If you are someone who likes to crunch numbers, or you have someone like that looking over your shoulder (and who doesn't), then you'd like to hear how Public Relations (PR) can extend your current investment in your marketing efforts. When you are already building marketing campaigns, PR can enhance your awareness for a fraction of the total marketing cost. Even if you don’t have an active marketing campaign, public relations can generate awareness for your company just by doing what some see as "business as usual."
While PR has the ability to focus on a hyperlocal level, it also can generate positive national awareness better and more cost effectively than any other marketing method. Companies are always launching and upgrading products, adding new services, speaking at and/or attending tradeshows, hiring new talent, etc. Each of these activities trigger the opportunity to generate more awareness for your company through PR.
Here are some initiatives where you should consider adding PR to the mix and why. While this is not an exhaustive list, it should help get your mind churning about increasing your marketing mileage.
Tradeshows – If your company is attending a tradeshow, don’t stop at creating brochures and a booth. PR can help if you: 1) get a speaker on stage so you can drive traffic back to your booth, and 2) create a press release that gains the attention of both media attending the event and national media not present. This will increase the effectiveness of your tradeshow investment by drawing more traffic (and likely, more qualified traffic) to your booth at the event and prolonging your tradeshow investment by obtaining media coverage that you can continue to leverage after the event. At Mercury Labs, we also implement a customer champion program that makes your customers a focal point in your marketing efforts, and events/trade shows act as a great launchpad to get customers involved as your champions.
New Products – Companies continually come out with new products for a number of reasons. Sometimes a product has gone through a significant upgrade to better serve the customer. Other times, an additional need in the marketplace has been discovered and a product is created from scratch to serve this need.
Each time a new product is created or a change is made, it provides an opportunity to reach out to media to gain attention for your company. This does not just mean that your company and possibly your face will appear in the local paper (though that can be beneficial as well), it means your announcement will appear in industry publications, blogs and other places where current and potential customers are already looking for information. Increasing SEO for your product terms by propagating it through massive media coverage is another benefit of product-related PR.
New Hires – Hiring employees, or even a promotion, is a great opportunity for media coverage. Some companies grow so quickly they can’t find enough qualified applicants. A media story can drive a flood of qualified potential job seekers to your doorstep. At an executive level, it will communicate to your customers the current status of your company. It can also serve as an endorsement of confidence for your potential customers.
New Customers – If you are in the services industry, landing a new customer can mean big bucks for you. Why stop at what the customer is giving you directly? Announce that customer win so that other companies in their industry with the same issues can see your solution.
Events – Are you having an event of your own? There is a lot of work that goes into planning and promoting your own event. With the time and money you are spending to do this, you are missing a great opportunity if you don’t have a media oureach plan to get reporters and cameras on the scene.
In today’s world, everyone is constantly bombarded with marketing campaigns. More than ever, consumers of both B2B and B2C companies need a trusted impartial endorsement to build confidence in your company, and that can come from a media publication, a blogger or a customer. So the next time your company creates a marketing campaign, make sure that public relations has an early seat at the planning table.
You are reading Atomic80, the nickname for the element Mercury and the blog for Mercury Labs, a company focused on the science of cinema and communications. Contact us to learn more about how Mercury Labs can help transform your raw ideas into compelling video and/or PR programs.