11. Public Relations / Media Relations

Public Relations is, in my opinion, a vastly underrated and under used weapon in the marketing armoury - particularly so because of its potentially low-cost. With advertising, for every £10,000 spent you will be able to acquire £10,000 worth of advertising space -- whether it be on TV, on radio, or in a magazine. The beauty of a Public Relations campaign is that £10,000 of spend can generate £100,000 or more of communication space if you know what you're doing.

There is a range of activities which can be included under the "public relations" banner and might involve liaison with a whole raft of organisations such as opinion formers, trade associations, influencers and of course journalists. As mentioned earlier however (literature) the argument needs to be pitched quite differently at all these various groups. By composing copy aimed at these different groups and incorporating it into press releases etc. a very efficient and productive communication programme can be implemented for relatively little budget. Once again the key is the ability to understand what information these different readers would find interesting and want to read.

Let's assume you have a locally based or regionally based business, and your customers are therefore local consumers. Your local newspaper is constantly looking for stories to publish and most businesses (even yours) will have events every now and again that are worthy of coverage in the local press. A simple press release can be put together and, provided it is pitched appropriately, stands every chance of being picked up by the local journalist. The same situation exists if you are operating in the business to business environment. These local newspapers still carry business sections of some description and hence would be interested in local business stories.

If this strategy is successfully followed, over a period of time opportunities invariably present themselves which really can provide your company with openings to communicate what would not be available to any of your competitors.

The Trade Press

Do you liaise regularly with your various trade publications, either in person or in writing? It has never ceased to amaze me how often I acquire novel and inexpensive marketing ideas over a cup of coffee with an editor or journalists from one of these publications. Why not let us visit some of your trade journalists and open up these communication channels? Another by-product of this approach is that very often they will then come to your company and ask your advice and views when they next come to write an article on your industry/market sector. There is no reason why members of your own management team cannot takeover from these activities once I have been able to set up the core system. Hence my comments at the beginning of this page about the cost effectiveness of the PR weapon.

10 tips for an effective Press Release