Publicity is the promotional channel that’s hidden in plain view. Everyone knows how valuable a story about your company or product can be, but almost no one uses it. Test your publicity channel prowess by ranking each answer to the following questions on a scale of 1-10:
1. Assume there are five potential media stories available per year, per market. Multiply the number of markets you sell into by five and write the total here: ____________. Now write the number of media stories that ran about your company and its products over the last 12 months here: _______________. How did your company do on securing available publicity?
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2. Of the publicity you received, did the stories include your top three key-selling messages?
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3. Of the publicity you received, did the stories include a good mix of other key-selling information such as photos, phone number, web address, links, etc.?
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4. Publicity is a premium source for social media content. In the weeks following each story you can do multiple posts on websites and social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. 5-10 posts related to each story is a good average to use. How well have you done extending the life of each publicity story through social media?
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Most people not only score low on securing the amount of publicity available to them, they also score low on the selling elements within the media coverage they received and extending the life of publicity through social media. If you scored low, don’t worry. It represents an untapped promotional channel that can produce amazing results. In fact, because the public has developed resistance and mistrust of advertising and salespeople, publicity can be an even more effective promotional channel.
To get a better understanding of what a dynamic promotional channel publicity can be and how you could use it to promote your company and products, check out the stories we have written about how our clients are using publicity on the rest of our blog.
