PR - Marketing⁺

PR – Marketing⁺ a collection of papers from PlannedSites for SME's

"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." - Brendan Behan

There are two types of PR:

• Story-led and
• Expert-led

Story-led PR

You can gain media coverage by generating a story that will appeal to journalists and writers. It is the most common form of PR and is well worth pursuing.

There are also a number of websites that will contact local or national press to ensure that your story is published in perhaps more than one publication.

Expert-led PR

Make yourself, in the eyes of the media and the public, the expert. It doesn’t matter too much what the subject is, as long as it is relevant to your business. The object of the exercise is to get the name of you and your firm in front of the public.

Somebody has to become the expert called on by the local press and radio stations. Why not you? Put yourself about in that capacity.

Media contacts

All this relies on you establishing contacts. Some personal, some more general on your media database.

It’s much, much better if you establish personal contact with one or more journalists locally. Send them interesting press releases and make sure they find you easy to find when news on tax (Budget time) and finance breaks so they may use you to help them make a decent story for their publications or radio stations.

Send out a press release and then follow it up; don’t rely on it to do the work by itself, particularly if you’ve sent it to a journalist you are cultivating, even put in a call first. You can post, fax or email your release. A combination of all three works well.

Include a personalised covering letter (or email) with the press release. Follow up with a phone call. Get to the point and quickly sell what's in it for them.

When targeting radio, remember that whenever you speak to someone, they're checking you out. The media love a good talker.

Keep making contact until you get a definite 'No'.

Ask if there's anyone else who might be interested. Don't hesitate to target different people on the same publication. Go back to the same journalists a few weeks later, even if they say no.

When you make a good contact, stay in touch. In all of your contact with the media, be passionate and if appropriate, outspoken and controversial. Above all, be very tenacious.