Grabbing Your Share of the Media Spotlight

The Media is “Looking for News” – Give them what they Want!

The media are (constantly) on the lookout for new, interesting and exciting (news) stories. What this means to you is that the media is entirely approachable. All you need to do is learn how to present “your news” to them.

The Four Key Steps to Obtaining Free Publicity

So how do you go about getting media coverage? It all starts with an angle, followed by a smartly and properly written press release, targeting the right media as a potential outlet for your story and then pitching them your story idea.  That’s it.  Your PR game plan consists of four key steps; Angle/Story idea, Press Release, Target Appropriate Media, and Pitching Skills.

Creating Your Media Story

How do you start getting free publicity? There are a few ways. The media coverage can be about you, your company, your product, your service, or your industry. It can be consumer-oriented or business-to-business related for trade magazines. Regardless however, the questions below will serve as triggers for the things you need to think about, and answer, that can serve as the basis of a press release you can use to pitch a potential story to the media.

Disclaimer: Here’s what this Article Will do, and what it will not Do

This article will not teach you “how to” write a press release. There is not enough space to do that. There are literally hundreds of books both off line and online that can assist you in this area, some for free, others not. What this column will do for you immediately is provide you with the critical thinking that expands your world from a marketing point of view that will allow you to begin the process of understanding what’s involved in creating a proper PR storyline that can help you potentially obtain free media coverage. So let’s begin.

• Have you earned any special achievements, awards, certificates, designations, etc?
• Have you emerged as a “sales leader” in your organization?
• Have you overcome any “obstacles” personal and/or professional to achieve the accomplishments or status that you have earned?
• Do you have any “inside or secret techniques” you can share with consumers or colleagues about your product or service that provides useful or valuable tips?
• How would you document your rise to success – overcoming obstacles, if any, to become a premier player (in whatever niche you might specialize in). This applies to “your success” either within your sales organization or your industry at large.
• Case studies and Teaching Opportunities – what secrets and/or tips can you share that that would be helpful and/or informative to others? This can be consumers or industry-specific.

The PR bottom Line

Maybe you’re special, maybe you’re not. If you can answer these questions, either any single one of them, or any combination of them, in a press release format, with a word count not to exceed 500, you have a shot at obtaining the media holy grail –  FREE PRESS coverage.

Working from this list you can craft a press release that could potentially be of interest to your local and/or industry trade journals, possibly even your daily newspaper or even magazines. Remember, the media are always looking for news. If you package, present and pitch your information the right way, you may very well find yourself in the media spotlight. That’s good for you, and your business. And best of all, it’s free.

Jeff Mustard, The PR Cowboy, is a veteran, award-winning publicist who has wrangled millions of dollars in free publicity for clients. He can be reached through his company: www.TheBambooAgency.com, email, jeff@thebambooagency.com or at: 954-801-8263

Leverage Marketing: Converting “Holiday Good Cheer” into Effective “Marketing Messages”

Why not take the opportunity to convert seasonal benchmarks, such as the “holiday season” into marketing opportunities? And that’s precisely the tact taken on behalf of one of Tennessee’s leading chiropractors who, at the last minute, decided to send a “holiday newsletter” to his clients. Converting “holiday good cheer” into marketing messages is a prime example of squeezing every bit of opportunity out of your communications strategy through the use of “leverage marketing.”

On December 8^th, Dr. Louis Obersteadt, the former multi-year president of the Tennessee Chiropractic Association and a distinguished two-time recipient as “Chiropractor of the Year,” decided he wanted a holiday newsletter. The case study below reflects the strategies deployed to maximize this singular marketing effort as a platform to create multiple marketing opportunities.

The Original/Primary Assignment: Create a Holiday Newsletter.

A big yawn and ho-hum is pretty much the way we can mostly characterize seasonal communications with customers, clients or prospects. The majority of snail-mailed post cards are generic “seasonal greetings” dripping with mundane off-the-shelf sentiment designed at best to be “warm and fuzzy.” Rarely, do you find a “call-to-action” and even less frequently does a “holiday card” strike such a resonant chord with the recipient that they can’t wait to not only share that unsolicited missive with family or friends, but even better, leave them anxious to make their next appointment.

The above was the self-imposed challenge the agency faced in creating this distinguished doctor’s newsletter. Click here to see the “snail mail” version of the Holiday Newsletter.

The Result: The most challenging task as marketers is to create a communications message that truly connects with customers, a message that makes them smile, one that is light and fun yet relevant, resonant and even humorous. If you can make people smile, or laugh, and gently, or subtly imbed your “sales message” it is arguably the most effective and powerful marketing approach. This goal was exceedingly accomplished. View the snail-mail version of the Holiday Newsletter.

Here’s what Dr. Obersteadt had to say about the “Holiday Newsletter”:

Jeff, I am very pleased with your incredible imagination! Thanks, Dr. Louis Obersteadt

Leverage Step 2: From Snail-Mail to Email

Finding ways to squeeze multiple uses out of your “marketing materials” is simply smart marketing. So the very next tactic we employed, as well as being extremely cost efficient for the client, was to reproduce the snail-mail newsletter into an email version. By simply reformatting the snail-mail version of the mailed print version of the newsletter, we were able to double up and reinforce our message to the doctor’s patients, increasing our “impressions” while reducing our cpm. Click here to see the email version of the email holiday card.

Leverage Step 3: The Press Release

Here’s where it gets pretty juicy, creative and fun. We decided to augment the holiday newsletter with some “practical holiday tips” and converted it into a potentially newsworthy press release. After all, the news media are always looking for “unique and interesting” holiday/seasonal-tie’in’s and stories. So, the approach we would take to the media would provide a consumer tie-in with the holiday season, best reflected in the following pitch line:  “A Dozen Helpful and Healthy Ways to Shop During the Holidays without Putting A Crimp in Your Christmas or Your Back.” The goal was to get the attention of news editors in Nashville, TN with a  Subject Line  in Outbound Emails to the Nashville media that read: “Correct Shopping Posture: Don’t Let Christmas Shopping Put a Crimp in your Shopping or your Back this Holiday Season.”

Click Here to See the Press Release

The Result: Media Success

The agency was engaged less than two weeks prior to Christmas Day. Clearly a short fuse and for all practical purposes an impossibly truncated time-line to get anything meaningful done, especially as the media is concerned, during this pressure-packed time period.  The fact is, news media stories require ramp and nurturing, especially if it isn’t a “hard news story.” And yet, despite these challenges, the “story” caught the attention of the editor of the Nashville Business Journal and was reproduced in whole in the Belle Meade Community Newspaper website (the newspaper being a weekly, the deadline had passed and no other issue was being “printed” until after the new year).

Critical PostScript & Important Public Relations Advice: News releases are intended to accomplish the following goals:

1. Create interest in an editor (print or electronic media) about doing a “stand alone” news piece about your client (the subject of the release/story).
2. A “story” may be picked up in whole, or in part.
3. Other times a news release will trigger interest on behalf of the news media who will use “your news release” as a starting point to do another version or slant of a story they think is more fitting for their reader/viewer/audience. In this case, a client might be the sole subject of a story, but more often they are one part or one source, of whatever this “larger story” might be.
4. Other times a “story” might fit in to some other notion or idea that is already “in the hopper” or in the “mindset” of an editor/writer/reporter.

Our media success was an example of the fourth scenario noted above.

The Nashville Business Journal

The editor of the Nashville Business Journal was, at the time of the story/release submission, working on a story about “marketing efforts on behalf of businesses’ in the face of a changing and declining business climate.” Dr. Obersteadt was quoted and featured in this story.

The Marketing Machine in Full Swing

So, what happens next with this media success? The principle of Leverage Marketing is further amplified below:

• A reprint of the article(s) will be posted to the Doctor’s website.
• At the Doctor’s discretion, a snail-mail version of a letter, along with a photo copy of the article will be mailed to his patients.
• Additionally and alternatively, an outbound (email) letter will be sent to his patients, which contain a link to the Doctor’s website where a copy of the “article” will live that proudly announces this recent “news” accomplishment.

Conclusion: The Big Payoff

Having established “contacts and connections” with the media in his market, going forward this first small but successful round of media exposure significantly enhances future opportunities to promote the doctor to media editors in his market.

The process of creating “branding” and implementing “name recognition” among the media is invaluable in advancing story ideas in the future. Just as with consumers, it takes time (frequency and reach) to establish “credibility and value” with customers; the media are no different. This (initial) marketing strategy and public relations approach has opened the doors for further dialogue with media.

Here’s What You Need to Know When Thinking About Hiring a Public Relations Firm

So, you’re thinking about hiring a public relations firm, but you have no idea what they charge or how they work. Just like any other professional who provides a highly specialized service, costs and/or fees relate to the amount of time, energy and effort that goes into servicing the account. In public relations this equates to two key variables; a) the actual “creation” of the press release(s), and b) the “distribution,” in other words, where will the press release be going and what media will be receiving it?

Within the context of the above, below are some questions that you must be aware of and equally must be able to answer (as much for yourself) before any public relations company or professional can provide you a quote for providing services.

• Have you or your company either worked with a public relations firm or received any press?
• Are there any press releases that have ever been written about your company, its product/service?
• Do you have any prior press releases handy, and do any of the facts contained therein still apply to your company, its product or service?
• Does your company have a well defined product and/or service? Is this well known and/or understood by the consumer and/or the B2B environment you work in?
• Is the company new or old? Does it have a big or small client base? Does the company have achievements and/or success for what it does?
• Is the product or service you are introducing new or old?
• Is this a consumer product/service or is it a business-to-business product/service?
• Is there good information already written about whatever you are trying to promote, in the way of collateral materials, or do promotional materials need to be created?
• Do you want and/or should there be images/photos to accompany the release?
• Do you want and/or should there be any “video” that supports your news/story?
• Is there or are there clear “public relations” possibilities for this company/product or service or do story ideas, angles, pitches, etc. need to be invented/created in order for there to be a compelling/legitimate “news” story about it?

The aforementioned are just some of the basic, but essential and preliminarily critical questions that any public relations professional will want to know as these directly relate and equate to the amount of time, energy and creative effort that needs to go into producing a powerful and effective press release and any supporting public relations campaign built around it.

Does “Writing” a Press Release Mean I am Going to “Get Press?”

It is very important you know that the act of just simply writing a press release is one thing, but writing it with the appropriate content and intent, with the “right news angle and spin” is what truly allows a public relations professional to legitimately generate publicity. Just because someone writes a press release for you does not mean that you automatically “get press.” That’s just not how it works.

What is Your Desired or Intended Distribution?

The next issue related to price/cost is distribution. Here are the questions you need to answer and a public relations professional needs to know in order to be able to properly provide you with a quote and cost for providing service.

• What is the geographic reach you are trying to achieve with your publicity?
• Related to the above, is your reach local, regional or national?
• Is your media outreach efforts geared for or intended for print, radio or television media?
• Related to the above, is your outreach to one, two or all three of these media?

Length + Depth = Cost

Be aware that the length of the release affects cost. Professional press release “wire services” charge according to word count and distribution circuits. So, beyond just the cost of creating and writing the release the other factor that affects cost is the actual word count/length of the release combined with the depth and breadth of your intended/desired geographic reach.

For example, a press release of 400 words is a different cost than a press release of 800 words. A press release distributed just in your “local market” is naturally different than if it’s regional, or national.

By now you see how the questions above, and your answers to each of them, directly relate to time, energy, effort and cost/fees, as well as for the potential for achieving public relations success.

At the end of the day, regardless of how much money you spend, you will expect to see “your news” somewhere. Your answers to the above questions and how your public relations professional addresses these first and fundamental questions should give you some sense as to their level of professionalism and their potential ability to generate media attention and coverage for your company and/or its product or service.

The Bamboo Agency is a full-service advertising, marketing and public relations firm that has obtained tens of millions of dollars in print, radio and television coverage for its clients, locally, regionally and nationally. Jeff Mustard is the President of The Bamboo Agency and can be reached at 954-801-8263, or via email: jeff@thebambooagency.com; www.TheBambooAgency.com