You don’t have to be a big business to win big media coverage
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If you open the pages of a newspaper on any given day, log onto the internet and browse your favourite news sites or listen to interviews on the radio, you would be forgiven for making the assumption that the experts they cite are likely to be from large sized businesses and probably leaders within their marketplace.
But it would be the wrong assumption to make. You don’t have to be a big company with a big brand and a big name to win big media coverage for your business.
Businesses, brands, with fewer than 50 employees can generate significant media interest for their organisations. In fact, more often than not, it is the small player who garners the greatest media interest. It’s all about understanding how to tell a story in the right way to the right people at the right time.
Example 1:
At the beginning of February news broke that self-employed workers may have to pay more tax if new proposals are to be accepted and rolled out.
An accountancy client of ours felt strongly about this and we were able to take her informed opinion and craft it in a way that the media would like to receive it.
The result was the client, who has less than 30 employees, was widely quoted with the national press, including The Express, This is Money, MSN Money, and The Independent. This gave the client an audience reach in excess of 400 million people both in print and online.
Example 2:
Another client, this time employing around 10 people, is a recruitment company based in the South West. There have been any number of challenges and pain points being felt by employees over the last 12 months, and this client had some thoughts to help people make better informed career decisions.
From talking about how to get a pay rise in the middle of a crisis, to sharing advice and lessons learned from leading businesses and teams, this client was able to get extensive media coverage again across national, regional, online and specialist industry publications.
They did so because they demonstrated that they understand those challenges and pain points that their target audience is experiencing.
But why would journalists within the media be interested in hearing from these types of businesses at all? After all, they are not the biggest players in their space. Nor do they have the largest revenues and a greater slice of the market-share pie.
The answer is simple. It’s because the content being created and communicated to the journalists is focused on educating, informing, and supporting the reader who will be consuming it.
Too many businesses and brands fall into the trap of attempting to sell themselves to journalists and editors with statwements that include things such as “We’re the leading… Our revolutionary… With unparalleled… We’re truly innovative…”This is an obvious mistake and is met with a short, sharp, bugger off and never darken my door again.
So, if you really get your marketplace and customers consider the challenges they are facing. Identify how what you do and say could potentially help and add value to them in some way.
But also consider the interests of the journalists themselves. They’re rightly very picky over which businesses and brands to include in their stories because it will reflect – positively or negatively – on them. The better the opinion and advice put forward, the greater your chance of having your voice covered in the media that your customers consume.
Size really isn’t everything. Compelling storytelling very much is.
Need a steer on telling your story? Feel free to email me directly (paul@clearlypr.co.uk) and I’ll be happy to talk through the ‘how’ with you.
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