How to make yourself or your business famous, without marrying a Kardashian/Jenner
PR Programs Can HelpAlice Donovan Rouse
“If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.”
- Bill Gates . . . maybe.
This quote is often attributed to Bill, but despite some time blown on research and a few shots at reaching the Gates Foundation media department, I couldn’t find any proof he actually said this. The line is plastered on the walls of P.R. firms and web message boards everywhere, so apparently, the industry did its job getting the word out. Perhaps a more apt quote is one penned by George Orwell, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
I’m a big fan of P.R., but I also know what it’s not, and why many people today don’t have a clear picture of why it’s worth the money or time, what to do or how to measure the value. I’ll cover some of that, along with a few tips, tricks and tools here. For the purpose of this article, we’ll stick to how you can get your stories published in major and niche online media. Print and broadcast follow many of the same rules, but sometimes take a slightly different approach due to timing, geography and creative requirements. I’ll also cover marketing through influencers, speaking opportunities, other digital channels and reputation management in later articles.
The Price and Value of Public Relations
Business owners spend billions every year hiring firms so they can be like Bill, but one can build an effective P.R. program for a relatively small investment. That’s not to say you may not need a good PR firm to help, but by educating yourself you also need not overspend and be underwhelmed by many firms that try to charge expensive full-year retainers and in return, give you a junior rep with limited capabilities or experience. It happens all the time, with monthly prices that generally range from $3,500 to $35,000. Instead, consider building your own program or hiring a firm that won’t lock you in for as long a period and takes responsibility to prove its worth with short term or month to month contracts. Warning: Despite the following tips, do-it-yourself P.R. can still take a decent investment of time and/or money and aggravation to get the formula down.
The great thing about good media coverage (the focus today) is that it’s a triple threat, with multiple benefits for the price of one. Aside from supporting sales, investment opportunities and overall brand awareness, well-placed articles on your company or executives can be a foundational element of your digital marketing program. They can drive search engine optimization with backlinks to media websites with high visitation, which helps your website to be found more easily online, and be shared as part of paid social media campaigns. It can also enhance you and your business’ reputation and increase your stature as a thought leader. Potential investors can see your status increase online or coverage on your business and may be more willing to throw a few dollars your way. And of course, in today’s business environment, more and more sales are driven by online awareness and reputation. If you have an app, it may even give Apple or Google more reason to highlight it in their respective stores and reviews.
That said, it’s important to understand going in that getting coverage by even the most sought after names in media won’t guarantee a massive, viral tipping point of sales that will ensure to help you replace dollar-store champagne with Dom Perignon. In most cases, you’ll get an uptick in visitors for a bit and place the media articles and logos on your website, push them out on social media, and you can add them to collateral and pitch decks for credibility purposes. A comprehensive marketing and sales program takes multiple tactics and ongoing campaigns working in concert to at least keep your glass (and bank account) half full.
How to Get Coverage
So you’re thinking, “Great! All I have to do is write something for Forbes and I’m set!
Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you; it’s not always that easy. The gatekeepers of the best sites are bombarded every day with hundreds of pitches for stories, often by influential PR firms on behalf of clients who have long-standing relationships and know the game very well. These editors don’t have the time or inclination to weed through 1000-word ego-boosting rants about how you’re a disruptor creating a new paradigm. They also won’t necessarily hand you the keys to the kingdom and let you submit thought leadership pieces for them directly without knowing whom to reach and having a great pre-written example piece or two in your back pocket and ready to share. If you’re emailing an editor directly, make that pitch in the subject line in as few words as possible. Add a paragraph in the body of the message to flesh it out if necessary, but no more. If you’re cold calling a contact, you’ve got 15-30 seconds to make that impression, so plan your elevator speech out before you get on your Bluetooth headset.
First you need to be able to find the right journalists who might be interested in your story, and then you need to grab these people’s attention as quickly as possible. One of the biggest pet peeves of journalists is people who pitch them stories that have nothing to do with the set area they are supposed to cover. The old-fashioned email “spray and pray” is not a great approach to building lasting media relationships. Make sure you understand their beat. You can sometimes find journalists’ contact info online or reach them through twitter or other social media, where you can also read what they like to cover, or you can pony up for more expensive professional tools like Cision or Meltwater, which also have monitoring capabilities to help provide measurement of audience reach and engagement, and sometimes others like social listening to use keyword searches to see which journalists are interested in topics relevant to your business.
You can also put out press releases through a wire service, though unless you’re putting out an incredibly significant story and with a brand or celebrity that everyone will drop everything to read about, this will rarely move the needle significantly. What wire services will do is ensure that the story gets posted in at least one place in the wording you want, without the bias or view of the editors you’re otherwise pitching. Probably the most well-known tools are PR Newswire and Businesswire, but they aren’t cheap and can cost often between $750 and $3500/story.
There are some less expensive options that will help you to get the story posted and sometimes guarantee some re-posts via syndication, which can at least help you to add not only the story in your words, but some notable press logos to your site and materials. I find the results on many of these are limited, but are great for specific situations. As always, I’m happy to share feedback or hear suggestions on tools or processes, so feel free to reach out or post a question and I’ll do my best to answer.
Content is Key
These editors are not looking for your hot take on the latest story of the day; they want something new and exclusive. Give them something that their readers will click on, not just a press release touting your latest upgrade to the Widget of the Future (trademark pending). If you’re not a great writer, go find one on LinkedIn Upwork, Scripted or one of the million other freelancer sites for roughly $50 - $300/press release or article. Personal stories are always a good angle, but they should be written so that the reader will get something out of it besides how great a person you are. If you have a good product or service but it’s not necessarily new or highly differentiated in your market, think about coming up with creative announcements about affiliations, partnerships, events or special versions of what you offer that will separate you from the pack and get attention of the media.
For example, most bars may offer a Martini, but not all of them offer a $1,000 Dean Martin martini that comes with an autographed napkin from his lounge lizard days. The signed napkin may cost you $500 on eBay. The ability to get press to visit, try the martini, pocket the signed napkin, then post an article about not only this, but how great the rest of your place is should be worth much more than the investment. Important note: definitely not suggesting you try to bribe the media here, though if it’s a genuine product/service you’re offering for a select time and others can buy it, it’s within some limits. Some may take you up on it, others will get fired for it and will be turned off that you brought it up so tread lightly as they may be focused on a career of integrity OR politics. This was just an example of taking something ordinary and creating something press-worthy without too much effort. By the way, if anyone takes that idea, I will take you up on the Martini J.
Not sounding so easy anymore? Fear not. I can tell you from experience that if you are committed to making a pitch to multiple publications with some regularity, your chances of getting something accepted increase dramatically in a relatively short time as your name becomes familiar to those gatekeepers even as they reject your first few attempts. Just try to be professional yet personal, and very, very targeted so that you’re not wasting their time or yours. If you have questions about tools or processes, feel free to reach out and I’ll do my best to help.
And finally, if you don’t have time to do all of this yourself, you can hire an agency or freelancer to help you with the details, just keep pitching those stories. Like anything else in business, perseverance is the key. So keep trying!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/benbloch/2018/08/09/how-to-make-yourself-or-your-business-famous-without-marrying-a-kardashianjenner/
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