How to Build a PR Strategy for Your Business
A Comprehensive Guide to Building a PR Strategy for your Business
In this article, we are going to share our framework for building a PR strategy for your business.
One of the most important things to do when you're building your business is to build a strategy for how you're going to get PR.
Public relations is one of the best ways to grow your business, as it can help expose your brand and increase awareness about what you have to offer.
Building a PR strategy doesn't have to be complicated or difficult, and by following these simple steps you can create a strategy that works for your business.
First, start by researching PR companies in your area or online
There are many different options for finding the right company to help you with your PR needs, so take some time to do some research and find the one that is best suited to your business and budget.
Once you've found a company to work with, it's time to start building your PR strategy.
This will include things like creating press releases, determining the right times to pitch stories and media outlets, developing relationships with journalists and other influencers in your industry, and more.
It's important that you understand all of the different pieces that go into a successful PR strategy, as this can help you get the results you're looking for.
One of the key things to keep in mind when building your PR strategy is that it's not something that happens overnight.
You will need to work consistently and stay on top of pitching stories and developing relationships with influencers and journalists in your industry.
By dedicating attention to the crucial elements of public relations, you're on your way to developing a robust and impactful PR strategy that can elevate your business.
Should you need assistance in crafting a PR strategy tailored to your business, reach out to us.
As a startup branding agency with a focus on public relations, we excel in guiding businesses to success through effective PR. We're ready to work with you to devise a strategy that fits your business perfectly.
Let's start the conversation!
Meghan Conyers and Quincy Samycia, founders of The Branded Agency know how to get your business press and how to get in the news.
Through their effective marketing strategies and expertise in public relations, they’ve generated millions of dollars of free press for themselves and their clients.
Their previous business (Strongbody Apparel) generated massive amounts of news and press through several PR campaigns.
Meghan, Quincy and their previous business Strongbody Apparel have been featured in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, Dragon’s Den, CTV, CBC, The Daily Mail, Cool Hunting, Cool Material, Uncrate, Real Men Real Style and much more.
You can also check out the links below, to the various media and news outlets that Meghan, Quincy and Strongbody Apparel have been featured in.
CTV News “Fishy secret weapon: Putting anti-stink activewear to the test”
CBC News Dragons Den “Strongbody Apparel”
Vancouver is awesome “This luxury Vancouver activewear brand is giving away 1,000 free pairs of leggings”
BC Business Magazine “Inventory: Athleisure is here to stay”
Vancouver Courier “This activewear brand is giving away free men’s workout tees”
Montecristo “Strongbody Apparel Gastown Jacket”
Notable “STRONGBODY APPAREL OFFERS A NEW TAKE ON ACTIVEWEAR”
International News Papers, Magazines and Television
Getting Featured in Bloomberg “Gym Clothes That Don't Stink, Thanks to Shrimp Shells”
Getting Featured in Real Men Real Style “Does Clothing Affect Your Workout? | 5 Ways Gym Clothes Improve Performance”
Getting Featured in Men’s Journal “13 Top Training T-shirts to Help You Dominate Any Workout”
Getting Featured in LA Fashion Magazine “Learn Why this Brand is Using Crab and Shrimp Shells to Make Odor Fighting Athletic Clothing.”
Getting Featured in Gadget Review “Strongbody Apparel Activewear: Where Tech Meets Clothing”
Getting Featured in Uncrate “GARB: Strongbody”
Getting Featured in Gear Patrol “How to Nail Your Workout Wardrobe”
Getting Featured in Cool Hunting “STRONGBODY APPAREL’S TAKE ON ATHLETIC GEAR”
PR Strategies: Our Guide to Buzz Branding
How to Get in the News
If executed correctly, our guide to buzz branding will generate massive amounts of backlinks to your website, increase store traffic and help your business rank for competitive keywords.
The first of our marketing strategies to get your business featured in the news involves understanding what public relations is. Let’s review the different types of public relations and how they can be used to benefit your business.
Understanding Public Relations
The easiest explanation of public relations is the practice of deliberately managing the release and spread of information between an individual, or an organization, and the public.
Here are some of the things that you should know about public relations before getting started:
Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment.
Public relations aims to create or obtain coverage for clients for free, rather than paying for marketing or advertising.
Public relations is most often used to create and tell your business or brands’ story.
Public relations is often overlooked by smaller brands. However, it’s a great way to build brand awareness and trust in your community.
Public relations consists of different types, including internal communication, media and social media relations. Public relations can also be divided into consumer and lifestyle relations (which this post will focus on) and crisis communication.
The sooner a business starts focusing on public relations the better as they will build long-term relationships with the news media.
Your business will gain a competitive edge over the competition (even if you're smaller than your competitors) through effective public relations strategies. You will also be seen by the public as being a larger and more trustworthy business.
Research Journalists and Editors
One thing you need to know about the journalists and editors working for the news and other media publications, is that they are looking to write about exciting and trending topics that are of interest to their readers.
They will not be incentivized to write a profile story of your business, as it’s boring and will not get very many views.
Therefore, you need to understand what the media publications’ audience is and the type of content they are looking for, prior to reaching out.
To research media publications, you can perform a Google search and look up the journalists and the editors of the news publication. Try to find someone that covers your industry or has written about something similar to what you are pitching.
Make a Contact List
After you have narrowed down the media publications that align with your pitch, use Google sheets to make a contact list of journalists and editors that work for or have produced content for the publications.
The media contact list should include the following:
Link to the article
Journalists' first and last name
Email address
Phone number
Personal website
Date of contact
Relevant notes to keep in mind when contacting
Write a Press Release
You need to write a press release that you will extend to the journalists and editors.
The press release should have an exciting title, be no longer than one page in length and provide the writer with all of the necessary information they would need to write an article of high quality within a relatively short time frame.
Create a Media Kit
To create a media kit, you should create an organized Google drive folder that includes the following items:
Press release
Hi-res photos
Company information
Product details
Additional info
The additional information includes anything that you feel would be important or relevant to the journalist or editor covering your story.
Write Multiple Email Pitches
You will need to write multiple email pitches, as they need to be customized to the journalist, editor and their publication, to achieve a greater likelihood of response. You should vary your email pitch accordingly and ensure that it’s a personalized email, to maximize results.
Here are a couple marketing strategies that we like to use to increase response rate:
Comment within the first sentence or two: “I recently read your article on ______ (media publication) and _____ (what you liked about it).” This strategy will quickly tell the journalist that you are familiar with their work and that you are not spamming them.
Craft a subject line that is professional, yet personal. This will ensure that your message gets read by enhancing the credibility of your email.
Create a Custom Landing Page
Your press release will be pitching a specific product, event or piece of information.
It’s important that you provide journalists with a link to a website landing page that matches your story.
To illustrate why this is so important, pretend that you own a tie company and your landing page has people talking about shoes.
This disconnect makes it more difficult on the journalists’ or editors’ end to do the necessary research about your company.
To get in the news, you want to make it as easy on the media publication to write about your business as possible.
For this reason, we advise that you take the time to create a custom landing page, to maximize your results.
At this point, you should begin to reach out to journalists and editors by utilizing the media contact list that you created.
If you are unable to locate their email or contact details, you can try reaching them on LinkedIn or other social channels.
Here is an email template that you can use to maximize response rate.
Email Template for Buzz Branding
Hello ____ (journalist or editors’ name),
My name is _____ (your name) and I am the _____ (your role) of _____ (your business).
I know you’re busy and I know that it may be asking a lot, but would you mind taking a look at my pitch/story?
I think that it would be a great fit for your readers; I just finished reading your recent article on (insert article name) and I strongly believe that my story aligns with your writing style.
I have a DropBox folder to provide you with our press release, hi-res photos and a sneak-peak video. The drop box link is at the bottom of this email, for consideration.
The story summary is below.
(insert story summary)
(insert additional links for reference)
Thanks again, (journalist or editors’ name), for taking the time to look at this. I look forward to hearing from you shortly.
Cheers,
(your name)
(your role) of/at (your business)
Maximize Your Business Press and News Features
There are a few things you will want to do once you get featured, to maximize your business press and news features.
Update your landing page to showcase your businesses press and news features. The picture above provides an example as to how we showcased our press on our Kickstarter campaign.
Update journalists and editors that may have previously turned you down, didn’t respond, or said they would get back to you. Let them know about recent publications that you have been featured in and tell them that you can give them information for an interview that the other published articles haven’t featured.
Use Facebook Ads to boost the featured article. You can request the media publication to post the article to their Facebook page and tag you in the backend of their page. This will allow you to spend advertising on boosting the post. If they won’t do this for you, you can simply post the article to your business page and boost the article to a select audience. We recommend using A/B testing across different audiences to maximize results.
Follow up with those that wrote and posted about you and offer them an exclusive interview, providing them with a follow-up story on how your product launch or marketing campaign went.
Utilize Social Influencers
You can repeat our marketing strategies in our guide to buzz branding via social media, to utilize social influencers.
Keep in mind, social media influencers may want free product or payment to feature your business services or products.
What the social media influencer will ask for (in return for influencer marketing) generally depends on the amount of followers they have.
You can group social influencers into four broad categories: nano influencers (500-4,900 followers), micro influencers (5k-49,999 followers), macro influencers (50k-499,999 followers), and celebrity influencers (500k and up).
The specifics (number of followers) are not as important as understanding that each category will increasingly expect more from you, in return for creating buzz branding.
We recommend utilizing social influencers among your marketing strategies, as it will create a surround sound effect and people will be seeing your business in the news, social media and maybe even on TV.
Remember to Thank Everyone that Helped You
You should always remember to thank everyone that helped you.
You want to create long-term relationships with journalists, editors, and social media influencers.
Follow-up with them after the campaign and thank them for writing the article or contributing to your buzz branding.
You may want to go a step further and ask for their address to send them a thank you card, some of your product, and/or a gift card (if you are a service business).
It’s important to remember the value of getting featured in the news and digital magazines.
Paying for news and magazine features can be extremely costly.
In some cases, we have paid up to $10,000 for a single feature in a digital magazine, with smaller magazines charging $500-$3,000 for a single post.
When your business gets featured in the news and mainstream media, it’s worth thousands of dollars.
Large companies pay hundreds of thousands (and in some cases millions) of dollars for peak hour features on television
More Innovative PR Strategies and PR Tactics
at this guide has provided you with a better understanding of how to create buzz branding for your business. There are many other PR and marketing strategies that can help create more visibility around your business.
Consider utilizing online press releases, writing opinion pieces for publications, hosting VIP events, attending networking events and conferences, creating videos or podcasts about your product, and engaging in email marketing campaigns. All of these strategies can help create more buzz around your business, both offline and online.
Most importantly, remember to be creative and think outside the box when utilizing traditional PR tactics. With the right mix of strategy, creativity, and execution you will begin to see improved results for your buzz branding efforts!
Creating News Worthy Content for your Target Audience
Remember, creating newsworthy content is key when writing press releases or stories for publications.
Try to capture their attention by offering something new, different, or exciting that other businesses have yet to offer.
Your PR Strategy to Maximize Media Coverage
Your Solid PR Strategy should include a PR Plan and PR goals that focuses on all of the components of a PR Campaign.
These PR Components include Influencer Marketing, paid media, earned media, brand key messages, social media posts all of which is amplified across multiple media channels.
should also be sure to include a comprehensive media list which is an important part of any PR strategy.
Knowing who the key journalists and influencers are in your industry will help you gain visibility for your brand.
When building relationships with journalists, editors, and social influencers, always remember that no two relationships have the same requirements and expectations.
What each influencer will ask for (in return for influencer marketing) generally depends on the amount of followers they have.
Be sure to create a fair exchange when working with influencers as this will help build long-lasting relationships that can benefit both parties in the future.
Also remember to thank everyone that helped you throughout the campaign - follow up with them after the campaign and thank them.
How to use PR Tools to maximize your PR Efforts
Take advantage of the latest PR tools and software available to help you maximize your PR efforts.
There are many affordable and easy-to-use tools on the market that can help you track, monitor, measure and analyze your campaigns, such as HARO (Help A Reporter Out)and Muck Rack.
Additionally, there are numerous other PR tools such as Hootsuite for social media tracking & management, Buzzsumo for content monitoring & analysis,
Meltwater for media tracking & analytics and Sprout Social for social media management.
These tools will not only save you time but can also provide insight into how successful your campaign is by providing detailed reports with data-driven insights that will show which strategies have been most effective in, also remember to be agile and creative when executing your PR strategy.
Your campaigns should evolve with the changing times and trends in order to stay relevant and remain competitive.
You must constantly monitor the success of your tactics, adjust where necessary, and use all of the data you have collected from campaign performance reports to make better decisions about what works for your business.
With a well thought out PR Strategy, creativity, hard work and dedication, you can create effective buzz branding for your business that will help raise visibility, attract attention and ultimately lead to more conversions!
We hope that our guide to buzz branding has provided you with some marketing strategies to successfully get your next campaign in the news, no matter the size and budget of your business!
For additional marketing strategies, you can check out our Marketing Plan Template post!
