There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.
The key to public relations lies in:
- Public relation or publicity, know the difference
- Merchandising
- Promotions
With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.
Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is sometimes less, sometimes more, important as conventional media depending on your business model.
Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:
- Put together press releases for your company as frequently as possible. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business. It should announce new products, new systems, new employees, new services, any of these your company has made a change to; anything you can dare to call newsworthy even when you’re stretching the truth.
- Create your press release to include one hook and one angle and no more. Be concise. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
- Put your press release in professional formatting. You can easily find templates online with a quick search. With press releases, you need a dateline, the most important information at the top, facts, figures and then wrap it up with contact details including who and how. Include/print on your letterhead and offer all contact information you’re willing to share. Send snail mail and electronic both.
- Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forgot to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites and links to industry professionals. Spend some time thinking about this list. It can be expansive. Realize you want to keep this list current and that will change. In other words, schedule bi-annual updates.
More importantly than a perfect press release is to make sure you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products/services you offer and made that clear in the press release. Are you providing people:
- a solution to a problem,
- a way to avoid a problem (in case they already have it,)
- an opportunity to enhance their life – the feel good?
State it. State it clearly. Offered in this way the media and public will be interested.
If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offering newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.
“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” Jay Abraham