I write a lot about the value of publicity. I know how well it works because I see the success our PR clients have every day. I also take my own medicine and I’d like to share some recent results with you.
As a business hobby, I’ve started a website for artists: Post and Paint. I know publicity is the most cost-effective way to promote something so that’s how I intend to promote the site.
Last month I did my first media interviews. One was with a local radio station and the other was with a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The first red line in the Google Analytics graph below shows the spike in site traffic from the radio show. The second red line is when the story ran the first time on the front page in the small local Dakota county section of the Star Tribune. The third line is when the story ran again a few days later on the back page in the broader Southwest Metro section. Collectively the two stories reached only a fraction of the paper’s full circulation.
I have a couple more local media stories lined up to run in the next few weeks and I’m sure they will produce similar traffic spikes.
I intend to do hundreds of media interviews over the next couple years. It’s a handy little benefit to employ a dozen full-time publicists, and you can imagine the exposure and traction my site will gain as stories start popping up all across the country.
It would be nice if our clients would let us share their Google Analytics reports but that’s not going to happen. Actually, I wouldn’t even publish mine if the site wasn’t something of a hobby or was further along. No point in handing out confidential information to competitors.
The publicity promotional mix channel should always be maximized. If you’re launching a new product, it’s the least expensive way to spread the word. If you have a product in the mature stage of the product lifecycle, publicity is often an overlooked goldmine.
If you feel like your products aren’t getting their fair share of media attention, give us a call and we’ll change that. We have been in business over twenty years and have arranged tens of thousands of media interviews for our clients. We charge per story we arrange so we have a pretty scrappy culture that causes us to work harder than your local PR firm.
