Now is the time to up-level your marketing plan by adding in free publicity. What we know for sure is that the more visibility you get, more potential customers and clients can learn about you and that means more business for you and ultimately more revenue and profits. Most of you are already growing your visibility with social media and now by adding in free publicity, you’re making it all happen that much faster and to a much larger audience. Landing in the media can expose you to hundreds of thousands, even millions of new people.
In doing a public relations review, start with: have you ever landed media coverage before? If so, are you staying connected with those journalists? It’s important to stay front of mind with them. Additionally, you never know where they might end up. One of my first interviews was in Examiner.com. A few years later that journalist sent me an email saying she was with Forbes now and had always loved my story. She pitched it to her editor who loved it too and they wrote an article about me. People in the media move around all the time so fostering and maintaining relationships with journalists is vital.
If you don’t have any prior media, no worries. It’s really not that difficult to start. I created a system I call the Get PR Famous Formula that is a proven to work. It’s worked thousands of times and it involves three simple steps.
Be Newsworthy
My biggest piece of advice when it comes to publicity is to start locally. Local media loves to cover stories about local businesses. Make your business newsworthy. “New” is the key word. If you’re a new business or have a new product, news service, new anything, that is newsworthy. Did you invent a new product, write a book, or win an award? Those are all topics that interest local media.
You can also get creative with “new.” When I manufactured my MediFashions, I ordered too much, so it was difficult to come up with new designs. Instead, when I heard camouflage was a new fashion trend for women, I took the camo Sock-It that was originally designed for men and coupled it with a hot pink Strap-It and created a “new” combination that appeared to be a new product launch.
The other thing is to focus in on what is your expertise and how can you share that in a newsworthy manner? An accountant can talk about new tax laws and what that means for local businesses. A roofer can speak about the importance of clearing leaves out of gutters in the fall to prevent clogs which leads to roof leaks. A Realtor can share three best bang-for-your-buck upgrades before selling. What is your expertise and what value can you provide a media outlet’s audience in sharing what you know?
Create a Great Hook
The second step is creating great hooks. You want to “hook” the journalist in with your subject line so they will want to read more and open your email. Look at magazine covers for great hook examples. People get paid for you to make an impulse purchase in the grocery store check-out line based on the article title/hook on the cover. What are they putting on the cover to hook you in so that you want to buy the magazine to read the article? Google is a great resource for magazine covers. One of my favorites is AARP Magazine. They do a great of hooking you in based on what they put on the cover.
Also, think about on television when they say, “Coming up next…” That is a hook. The television stations need people to stay and watch the commercials. Those are their sponsors and they pay for the advertising. It’s up to them to get you to stay through and listen or watch. They do this by “hooking” you in for the next story, so you won’t leave. When coming up with your own hooks, think about what will make you stay through the commercials to hear the next story?
Find the Right Journalist
The final step in the Get PR Famous Formula is finding the right journalist. “Right” is the important word. It is vital that you find someone covering your industry. Remember that Google is a question search engine. Ask Google, “Who writes about [your topic] at [name of publication]?” In the majority of searches for journalists at local media outlets, all their contact information comes up including email address and phone number. This is an important step because you don’t want to send your business story to the food editor. Remember to use the phone number to follow up with the journalist. Many are overwhelmed with emails and often forget your pitch came in, even if they loved it. Rarely do people follow up with phone calls anymore so this is a great way to stand out in the crowd.
This 3-step Get PR Famous Formula is the key to publicity success. By pitching the media in this way, you will be light-years ahead of your competition and journalists will be thrilled to work with you because you’ve made their job that much easier but giving them exactly what they want.
In summary, perform a public relations review by going back to anyone who has covered you in the past, reconnect and build a relationship with them for future stories or quotes. The next step is to start pitching the right media relevant, newsworthy stories using a great hook to make sure they read it and want to use your idea in their newspaper, magazine, online publication or on their television, radio show or podcast.
For more information, go to www.3StepstoPRSuccess.com and download your no cost guide with more details on this process.