It’s always good when you can help a client to gain media coverage that makes a dramatic difference to their number of inquiries and sales.  It’s also nice when you generate some great PR coverage for them.  In our case Metisee Motorbikes have achieved both with significant stories about the company on BBC Radio & TV, The Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday, Top Gear Magazine and most recently the cover of the current edition of Classic Bike Guide.

We only do 1 day a month for them, but over a 5 day period we have generated media coverage worth over £150,000 for them.  Importantly, this has translated into real sales for the company.  We were helped by it being a very media friendly product, but have helped them achive some significant and worthwhile coverage.

Thanks to all the people who were able to attend the lunchtime seminar I spoke at today at The Angel Hotel in Market Harborough.  It was organised to promote a local networking group and about 10 people from the group were present including Mark Spikings from www.stillmagic.co.uk who took some great pictures of the event.

I covered the 9 level for marketing Success and the topic seemed to go down well and provoked some interesting debates.  It’s pretty clear to me that whilst the ecconomy is not looking too rosy (!) small business owners are fairly confident that they have a lot of control over how well their businesses will do over the coming months.

I have decided that my next seminar is going to be on the subject of marketing during difficult times and will follow the theme of my new tips booklet ’12 proven marketing idea to help your business weather the ecconomic storm’ See www.themarketingmentor.co.uk to claim a free tips booklet on this subject.

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By having articles published in trade magazines, being regularly quoted in articles or interviewed on radio, you can be quickly seen as a leading figure in your area or industry. This is almost impossible to achieve in any way other than by spending time on PR. Handled correctly you can quickly become an ‘expert’ in your own specialist area.

Be remembered for the right reasons

By planning a careful PR campaign, you can make sure that your company is seen to be innovative, thoughtful, caring or whatever else you want it to be. This long term, big picture PR must be based on truth otherwise it will almost certainly backfire, so be careful what claims you make for your business.

Make people ‘seek you out’ rather than feel sold to

In an age when we feel sold to all the time, people like to receive expert opinion. If you are some kind of expert in your specialist area, you can make regular and legitimate comments on ongoing issues. Contributing articles, creating surveys or even producing your own tips booklets or CDs all help to position you as a go-to expert within your field.

Any company can use PR, but realistically, some companies are more likely to gain regular, positive PR than other companies at any given time. However, by keeping an eye on industry news, local news or by looking at the best way to develop products or position your business, it is always possible to have some form of ongoing media coverage.

Deal with the facts- don’t be tempted to embellish a release with fancy language and irrelevant information. It can be particularly difficult to resist this temptation when writing a release that really doesn’t have much content to it. However, bear in mind that you need a good, strong story, so if it can be covered in two coherent paragraphs, don’t be tempted to add a third- an experienced news editor can spot waffle a mile away.

Spend plenty of time crafting the first 10 words of your release- they must make an impact straight away. Because editors receive so many releases, it is essential that your first sentence grabs their attention. Spending half your time writing the first sentence and headline is a worthwhile investment of your time. Try to think about what is interesting about your story – why would people in the local area / trade etc want to read about it? Try asking the question ‘which means that…’ once you have made a statement to see if any greater truth can be told about what your company or organisation has done.

Consider first paragraph of the release very carefully: it should tell your audience what the key information is and why they should be interested in reading it- in other words, it should summarise what the rest of the release is about. Once you have written the whole release, you may be in a better position to redraft your first paragraph to ensure that it is as effective as possible.

With a news release, your headline is vital as this is what first catches an editor’s attention – I recommend writing this last of all. The headline should be a précis of the whole story, and it is only once the whole release is written that you are in a position to summarise it with pinpoint accuracy.

Bear in mind your audience. Think about their perspective and present the facts in a way that is interesting to them: the readers of ‘Pig Farmers Gazette’ will be interested in different items to readers of ‘Watercolours Weekly’. If you are writing for a trade publication, you may want to go into more technical detail and use specialised vocabulary, but this should be avoided in most cases when dealing with the mass media.

Structuring the press release.

A press release should follow certain conventions.

Whenever possible, confine your release to one sheet of A4- there may be exceptions to this, but as a rule of thumb, releases contained on one page are far more likely to be read. Keep the emotive language to a minimum – you are recounting the facts and should therefore aim for an impersonal written style, avoiding adjectives as much as possible. Remember, you are not writing an advert- your release should be written in an objective, unsensational style.