NewsBusiness

Sometimes you’re so focused on getting the media coverage, it’s hard to think beyond the actual coverage itself.

It’s tempting to think that getting coverage is the final objective, but you have to remember that most print media is thrown out that day – newspapers generally get binned fairly quickly and you’re lucky if a magazine hangs around longer than a few weeks.

Coverage on the radio and TV is even more ephemeral – one minute you’re there, next you’re gone!

What are the chances that your target market is reading that newspaper article, watching that TV report?

Many businesses assume that the feature itself will generate instant enquiries, but it often doesn’t happen that way.

What you need to do now is make the most of the coverage in your regular marketing. This means, as a minimum:

• next time you send out an email to your list of clients, prospects and email newsletter subscribers, make sure you point out where you have been covered and when
• if you can, get a copy of the article or clip of the TV/radio item and put it up on your website*
• put a small news item/image referring to the coverage on the home page of your website or at the very least put up something on the home page that says eg “As featured in…” and that shows logos of the news/media outlets where you have featured – this must be ‘above the fold‘

The thing to bear in mind is that your customers and prospects may not have seen your coverage, but the fact that you featured in the news or the media will (generally) enhance their perception of you. And may prompt them to become clients, or stay as clients, or recommend you to someone they know. This is why you have to tell them!

The other benefit of getting media coverage is that you are now more appealing to other media outlets, since you have proven experience. From this point on, when talking to other journalists you can drop in where you have been featured and reinforce your (new) status as an expert or industry commentator.

So many businesses see the first piece of good media coverage as the end result. In reality it should only be the beginning.

*this is why media monitoring is a good idea

photo caption: NewsBusiness client Alistair Hill of Bushfire Risk Reducers being interviewed for Channel 9 news by reporter Sarah Harris

Video is a great way to engage your website visitors and here is a new approach, thanks to a website called xtranormal. On this site you can create your own film/movie online and then put it on your blog or website, or upload it to YouTube. You might be interested to know that, after a few initial technical hitches, we ’shot’ this video in about an hour and a half. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it gets the message across!

If this video does not display properly, try watching it on YouTube.

A few stories in the media/online recently* have shown that a great way to get attention for your business – whether via conventional marketing channels, through the media, or online, is to ‘throw a brick’.

Throwing a brick is all about picking a target and then, basically, laying into them. Now if you’re planning to throw a brick at an individual or a particular company, you’re probably well advised to consult your defamation lawyers first, but if you target an industry or an indeterminate group of people you’ll generally be in the clear.

And why does throwing a brick work? Because it generates controversy and gets people all het up. Whether they agree with you or not, they’ll certainly remember who you are. And the other important thing to remember is that the people who disagree with you were never very likely to buy your product anyway. It’s the ones that agree with you that are, and they’re the ones you want.

And the media loves controversy. It’s something they can hook a story on and go out and do a vox pop – ask people in the street (or in an industry) what they think.

So next time you want to get the attention of your customers/list/the media, try throwing a brick and see what happens.

*see the recent Crikey article and Leela Cosgrove on Anthill “Why PR is a pointless waste of time” (ironic really given the subject matter!)

We’ve reported on this before (see our previous post). This time it’s Crikey’s turn to let us know that half of our news is generated from public relations. The Crikey study, again in conjunction with UTS in Sydney, involved 40 students calling media outlets and asking them the hard question – where do your news stories come from? See the Crikey news item for more information. To access the full report you have to subscribe to Crikey.

It all used to be so simple. Newspapers, TV and the radio ran the news, and businesses used conventional advertising alongside editorial to generate business. Both editorial and advertising ‘worked’ and there was rarely any crossover between the two.

Now conventional media is threatened by the perceived free-for-all that the internet has delivered, the ‘citizen journalists’ rival the TV and the newspapers from their back bedrooms, and advertising seems to have lost its effectiveness as viewers, readers and listeners stop paying attention.

This is bad news if you are a conventional media outlet or a conventional business, but great news if you’re prepared to jump into the news business, at least in terms of spreading the news about your business!

If people are no longer responding as enthusiastically to sales messages, everyone continues to be interested in information – and more and more information – about ‘things’. The internet allows us to research products, services and companies ad nauseam before making a decision to buy. This means that potential customers are now much better ‘qualified’ when they (finally) contact you, since they have found out most of what they needed to know. And the businesses that win these customers are the ones that have the most information on the internet about what they do. This information – in the broadest sense of the word – is ‘news’.

So if you’re currently in a position where there is not much ‘news’ out there about your business, how do you go about rectifying the situation?

• Start telling people your news

The easiiest way of doing this is with a regular (ie at least once a month) email newsletter or update. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as it goes out regularly and is primarily informational, that is it’s not just a sales pitch. And if you put a signup box on your website with enough good reasons as to why anyone would want to receive your newsletter, you can grow your list.

• Start updating your website with this news

Search engines give preferential treatment to websites that a) have a lot of content on them and that b) are updated regularly. You can score on both counts by putting your newsletter articles up in full text on your website every time you send it.

• Start sending some of this news out to ‘the media’

Don’t expect great results from sending news releases out to your local paper or to a national TV station, unless you have worked out why either of these outlets would want to cover your story. Instead look at your story and work out which media outlets would really like it. The best places may be industry journals or specialist magazines or websites.

Any positive coverage online will not only drive people to your website, it will probably generate inbound links which will help your website’s search engine rankings.  Any positive coverage offline will also drive people to your website (whether or not the web address is mentioned) and will raise the profile of your business much more effectively than any advertising can.

1) Let’s call the local paper – they’ll run a story on us.

Almost a knee jerk reaction from many businesses when the subject of getting media coverage comes up is “Why don’t we get something in <name of local rag>?”.

Here’s why the local paper isn’t always the best place to start. Local papers (in Australia at least) can be up to 80% advertising and syndicated content, that is generic items on eg weather/horoscopes/car reviews which are shared across many titles by the newspaper publisher.

That can leave sometimes only 10-15 pages for the local editor. Once you take away local politics, police reports and the local sports pages, that leaves very few other pages to fill. Now factor in the fact that many local businesses will be thinking the same way (“Let’s call the local paper”) and you can understand that the editor is likely to be besieged by local businesses wanting coverage – some even demanding it!

And if you do succeed in getting coverage, how helpful is that to your business? Is your market really only people who live in the local area? And do your prospective customers read your local paper? Do they expect to find your type of business mentioned in it? (see Sin 4)

There can certainly be times when coverage in the local paper is beneficial. Just ask yourself the questions above and also bear in mind that, for a story to be relevant, it has to have a strong local theme, which you will need to emphasise. And if you have a good photo opportunity, so much the better (see our previous post on this).

2) Yes – we had some coverage. Two years ago.

How many times have you visited a restaurant and spotted a press clipping stuck on the wall or counter. You bend down to read it and, seeing it’s a bit dog eared, look at the date and realise it’s several years old. Who knows, the whole kitchen staff might have moved on since then! Many businesses think that once they’ve got an article in the paper, that’s it, game over. Instead, think about whether there are stories you can get out every month, not just every few years.

3) We didn’t get any calls from that article.

With all of your marketing efforts, including media coverage, you have to see what works and what doesn’t. But remember that most newspapers (unlike magazines) are skipped through and binned the same day.  Unless the person reading the item is very interested indeed in your product or service at that exact moment, you’re unlikely to get a call.

So is media coverage useless then? Not at all. Firstly, those people that read the article (assuming it’s positive coverage) will remember what they read and may talk about it with other people. Secondly, if you let your existing clients know that you were covered in the press (with that press cutting in the shop/restaurant or perhaps on your website or in a newsletter), they will think more highly of you and be more confident in their choice of your business as a customer. And they will be more willing to refer people to you. And that subtle shift in attitude is very helpful for you – you are in their eyes a more ‘credible’ business!

4) Who’s our target market? Anyone with a pulse.

When you’re big game fishing you don’t stick a maggot on the hook. I don’t know much about fishing, but the same principle applies to marketing. Until you know who your ‘perfect client’ is, it’s incredibly difficult to work out how to promote your business effectively. Once you do know your perfect client, you know what they read, what they watch and listen to, what sites they visit on the internet, which newsletters (email or otherwise) they subscribe to, you know where your marketing efforts are best spent.

You know where to advertise and you know where you should aim to get editorial coverage. You also know which other (non competing) businesses service your target market and who you could perhaps joint venture with. So pick your niche, find your perfect customers, and market to them, and them alone (see our previous post on the perfect client).

5) You’re from which paper? And you want to speak to the CEO? He’s not available right now.

When the media wants to talk to someone in your business, this is an opportunity to establish your business as a leader or expert in the field. If it’s a ‘bad news’ story, it’s a chance to put your side of the picture. If a journalist can’t speak to the person they want to speak to, they’ll move on to another business (perhaps your competitor) where they can talk to the right person or, if it’s about your company and it’s a ‘bad news’ story, they’ll present only one side of the argument, with a pointed comment that there was ‘no comment’ from you. Wised up CEOs are happy to talk the media at any time, and their support team are under instructions to pass media calls straight through to them.

6) Why would we want to send our customers an email? They know what we do.

One word. Engagement. It applies to your current customers, your future customers, your past customers, your employees. If people are ‘engaged’, you have their attention. If you don’t, somebody else does. And in the context of your service or product, that somebody else is your competition.

You need to stay in touch with all of your business contacts – associates, suppliers as well as customers and prospects, as a guide, at least once a month. Not to sell them anything, just to keep them informed of any new products or services you have, pass on some of your expertise in your field, celebrate successes, ask their opinion. Just letting people know on a regular basis that you’re still there, still offering the same (or new) things, still happy to help them by selling them your service/product, increases the likelihood that, when they need what you sell, they’ll come to you, not go elsewhere. Leave it too long and you’ll lose them.

(Six months after setting up NewsBusiness I sent an email to all my previous business associates – within half an hour I received a call and had a contract for some work. Not a bad result from a few emails)

7) We operate in a very price sensitive market. We can’t put our prices up.

You have to put your prices up. Unless you are a large established business, it is almost impossible to survive in a ‘commoditised’ market. Larger businesses have the buying power and the resources to enter a price war and win. A smaller business generally cannot compete on price (unless it has a completely new ‘game changing’ model) and so must compete on service or quality, eg speed/attention to detail etc. Find out what your ‘perfect client’ wants (ask them) and give it to them. Offer a standard service plus a premium service. Price the premium service at least three times higher than the standard service.

Pricing sends a message to the consumer of the likely worth or quality of an item (irrespective of its actual quality). Individuals will pay premium prices for perceived better quality or rare items. Anecdotally, two different research projects have shown that:

• putting prices up by 20% results in no/minimal loss of existing customers
• ~6% of any customer base is prepared to pay up to 5 times the standard price of an item for a premium version

To echo the advice of Seth Godin (and many other marketing commentators), you have to pick your niche and focus on giving a service to that niche that no one else can give.

Reading time <7 mins

Back in May Sydney academic Jim Macnamara put together an analysis of more than 70 local and international studies published over the last 80 years.

He concluded that a lot of media content is derived from PR material – although not surprisingly some publications and media are more reliant than others on news releases and PR information. ‘Quality’ newspapers and broadcasters relied the least on PR material and suburban and rural newspapers, trade press and specialist publications relied the most.

What is really interesting is that journalists tend to say that they do not rely on PR – how can this be in the face of the evidence? The answer is in their perception of their sources – once they get to know a PR person, they then regard them as a ‘trusted source’ rather than just another PR channel.

Here’s the full article from The Australian:

PR driving up to 80pc of content

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear this from any of the latest horde of pop stars? But of course they never say it, and so ensues the normal round of gossip columnists, radio DJs, TV interviewers etc trying to wheedle interesting comments out of the celeb in question.

I suppose it makes you wonder what an interviewer would actually say in reply to a pop star if they really said this – they’d probably be dumbfounded and be prompted to ask something like “Well, why don’t you want to talk about your music?” Which then might lead to the conversation the musician wanted to have in the first place.

It really does go to show that the grass is always greener on the other side – there are plenty of business owners who would die to get some good media coverage. And those (mainly celebrities) who are getting tons normally complain massively about it!

The publicist Max Markson summed it up beautifully when he said that newsworthiness is all about “Ordinary people doing extraordinary things or extraordinary people doing ordinary things”.

So how does this relate to getting media coverage for your business? If you take Mr Markson’s quote at face value, you need to see what you – or your business – is doing that is truly extraordinary. If we assume that getting on to the front cover of New Idea is not your aim, then this relates as much to your industry media (or your niche media) as it does to mass media. A positive story in ‘Widget Fancier Monthly’ might be all you really need to start your climb to celebrity status – in the world of widgets anyway!

This is an interesting post on the US PR/journalism related blog Journalistics. Even though the information is based on the US, it is still applicable outside the US. It’s also interesting to see that the author mentions polls and surveys as a good way of measuring the impact of PR, despite the fact that they are ‘time consuming’. Surveys before and after PR campaigns give another very useful measurement of effectiveness.

Read the full article here:

How Do You Measure PR? (read time ~6mins)

Another post from the Journalistics blog (based in the US) puts some facts and figures behind the old argument as to whether or not you should follow up a news release with a phone call. We’ve explained the pros and cons in our report “Ditch Your Marketing… and do PR instead” but it’s always useful to read actual feedback from journalists.

Read the full article here:

How Do Journalists View Follow Up Phone Calls? (read time ~4mins)