Nothing outsells a good news story about your product, and dollar for dollar no promotional channel can outsell publicity. To make media coverage successful as a marketing channel, though, you need to arrange a myriad of news stories, not just one or two. Some businesses sit on the sidelines and hope that maybe some “free publicity” will come their way. Others make the mistake of hiring traditional PR firms, only to watch their money evaporate on billable hours without getting much coverage. The smart ones hire us: a company filled with aggressive and experienced publicists who specialize in product news coverage and charge per story. Some of our clients can’t spend their marketing dollars fast enough with us, giving us marching orders to get their product as much media coverage as possible, year after year.
You’re probably wondering how we can make the claim that our publicists are harder-working and more masterful than other PR firms’ publicists. The reason is that charging per placement, not by the hour, makes our culture different. We’re scrappy because the more times we get your product in the news the more money we make. Compare that to your traditional PR firm’s hourly retainer.
If you’re new to publicity, it’s important to grasp that you need to judge the efficacy of this promotional channel as a whole, not one story at a time. A single news story may not send sales through the roof (even though this happens for some of our clients) or it may not be worded as perfectly as an ad, but as a whole, publicity can have an incredible impact on your gross sales. Don’t nitpick individual placements. Evaluate your publicity channel efforts cumulatively.
Take a moment and imagine the impact that news stories featuring your product, popping up all over the country, could have on your 2011 sales. Give us a try on a project—call us to find out just how inexpensive it is to get your product in the news.
The media has an insatiable appetite for new information, and every single day reporters and producers are scrambling to find interesting topics they can report on. Does your product solve a problem or fill a need that their audiences should know about? If so, story opportunities will be missed this week that could have included your product. The longer you wait, the more opportunities like these slip by. And that’s a shame.
