What makes a good story? How do I make my business a subject people actually want to read and talk about? There‘s no doubt that good PR can make a huge impact to an SME business but often business owners don’t have the ‘know-how’ to unlock its full potential and are wary about allocating a significant percentage of their marketing budget to an external marketing agency.
We have helped many of our clients to enjoy PR successes without having to invest large sums of money, by sharing our top tips:
1. Do your background research.
• Journalists are happy to publish stories that will be of real interest to their readers so find out more about what they publish. Which publications should you target and try to build strong relationships with?
• Can you identify the particular journalist who writes about similar stories? Local papers are particularly interested in local events, new businesses, or how a local business can increase employment opportunities by opening up a new market for existing products and services or developing new products.
• Supporting a local charity can raise the profile of your business.
• For trade publications the journalists like to know what’s new or different about your business that differentiates you from your competitors.
2. Follow a process and make this an integral part of your marketing plan.
• Good marketing doesn’t have to be wacky and innovative all the time; it’s more about being consistent. Make sure that potential PR stories are identified on a regular basis by adding it to your marketing plan. As your business changes consider whether this has potential for PR.
3. Prepare your material. Make it easy for a journalist to access more information, including providing suitable photos or video. The paper may want to take their own photo but it’s quicker and easier for them if you send something with your text copy.
4. Include all the relevant information succinctly (who, where, why, what, when etc) so that they have all the facts and figures at their fingertips.
5. Add human interest with different viewpoints about your story. This could be a strategic partner, a customer, a business organisation or trade association point of view. Make sure third parties have seen and approved the copy you intend to send out so that they can edit it if they wish.
6. Build long term relationships with the journalists who write about your industry, just as you would with a supplier or customer. Over time this helps establish you and your company as an expert spokesperson and the journalist will ask for comments about news stories they are covering.
Interested, but still a bit unsure – give me a call and we’ll talk you through it.
Gill.