Getting Media Coverage
by Pete Arnold
Public relations (PR) is a powerful service in any marketing toolkit. Yet despite the various aspects of PR, most marketers want only one thing from their PR activities – media coverage. Placements in target media outlets. They want the media coverage to be positive, and they want it often.
We get 100 positive placements per month in top tier business media working closely with one of our clients, JupiterResearch. Give me three minutes of your time, and I’ll tell you 12 of the ways we get these results for a privately-held company with fewer than one hundred employees. For your information, JupiterResearch is an authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business.
Let me begin by defining top tier business media outlets – print, online and broadcast. They include ABC News, AP, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The New York Times, Newsweek, NPR, Reuters, Time, U.S. News & World Report, UPI, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Here are 12 steps to getting one hundred positive placements per month in these top tier business media:
Listen carefully to your client. Thoroughly understand what the client wants to achieve and the timeframe available.
Determine what the client offers the media to help you reach those goals. This understanding is important because what the client thinks it offers and what you think it offers may initially be different. Ensure you are on the same page.
Get client feedback on which editors, reporters and columnists at which media outlets are important. Then, conduct your own research to augment the target media. If appropriate, add selected bloggers to this media database.
Find and study the beats of writers, editors, reporters, columnists, and bloggers at your target media. Within those beats, seek to determine the authors’ hot buttons and, also, why they have chosen particular angles for their stories.
Package the client’s news and feature-article messages in ways that appeal to different members of the top-tier business media. Develop a variety of subject headings that are most likely to get particular media outlets to open the messages.
Contact individual editors, reporters and columnists to let them know the content you offer. Never send messages in mass e-mailings but, instead, personalize them. When appropriate, follow up with phone calls.
Differentiate yourself by offering something special, such as turnaround time. For example, you can offer on-demand media relations by providing a one-hour response to members of the media who are on deadline. We offer this service 24/7.
Be proactive. Anticipate what members of your target list will write about. What industry events are coming soon? What industry news is expected? What problems are likely to arise in the marketplace? All three questions are relevant if your client has solutions that can address them. Communicate those solutions to your media database in the context of these upcoming subjects.
Be reactive. When a member of your target media list writes about a subject that should have included your client’s product or service but didn’t, contact him or her. Provide ideas for the next article on this subject. Be sure to include information about your client’s products and/or services in a non-promotional way.
Get feedback from target media. What story ideas are they looking for? What story holes do they have? Of course only a small percentage will respond, but all will know that you’re looking at issues from their point of view.
Be competitive. Periodically assess your results relative to one or two of your client’s key competitors. Measure your placements among top-tier business media in comparison with their placements.
Reassess steps 1 through 11 on a regular basis.
Not every small to medium size, closely-held company is going to get 100 positive, top-tier business media placements each month, no matter how excellent the company or its public relations services. And I want to emphasize that JupiterResearch has many strengths, including authoritative analysis, proprietary data, and articulate analysts that provide thought-leading ideas. Nevertheless, these 12 steps will help you to get more than your expected share of placements.
Pete Arnold is the CEO of Peter Arnold Associates, a national public relations agency with offices in Wellesley, Massachusetts and Frisco, Texas. He can be reached at parnold@parnold.com.