6 Ways To Help Your PR Company Get You Results

The Public Relations Society of America defines PR as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” In other words, PR is marketing that builds credibility.
There are a lot of ways to get free PR for your startup, but publicists have spent years building up media contacts and pitching skills that you cannot replicate on your own. For Startups, especially ones trying to raise money, the value of good PR cannot be underestimated. Even if your budget is tight, hiring a good firm (for at least six months) can be the difference between barely scraping by and hitting it big.
But PR is a bit like cooking – even the best chef can only do so much with bad ingredients. If you want your PR firm to succeed, you need to help them.

Paula Conway is president of Astonish Media Group, a PR firm based in New York City. Astonish works with big companies (e.g. American Airlines) and startups (e.g. FITWEEK) alike, and has gotten impressive PR results for both. Here are her top tips for helping you get the results you are paying for.
1. Share News Early
Tell your PR firm of any branding changes, news, partnerships, or announcements ahead of time. Don’t just spring news on them a week or two before something is about to happen and then expect them to get you in the New York Times. Lead-time is critical with media, so give your firm the time they need to craft the messaging and broadcast that messaging. Remember that print publications often work six months out.
2. Consult With Your Firm On Branding Decisions
Get your firm’s input on any major changes to the company’s name, branding or market positioning. “We had a client who decided after we had landed him quite a bit of press to up and change the name of his company, and introduce the new brand. It confused the media and ultimately, because they became suspicious of the sudden branding shift, he lost some high profile press opportunities.”

3. Make Time To Talk
Make your team members available for regular check ins and for media inquiries. If the CEO is going to be the spokesperson, he or she needs to be available to the media within a reasonable timeframe (24-48 hours). If the CEO is just too busy, find someone within the company who will make a great spokesperson who has the time to cultivate the media relationships. These relationships are critical to your company’s future and brand trust with the press. PR is not something you can just hand off. It takes work and time to be successful.

Paula Conway, President of Astonish Media

4. Be Patient
Don’t put unreasonable demands on your PR firm. Expecting them to pick up the phone and have you in the Wall Street Journal within a week because you have a great story is not reasonable. Even if your PR firm as the best contacts, they need to reach out to their contacts with a measured approach to ensure that the message is well communicated and that your brand is presented in the best possible light. You also need to allow time for your company to gain trust with the media and this simply does not happen overnight. Paula recommends you contract a firm for a minimum of six months, and ideally a year, to start seeing results.
5. Listen.
Take your PR firm’s counsel. Remember, good press is IRREPLACEABLE and is the most valuable objective advertising your company or brand can ever receive. The good will it will buy you will live on beyond the moment of sales and pay you back in many different ways. Trust your firm to know when it is the right or wrong time to strike out with a message or new product launch.

6. Be Creative.

Give your firm good stories. If your company is doing interesting things, share that with your PR firm. Have more conference calls, or invite them in to meet with your staff and learn more about the creative things your company has to offer. Good stories and interesting angles are what get an editor’s attention. You cannot pitch the same thing over and over again, your PR firm needs you to help them think outside the box to help get you more placements.
As Theresa Roemer (an expert in business philanthropy who is one of Astonish’s clients) summarized, “Having been through multiple PR firms and having made many mistakes along the way, I learned that you, the client, are as much responsible for the PR as the publicist. You need to communicate your goals, share information, and make yourself and your team members available. Otherwise, you’re spending money in a vacuum. If you do not work alongside your PR firm and lay out your objectives and expectations, you cannot expect them to be met.”

5 DIY Public Relations Tips for Startups

Developing and executing a PR strategy as a startup takes time and effort, but the increased awareness and sales are worth it. Credit: Public relations image via Shutterstock View full size image

Marketing is a crucial element for any startup's success. If people don't know about your product or service, how are they going to buy it? As obvious as this may sound, many entrepreneurs put their marketing and public relations efforts on the backburner because they can't afford professional services, and it simply becomes another item on a never-ending to-do list.
If you have this mindset about marketing and aren't making it a priority, you may be missing out on valuable leads. Developing and executing your own PR strategy as a startup does take time and effort, but the increased customer awareness — and consequently, sales — is well worth it.
Lisa Carole, co-founder of fashion retail company Hoodsie, took the "do-it-yourself" approach to publicizing her recently funded Kickstarter campaign. Though she had a lot to learn about writing releases, pitching reporters and designing media kits, she now feels confident that Hoodsie can manage its PR as it gets off the ground. [How to Write a Great Press Release]

 

"Being able to do your own PR is liberating in the sense that you don't need to rely on anyone," Carole told BusinessNewsDaily. "You are your business' best advocate."
Carole offered the following tips for startups that are handling their own public relations.
Make yourself relevant.Take the time to develop relationships with relevant media contacts. They're not there to serve you — a journalist's job is to report the news, so make yourself newsworthy. Carole found that for Hoodsie, targeted outreach from the founders was the best approach to reaching journalists. Rather than trying to force their story on the media, the team worked to find angles that would be relevant to the publications they were pitching.
What's your story? Spend some time thinking about what makes your company and product interesting. How can you tie these points of interest into a memorable and positive representation of your company, product and brand?
Make your own lists.There are lots of shortcuts to the list-building process, but Carole recommended taking the time to create a comprehensive list of publications that would suit your company's angle. From there, go through each publication's website by searching relevant terms to find the correct writer to contact.
Newswire services are worth it. If your budget allows for it, sign up for a press release distribution service to increase your media reach. Many sites have services tailored for small businesses that are writing and sending their own press releases.
"We used a newswire service halfway through our campaign that really boosted our web presence and got quite a bit of unsolicited coverage," Carole said. "Had we known this would be the result, we would have scheduled one for our initial launch."
Utilize the cloud. Use cloud storage services like Dropbox to host PDFs of your media kit, press releases and a few high-resolution images, and include the link to the files in your pitch emails. It's a great way to share your materials without having to add any large attachments.
Originally published on BusinessNewsDaily.

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Content Marketing 101: An Introduction to the Newest Marketing Tool for Businesses

The traditional marketing methods that businesses have used in the past are becoming outdated and uninteresting to consumers, leading to low conversion rates, decreased website traffic and lower ROI (on a company's marketing spend). Today, many companies are choosing to implement new and creative marketing strategies with the end goal of establishing their company and key executives as experts in their industry. Not only does this increase a company's overall credibility, it also helps to shorten the sales cycle drastically. The most effective thought leadership campaigns use content marketing to educate readers (potential clients, media, industry experts, etc.) about a company's area of expertise.
So how can you get started with your content marketing strategy? First, it's important to know the basics...
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a targeted marketing strategy that involves creating insightful, engaging and interesting written content with the aim of creating customer loyalty and increasing opportunities for future business. An effective content marketing strategy will help a business engage with its customers, leaving them better informed and interested to find out more.
Content marketing can include a variety of tactics including:

• Thought leadership articles published in high-profile publications


• Blogging


• e-Books


• Webinars


• Among many others...

Content marketing is not a direct sales tactic, but rather a two-way communication medium between a business and its target audience. Like public relations and social media, content marketing is not directly designed to sell a product/service; however, it can have significant effect on brand awareness and can be highly effective at positioning a company as an expert in their field. As I'm sure you know, these activities cannot be directly linked to an increase in sales, but they can significantly decrease the length of the sales cycle, making it a highly effective marketing medium -- especially for start-ups and companies working in a highly competitive market with high supply. By improving the public's understanding of who a company is and the product/service it offers, content marketing is a fantastic way to increase a company's credibility and brand recognition without the significant costs associated with more traditional marketing methods.
In order to get the highest ROI from your content marketing strategy, it is very important to follow these four tips:
Embrace the Blog
Hosting a blog and sharing content on your website not only allows your customer to understand your position as a thought leader, but it is also the easiest and most effective method of driving traffic to your site and increasing your SEO ranking. Every time a new blog post is added to your blog, the search engines scan your site, which immediately leads to a boost in your search ranking.
Create a weekly blogging schedule and post on the same days every week, so your followers will know when to visit your blog to read your new posts. Businesses should be publishing a new blog post with original content at least twice a week. At least another two times per week, you should be sharing content from other sources (news articles, other companies, studies, stats, etc. with links back to the original source) through your blog. For even greater consistency and brand recognition, you should cross-promote your blog through your company's social media channels.
Promote Through Social Media
Social media is one of the best ways to post and share your content but because many companies are only now beginning to integrate it into their strategy, it can go a long way to establish your company as innovative. Before getting started, it is important to understand the role of social media and the benefit it offers for businesses: social media is one of the best marketing mediums for developing relationships with (and loyalty from) potential customers, but in most cases, it is not a direct sales tactic.
Implementing a social media posting schedule will help your business maintain its competitive edge, and ensure that you can offer interesting, unique content on a regular basis. The more views your post receives, the more it will be shared, commented on and enjoyed by both new and existing customers -- and the greater ROI that your social media outreach will earn. Because of this fact, scheduling your posts to ensure the greatest exposure to your followers can make or break the success of your social media strategy. Scheduling tools like Oktopost will enable businesses to share content at the time of day that it will make the biggest impact.
As well as publishing your own content on a consistent, ongoing basis, businesses should be engaging with customer's posts to ensure continued customer satisfaction. For example, if a hotel guest tweets a picture of the fantastic view of the beach from her hotel room, the hotel should acknowledge the post offering a friendly greeting or 'thank you' for the post. Consider also retweeting (sharing the image with your followers) and then recognizing the customer on #FF (follow Friday), as one of your property's amazing guests. This will make the guest feel special and she will remember the hotel for its fantastic beachside view, as well as its friendly staff.
Drop the Sales Pitch
Effective content marketing minimizes the need for a sales pitch. In fact, if a company does choose to promote their company within their content, its content marketing strategy will not be effective. Most consumers are highly distrustful of advertising messages and so the moment your content becomes promotional, readers are likely to lose interest. Customers visit websites and social media channels to learn insightful information about a business' area of expertise, not to experience a hard sell (or even a soft one!). Instead, provide customers with the information they are looking to find in a creative and informative way.
For example, a hotel can use content marketing to increase repeat site visits from potential customers, increasing brand recognition, brand loyalty and increasing direct bookings in the process. In order to do so, the hotel would need to make their website (and blog) a destination for consumers to find out valuable travel tips (including topics like: how to save on your upcoming hotel stay, etc.). Because readers keep coming back to the site to learn from your content, they will be more likely to remember your hotel and visit your direct website (instead of the OTAs) when they are booking their next hotel stay in that destination.
By providing info instead of just using your content to sell, you are giving the customer time to develop trust for your company, before receiving your sales messages. If your content continues to be engaging, informative and creative enough, the customer will remember your company and come back to make a purchase when they are ready to do so.
Add Videos
Videos are very popular content with followers because most people connect more strongly to visuals than copy; however, many companies are hesitant to use video content because of their perception of it as expensive and time-consuming to create. In reality, videos can be much easier to produce than you might think. With a well-planned script, a professional setting and proper lighting, you can use free video apps (i.e. Vine and Instagram) to create mini-looping videos that can be shared on all of your social media profiles quickly and easily.
Additionally, creating a longer video for your homepage or for YouTube will not only position your company as a creative thought leader, but can also offer very beneficial marketing exposure. For example, multimedia content often appears on the first page of Google search results, which helps to make your business more visible (without having to invest in expensive SEO or Google AdWords campaigns). Even if your videos are not visible on the first page of search results, consumers will often use YouTube to conduct a search. In fact, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world.
To conclude, as it becomes harder for companies to stand out from the crowd in a highly competitive market, a content marketing strategy becomes increasingly important. Content marketing is a low-cost, highly effective way for companies to establish a position of thought leadership and develop relationships with potential customers using top-notch content.
If you have any further questions about content marketing or if you would like help planning and creating your business' content marketing strategy, please don't hesitate to contact me at any time at jenn@jlnpr.com.