Is it possible to promote a business on a shoe-string budget? Can a small business with new voice in a voluminous media market get enough attention to merit the time investment? More importantly, will the results gained from your efforts be measurable in terms of business outcomes?
For one small and very unique pizza restaurant, turned franchise chain, it turns out the answer is yes. These were the questions facing when Eric Haley joined the restaurant business in early 2007 as vice president of communications. Pizza Fusion was bringing a new twist to an old business: an eco-friendly pizza restaurant.
Pizza Fusion is wholesome in every sense — from the environmentally considerate hybrid vehicles used by its delivery drivers — to the organic and gourmet ingredients that go into its food products. As the firm’s tag line goes, “Saving the Earth, One Pizza at a Time.” Pizza Fusion faced a pretty significant hurdle: how could they share their story, build reputation and ultimately attract business on a very, very tight budget.
Grabbing National Attention
So just how does a start-up business build a reputation in an industry that never previously existed? Pizza Fusion turned to PRWeb and Haley notes he opts for the advanced visbility package because it allows him to incorporate photos, for example of menu items, at no extra costs. He’s also experimented with establishing his own RSS feed for “organic pizza” something that is unique to his line of business.
“The PRWeb solution for Web visibility allows me to effectively communicate to media and the consumer alike, across multiple channels,” says Haley. “PRWeb is also a useful service for social media and it has proved to be very good at driving blog traffic.”
Haley notes that PRWeb has put Pizza Fusion “all over the Internet.” Such a measure may seem vague until you quantify the results: he determined that in his first year he was able to secure 44 million media impressions – a number he doubled the next year.
“In part, the PRWeb analytics has enabled me to better quantify public relations results,” says Haley. “This is helpful when communicating the value of PR to management, for example, I can definitively report to the CEO that, ‘We got X number of impressions.’ ”
And there’s evidence to suggests it’s not just the CEO that’s been impressed. Pizza Fusion has received a substantial amount of news coverage to which Haley notes PRWeb has been a significant contributor. Key placements have included: USA Today, The New York Times, Sundance Channel, CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine and a number of trade publications important to the Pizza Fusion franchise. Perhaps the most noteworthy PR results are those Haley ties to business outcomes. In his first year — on that shoe-string marketing budget — Pizza Fusion secured 1,400 leads, 60 franchise commitments and opened 20 new stores in 14 states. As these results indicate, Pizza Fusion has been more than successful – and yet the business continues an aggressive national expansion with several new locations currently underway around the country. Pizza Fusion is booming and credits savvy PR initiatives made possible with PRWeb.