Get Great Publicity Without Spending A Fortune!
3 Quick Tips To Save Thousands of Dollars and Hours of Aggravation…
As Thanksgiving approaches, I’d like to thank you for reading and your support throughout the year. With this in mind, here are some public relations’ tips to help your business or practice grow!
When your target audience members hear or see a story about you in the media, you receive third-party credibility you can’t get any other way. This is the one key thing that public relations (PR) offers that you won’t find anywhere else, and it’s essential to use with your marketing and sales activities to build authority. It’s not advertising and gives you a huge competitive advantage.
But, Melanie, this is not possible with my current bank balance and schedule… or is it?
Take Advantage of Public Relations Without Wasting Time or Money.
1. Focus on one media venue that matters.
What does your target market pay attention to on a regular basis? Choose one media venue to go after. This may be a local newspaper, television news program, radio show, blog, or something else. Then, conduct research to discover who you need to contact at that venue.
2. Provide value.
Sorry! This is not about you. It’s about providing value to a specific media member at a specific media venue so they can share an insightful and entertaining story with their audience. What kind of insights, tips or feedback about current news, trends, industry updates, and other information can you provide that their audience will actually care about? Once you figure this out and practice what you’re going to say, contact the media member, introduce yourself and provide your unique story idea.
3. Follow Up, Rinse and Repeat.
Just by introducing yourself, you may get a story right away AT NO COST TO YOU (it happens!) … or it may take several weeks. The point is to build a relationship with specific media members. See how you can help make their jobs easier by providing valuable, entertaining, and current information… on a regular basis.
Yes! This takes time and effort. Is it worth it?
Duh. Media members need your information to publish fresh stories every day. They want to hear from you with your in-the-trenches expertise.
It’s a great win-win opportunity; they obtain new, shareable content and you receive many benefits. You may get a feature story worth thousands of dollars in advertising and have the opportunity to share personal insights with your target market. But more important, this provides third-party credibility where an influencer is talking about you – something you can only get through public relations. Then, you can experience a boost in search rankings and awareness, site visits, office calls, online registrations, and much more. Best of all, you can use your media clippings in your marketing processes and sales materials to show credibility and authority.
Yes, obtaining good publicity takes time and effort… but it’s worth it. Start doing it on your own to see how it works. Then, you can conduct research and find an experienced publicist who knows direct marketing and copywriting to help you (warning – blatant pitch for my services!) Also, avoid automated AI services that generate and distribute press releases. The best results come from real, human relationships – it is public “relations”!
To save resources, have your publicist provide a specific strategy unique to your business or practice so “you’re on the same page.” Then, you’ll experience the best results based on your overall goals. PR does not need to cost you time or effort if you focus on the right people and activities. Start small and grow from there.