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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Why use PR in your business?

15 Oct

I’m really ‘reverse engineering’ my previous blog posts here. This is because although I’ve already talked about how to get publicity and how to create an effective press release, I never really covered the core strategies and principles behind doing so. Following your questions and comments, I have written a short article about why you should actually use PR and the ideas and concepts behind press releases and getting articles written in newspapers & appearing on Radio or TV.

So firstly, let’s be clear on why PR is so powerful! Think of a national newspaper and what someone like a car manufacturer would pay for, let’s say, a half page advertisement for their new car model in that national paper.  It could easily be ten or twenty thousand or more.

They are willing to pay that amount because hopefully (if they know what they’re doing) the number of people seeing it will bring them a profit.  If you compare that to a half page article in the same publication, where a journalist has written a half page review of the new car and they are absolutely raving about it -  not only is this coverage free, it’s also far more valuable than the advertising. This is because people believe what they read in the editorial far more than what they read in an ad, in the same way people will be more inclined to believe what they hear on a radio talk show than they will in a radio advertisement.  They will pay more attention to what they see on the TV news, or segment of a lifestyle show – such as GMTV or Oprah rather than the TV ads in the breaks and so on.  So you get this double whammy!  You don’t just get media coverage that’s totally free, you get media coverage that’s actually far more valuable than the advertising that normally would cost you a fortune.

I think it’s this ‘too good to be true’ aspect that steers some people clear of PR, in the same way that some people never bother sending out emails because it’s just all ‘too free and easy’ and life couldn’t possibly be that straightforward!?  I’m fairly sure you’re smarter than that, which is probably why you’re reading this in the first place!  So just get your head around the fact that most of what you’ve heard about good marketing and good PR being a struggle is absolute nonsense!  Another myth about PR is that it only works for certain types of business, that you have to have a particularly ‘sexy’ or ‘interesting’ business to get PR coverage or perhaps already have had some media exposure (Dragons Den etc).  It’s certainly true that if you invented a miracle  weight loss method, it’s going to be easier to get you onto national television than perhaps if you make a new type of vegan bread.  But, if you do make vegan bread – we’ll still get you on the TV! For example, when interest rates go up or down we’ll call all the news programmes and put you forward as an example of how vegan bakery’s are affected by interest rates too.  Suddenly there you are on the TV.  With PR there is always a way.  It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what you sell or how large or small your business is.

 
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Posted in Magazines, Marketing, PR, Press Releases

 

Learn to Write an Effective Press Release

25 Sep

Writing a good press release is the key to getting free media coverage. Here are my 4 golden rules and a blueprint, if you like that you can follow to ensure your press releases have every chance of being successful.

First of all when doing your press release don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve got to hire a PR agency to write your press release for you and to target the media for you.  Do it by all means if you’ve got the budget but this is not rocket science and you can do it by yourself if you want to.  Here are the golden rules for writing your press release:-

  1. Keep it simple and keep it to one page.
    Remember the purpose of your release is not to tell your entire life story, it’s to entice the journalist to get in touch with you to find out more and one page should be more than enough for that. Its a bit like a sales letter.
  2. You must have a great headline on your press release.
    Remember about journalists sifting through hundreds of these releases, well this means you’ve got about 3 seconds to grab their attention and you do this through the headline.  Generally they’ll glance at the headline of the press release and they’ll only read the rest of it if they find the headline of interest.  The good news is you haven’t got much in the way of competition because most press releases and most headlines are really dull and dreadfully boring, so how do you come up with a good headline?  Well, it’s the same as when you’re writing a headline for an advertisement.  The only purpose of the headline is to grab the reader’s attention and get them to read the rest of the press release.  So be creative, be imaginative.  One of my favourite forms of headline is this, if you’re going to do the thing of putting yourself forward as an expert do a headline that says “5 top tips for …” then you fill in the gap.  “Leading expert on xyz reveals the secrets of …”  So if you’re, lets say, the computer repair person your headline could be “5 top tips for saving your computer from a killer attack” “Leading expert on computer security reveals the secrets of effective computer protection”. Basically, our headline has got two lines to it.  It’s got a top line which is “5 top tips for ….” whatever your expertise is in and then a sub heading, if you like, “leading expert on xyz reveals the secrets of effective …” and you can tailor make this.  Its great, you can tailor make this to any business.  I’ve done this dozens of times for all sorts of peoples from all sorts of fields and journalists love this kind of thing because they can immediately see how they can turn this into a nice article or feature.  If you’re a car retailer “5 top tips for saving money on your new car” “Leading expert on car pricing reveals the secrets of saving thousands”.  Now if you send those sort of press releases to 10 or 20 newspapers, magazines or radio stations do you think 1 or 2 or 3 will respond and want to talk to you?  Absolutely.  Now these aren’t news stories specifically.  They’re more feature ideas but the reality that PR is about news is actually another myth.  Most news in the media is already covered.  It’s the top national or local stories of that day.  Most of the PR you’re going to be doing is really targeting feature material to the newspapers, to the magazines, to the media.
  3. The third golden rule of great PR is to write a few paragraphs of simple copy that tells your story or talks about what you’re offering simply and succinctly.
    Simplicity is the key and you could see an example of how to do that in the feature that I mentioned. Avoid industry specific language, technical terms etc that ‘outsiders’ may not understand.
  4. Finally, your press release must have a strong, clear call to action which tells the person reading it what to do next.
    So in big, bold letters at the bottom of the release put “For more information or to arrange an interview with… call this number, email this email address” and it’s really that simple.  One of the biggest mistakes you can make in PR is to make it more complicated than it really is. With great long convoluted press releases and PR is like all forms of marketing, it’s a numbers game.  You can send the greatest press release in the world to 20 people but you’re very unlikely to get 20 good responses but even if you get one response think about what that costs you.  Virtually nothing. And what that could be worth to you in terms of free PR coverage?




The aim here is to have PR as part of your mix each month so its an ongoing part of your overall business success strategy so, for example, you could decide now to target just 20 media outlets each month for a fairly small amount of effort that’s going to give you an ongoing stream of coverage.  Be very careful about planning PR based on normal everyday business events. You’re probably a lot more interested in the fact that you’re moving office than your local media might be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your imagination and turn a fairly straightforward event or piece of news into a good media event.  The key here is to remember that a good deal of the media particularly local newspapers and television are visually led.  What that means is your local newspaper will decide whether to cover some stories not just based on the newsworthiness of the actual story but also on whether they’re going to get any good pictures out of it and the same applies to local television.

The classic example of someone who understands the visual power of PR is Richard Branson, head of the Virgin empire.  PR was one of the key marketing strategies that Branson used to build his business.  You can not put a value on the PR he’s generated over the years.  Its going to be worth hundreds of millions.  Richard Branson understands the power of a great picture.  Here’s an example.  There are hundreds of men around the world who own wedding related businesses, but how many of them launched their business by dressing up in a wedding dress and inviting the press to come and take their photo?  That is precisely what Richard Branson did when he launched Virgin’s wedding business and as you can imagine the coverage he generated was phenomenal.  So one of the ways to get good PR is to look at what your business does and anything happening in your business and see if there’s what journalists call a photo opportunity there and if there isn’t create one.

 
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Posted in Advertising, Magazines, Newspapers, PR, Press Releases, Radio, TV

 

How to get free PR for a business in newspapers and radio

14 Sep

The easiest form of PR is normally your local press.  Depending on where you live they are often so short of good stories they’ll run almost anything, even some of the more boring approaches.

It’s certainly true that if you go to your local press with the approach I’m suggesting here you’ve got a very, very good chance of success.  And if you have a fairly straightforward story about your business like a local office or store opening or a story about your staff it’s certainly worth approaching the local press and giving them a try.  You’ve got nothing to lose.  Beyond the locals the remaining areas to target your PR are going to be national newspapers, national consumer magazines, business to business magazines, radio, TV and the internet.

Now there are a variety of ways for you to access the contact information on these media who you should be contacting.  You can do this a number of ways, you can just source the publications one by one, go through your papers, your magazines, go to websites, or you can also buy media guides and PR planners to assist you in doing this.  Basically you can pay to rent all this data and all this information depending on where you live and where you want to target.  So go do an internet search for media guide or PR planner for the most up to date information.

When it comes to actually contacting the press here is how you do it, it’s very simple…

  1. Send them a letter or a press release either by post or by email and you can also fax it
  2. Follow it up with a phone call!!

The follow up is really important.

Journalists are bombarded with a lot of stuff and they are normally either overworked or down the pub and it’s all too easy for some of the good information to fall through the gaps so when you follow up with a phone call you can check first of all that they’ve seen what you sent them and, most important of all, you get the chance to sell to them again by showing how what you’ve got is going to be of real interest to their audience.  When you call them show them that you’re thinking of their audience. Use language like “I’m guessing this is of real interest to your readers, is that right?” or “I’ve sent you this material because I know that a good proportion of your listeners are affected by this and I thought this would make a great feature for you”.

Remember that you are selling to them so you want to use all the communication and influencing skills that you would normally use perhaps with customers.  Now here’s another really important point about that follow up phone call.  If you’re targeting radio or TV stations and either you call them or they call you at any point remember that during that call they’ll be testing you out to check that you’re a good speaker.  There’s nothing worse for a producer than booking a guest for a radio or TV show and then discovering they’re really dull and uninteresting.  Not only will the audience not respond but the producer will look bad in front of his or her colleagues too.  So often what they’ll do is they’ll call you up with a couple of questions.  They may or may not be interested in your answers to those questions but what they are definitely interested in is your ability to communicate with them.  They’re not looking for you to be a Shakespearean actor or have perfect diction.  What they are looking for is passion about your subject.  Be passionate about your subject and they won’t just invite you onto their show they’ll have you back again and again and again.

The media is crying out for passionate experts, so go for it.

 
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Posted in Advertising, Magazines, Newspapers, PR, Press Releases, Radio, TV