Moo.com so that as I handed out each card, I could pop a discount code on:
Results
Well. We already know it didn’t happen, but what was I hoping for?
Sales Target: Minimum of 20 annual subscribers to cover my costs
Loyalty: Meet some of my readers in real life
andDream big: The startup royalty I was trying to get in front of was Simon Squibb, who has a casual 3 million followers. The goal was to get him to pick a card from the dress, receive his personalised PR tip, and then snaffle a little video or picture together.
(Any of you who are pals with him and want to get him to share this, feel free 😘)
Inspiration: I want you all to know that there are a gazillion ways to promote yourself, and it can be more creative and fun than you ever realised. If I could wear an interactive dress based on my advice, what would that look like for you?
Can it still work? What am I doing instead?
I’m overconfident that this is the most interesting growth tactic I’ve seen for a newsletter on Substack.
Feel free to correct me.
My overarching mission is to help hype you and show you that promotion can be fun.
I didn’t need to wear this dress in person to show you that.
#alwayslaunching. You don’t just get one moment. There will be other events. The costume doesn’t die.
I’ve realised that my most crucial promotion job is not to attract new people through live events but to inspire and serve my existing community as best I can.
So, I will celebrate my idea with you instead, dear reader, and I will do my first online live on Substack in the Dress on Wednesday 💅🏻 👗.
⏰ Going live on Wednesday - Here’s how to join.
⏰ Set your alarms. I’ll be doing a live PR Tips card reading on Substack for you all Wednesday 5th March at 19:00 GMT / 20:00 CET / 14:00 EST
🔮 I’ll share a few fun PR trends I see before picking cards for people in the chat to give you some personalised feedback.
Want to tune in for the first screening of the interactive dress? Download the Substack app. I’ve included a link below. If you enable notifications, the app will notify you when I’m live. Just tap that, and you’re in. See you Wednesday?
If you want to continue learning from me and have a cheerleader in your pocket, you have just 7 days to claim the 30% discount.
Over to you…
What do you think?
As I won’t get any social media shares from the crowd on the day, please feel free to engage or reshare this article or my posts about the stunt on LinkedIn or Instagram.
What am I doing next?
🌎 It’s not the main stage I was hoping to launch from. But I will keep sharing it and put it out into the universe.
I’m a great workshop teacher and keynote speaker. You know where to find me if you'd like me to speak at your next event or give personalised PR card readings.
Let’s see what is meant for me...🔮