There used to be a saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity. For businesses, the right publicity can be the difference between success and failure. Where often advertising can fail, PR and publicity can make the difference and should be part of any marketing campaign, where possible.
If you want to attract the attention of the media, you will have to approach them professionally. Media relations is a critical part of a business’s marketing and public relations efforts.
These relations consist of all your contacts with reporters, editors, program producers, and others in the print and broadcast media. Your aim is, of course, to generate favourable coverage of your products, services, policies, and goals.
Media coverage helps your market understand more about what you do and why. It is also tells your story to suppliers and potential investors. The best media relations begin with good business performance. The stronger your business and products are, the more the media will have to cover.
The media’s primary concern is with what’s newsworthy. This is why working with the media requires a lot of hard work. You can’t get to know the media overnight. You can’t expect maximum coverage unless you spend time (and, in some cases, money) communicating by mail, by phone, and in person.
Keep in mind that the obligation of media professionals begins with their publication or station and with the interests of the people they reach – their market.
They also have an obligation to maintain editorial distance from the businesses they cover. They try very hard to remain objective, not to play favourites and to be emotionally detached from outside contacts.
Your obligation begins with your business and how to communicate your interests to your staff and your market. When you work with the media, you constantly perform a balancing act between what you need and what the media need.
It will always be that way. To you, your business is special; to the media, it’s just one among many. This is why, in addition to getting to know editors, reporters and broadcast producers, you need to take certain actions or develop certain attitudes that will allow you to work with the media for the best results.
Communicating with the media
Tell the media what you’re doing and why. Go to them with news about achievements, not plans. You won’t get very far if you try to approach the media with nonessential news without a creative or unique angle.
Stick with the basics, spelling out the who, what, when, where, and why of what you have done. The media deal with unbelievable quantities of information daily, only a small portion of which appears in print or on the air. Don’t add to their burden. If an editor or reporter wants more information, he or she will ask for it.
Be open with the media
You want to be discreet, but give editors, reporters, and others the information they need to tell a complete story. They want to give their audience good information, for that is their chief obligation as members of the press.
Be responsive
When the media ask for information or interviews with you or your management, respond as quickly as you can. Don’t delay unless you have a good reason.
If you don’t get back to an editor or reporter with an answer to a request – usually within several hours – they will probably move on to another source to round out their story.
Worse, they might decide to kill the story, in which case you’ve forfeited an opportunity for coverage. Still worse, your failure to respond might be mentioned in an unfavourable light in any story which they do run. The media move quickly against rigorous deadlines.
Respect that pressure, and most editors and reporters will respond more openly to your inquiries.
Remember the public
Keep the public interest in mind when you work with the media. The information you give the media should inform and influence public opinion. Generally, the public wants facts and sound arguments in language they can understand.
They want to know what you are doing that affects their lives, especially through their wallets. Show them the benefits of your product or service, selling them on how you are helping them, not on how they should help you.
The public connection is critical since, as a business owner, you depend on it for your survival. You are accountable to the people who will make you succeed, particularly those who buy and use your products or services.
What you are trying to say, through any coverage you receive, is that your business has a legitimate purpose and deserves to continue to make a profit because it serves that purpose.
The more you work with the media to tell your story responsibly and creatively, the more you’ll succeed in reaching your markets through the press.
Targeting media outlets
When you put together an advertising plan, you need to select those media most likely to reach your customers. The same holds true when you decide which media to contact for publicity.
Most publications and news shows already have detailed analyses of their audiences, in order to justify their advertising rates. You can get a reader or viewer profile simply by calling or writing to the station or publication and asking for a press kit.
Not only will you be able to focus on the medium most appropriate to your audience, but you will also know which types of stories these media use. Once you know, you can tailor your story to fit their format.
In addition to the print media, you might find a number of radio and television shows in your area which welcome businesspeople. If you’re a travel agent, you could talk about the best times to take certain vacations, and how to find a good deal.
If you own a restaurant, you might be able to give a cooking lesson on the air, and publicise your business at the same time.
If you do your homework before you approach the media, and demonstrate to them that you’re a professional who knows what works and what doesn’t for their audience, you stand a good chance of getting valuable publicity. . . for free.
Writing a pitch letter
Chances are, if you call media people with a story idea, they will ask you to send something in writing. It’’s much easier for them to read a straightforward account of you and your business than to piece it together from a telephone conversation.
Besides, they can look at your material when they have the time to concentrate on it.
Your pitch letter is your formal introduction to the media person.
In it, you will describe yourself and your business, why your story would be of interest to their audience, and how they can contact you. In a way, a pitch letter is like a sales letter. You want to convince the media that you are worth covering.
Target the media you think will be interested in your angle and then call to find out who would handle stories of the type in which you hope to be featured.
Get the precise spelling of that person’s name, their title, the correct mailing address, and a phone number if it is different from the one you called. This may sound simple, but professionals in the media constantly complain about receiving letters with misspelled names and incorrect addresses.
If you make errors like these, how do they know that you aren’t just as careless in the information you’re sending them?
A typical pitch letter is concise, and is usually confined to one typewritten page of information. Pitch letters with a solid news angle should go to the main editor of a local newspaper, the news director of a local radio station, and usually the person in charge of the assignment desk for a local television news show.
If you’re pitching a story with a less timely angle, send it to a newspaper’s features editor or perhaps the coordinator of an afternoon radio talk show. Once you develop a media kit, discussed below, you can enclose it with your pitch letters.
Developing a press release
Press releases are an important part of a PR campaign. They are the primary means of “selling” your story to the media. All press releases are structured in the same way.
Following are some guidelines for good press releases. As you review them, you will be able to see why releases succeed and fail.
The press release should be double-spaced.
It should be on plain white paper and printed with black ink. Editors look at hundreds of press releases every day, and if yours is difficult to read, they will throw it out. Your letterhead should also be at the top of the first page, to establish your identity. You can get special letterhead printed for this purpose if you choose.
A good press release has no typographical or grammatical errors. A press release containing such errors will elicit a negative reaction. It has the same effect as a badly written business letter or résumé. The release should be typed, as opposed to hand-written. Print out (or type out) a fresh copy for each person to whom you send it. Do not send out poor-quality photocopies with dark staple marks or blotches.
The press release must contain six basic elements: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Put the most important facts in the lead paragraph, with the facts decreasing in importance as you go down the page. Why? Suppose you send a press release to an editor who has five inches of space, and the release runs eight. Ideally, the editor would trim your release from the bottom. Therefore, put the less important things there.
You need a contact source. In the top right-hand corner of the first page, directly underneath your company’s title, there should be a line that says “For further information, contact. . . ” A telephone number and name should follow. The editor must have somebody to call to answer questions or to be interviewed. Do not close off this possibility by failing to provide your name and number. If you can only be reached during specific hours, specify them.
The best press releases have a dateline, with the city in which the business is based, and the date the release is written before the text begins. Every press release needs a dateline so that the editor can tell when it was mailed. Nobody wants to cover an old story that has completely lost its meaning. If you expect to get free press coverage, you should take care of this detail.
If your release does run longer than one page, put “more” at the bottom of each page except the last, and put “end” at the bottom of the last page. Additionally, be sure to number each page in the top left-hand corner with a page number and a two-word story description. For example, the top of the second page of a release regarding a new car model would look like this: 2/new model.
You can usually improve your chances of receiving media attention if you include a picture with the written material.
If you have an interesting product or an unusual storefront, you should include a photograph with your release. A newspaper will use a black and white photograph, while a magazine would probably prefer color slides or prints.
Keep in mind that a publicity photo should tell a story about your product or service. For example, a toy company might run a print ad showing a doll, the box it comes in (with the name of the toy company prominently displayed), and all its accessories laid out in front.
A publicity photo, however, might show a little girl holding the doll, or reading her a story or feeding her. As much as you’d like your company’s name to appear in the photo, don’t do it unless it’s very subtle. It simply won’t get used.
