Getting great publicity for your business is really about getting your message about your unique product and service offers out to your market via the right online and offline media.
However, hiring a PR firm to do this important aspect of marketing for you doesn’t come cheap, which is why it’s a big advantageous to do your own publicity, especially as the resources now available to you on the internet will allow you to do your own publicity effectively and at low cost.
And in addition to that, another good reasons to do it yourself is because you know your business better than anyone else which means you can identify the precise unique value you offer and what you want to say.
Better still, by getting the media in your industry to write about you can be much more effective than the content you create about yourself …because people trust the word of others which in turn can have a huge beneficial impact your business.
So consider doing your own publicity as it may not turn out to be as difficult as you may think. You just need to allocate some marketing time either for yourself, or a member of your staff, to plan, prepare and put in the work to master some basic techniques.
Here are 3 ways to help and guide you:
1. Clarify what makes you unique
In order to get good publicity about your business, you need to entice journalists and ‘influencers’ in your market to write about what makes you and your business unique and why customer prospects should choose you over your competitors. So, a good place to start is to consider what makes your value offer different from others.
To begin, just imagine putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and hear what happy customers say about you, what they like about you and why they would choose you instead of someone else. In other words, think about your unique value in terms of the benefits and what it means to them, rather than just the features of your product and services.
The core of any publicity is to clarify how you can improve and make your customers’ lives better which becomes your attention grabber, your communication “hook” that tells them how you uniquely meet their needs. This is how you can attract influencers and journalists to want to write about you.
2. Plan and prepare your “Media Kit”
Creating a media kit makes doing your own publicity easier as it’s a ready-made publicity package about who you are and what you do that you can publish online for anyone to use and you can also send it out to journalists and influencers when you contact them.
The absolute essentials of a media kit include:
- An explanation of the unique benefits you offer
- Links to your website and all your social media profiles
- A bio of you and any important people in your business with headshots
- Branded visuals such as your logo, awards and certificates
- Images of your facilities or products, the latest news about your business and press clippings
- Contact information
3. Build yourself a list of journalists and influencers in your market
If you want good publicity, it’s important to think about who’s going to write about you. So you need to build a great list of those specific journalists and influencers in your field who have a large and receptive audience who they can contact for press coverage. Which means you have to give them your inviting messages in the form of interesting news, an important announcement, an attention-grabbing upcoming event and stories about your products and services and the people involved in your business.
Your list of journalists and influencers should include not only writers for print publications offline, but also those online such as on popular websites, bloggers, YouTubers, and on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. You should also print copies to give out when you meet people offline such as when you’re at networking events.
It’s also a good idea to think beyond text-based publications and take advantage of other forms of media by getting interviewed on radio and especially podcasts which are becoming extremely popular and offer a great way to get yourself and your topic more widely known and build potential relationships.
Which means creating ideas about how your business is growing and developing, upcoming product launches and other engaging stories you can share for publicity. And don’t forget to end your article with an introduction to you and your offers.
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