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B2B INC. WILL ENSURE THAT PUBLICITY MARKETING IS INTEGRATED INTO YOUR MARKETING
Make the press your friend.
Those who write about your industry should be your friends. To make them your friends is not that difficult of a task, since they need you (or at least your news) as much as you need them. However, as with any friendship, the relationship takes time and attention to develop. At its most basic level, publicity marketing is about nurturing those press contacts.
Finding your press contacts.
Not that long ago you could develop a list of press contacts pretty easily: your industry trade magazines, and maybe business papers and magazines, were your primary resources. Things have changed, and this is why your publicity marketing tactics must change, too.
The Internet, and social media, have changed everything.
Publicity marketing has changed forever, thanks to social media. The control you once had over your brand, and news about your company, is now in the hands of thousands of bloggers – professional writers (the few) and anyone else who has an opinion (the many). So, press-publicity-public relations control has become more complicated.
But this is not necessarily bad news, since these new, web-based media channels and tools also offer opportunity to monitor, mine, engage customers and prospects, and find influencers – if you know how. So, it’s important to know how to integrate your press and publicity marketing efforts with social media; they know go hand in hand.
New channels and tactics for publicity marketing tools.
New channels, tools and tactics for managing your publicity marketing fall into four main categories:
- web-based press release tools
- web-based one-on-one press and publicity distribution
- press and social media tools that enable you to find and connect with individual writers, editors, bloggers and influencers in your industry
- social media monitoring tools that allow you to monitor brand sentiment and news about your company, your industry and your competitors
From basic to more complex: determining your publicity marketing strategy.
The tools listed above are in order from basic to more complex. You can pretty much develop a strategy, and utilize advanced tactics, for any size company and for any challenge at much lower cost than the pre-Internet days. Of course, there are traditional, non web-based tactics as well.
Here’s what’s important: determine what role publicity marketing should play in your marketing mix. Once you determine (and document) your sales and marketing objectives, strategies and tactics, you’ll see more clearly how publicity marketing can support your marketing strategies.
In any event, we recommend that you include press and publicity tactics in your marketing plan, even if it’s a basic set of tactics, and that you consistently employ publicity marketing.
Watch your competition.
Keep an eye on your competitors to see how they use publicity marketing. One simple, free, effective tool to watch online press, articles and news is Google Alerts. More sophisticated tools can be used to monitor social media. Of course, watch your traditional media outlets also.
Develop press relations.
Find the people who write about your industry. Introduce yourself. Provide them with something of value such as technical updates, new product news, research results. Invite them to your plant.
Even if you have a small publicity marketing budget, cover the basics.
At the very least, develop your press contacts, issue regular releases and watch your competition.
Leverage, and integrate, your press coverage.
A press release can have legs if you leverage it. Re-purpose every release into your blog, maybe Twitter, your newsletter, e-mail marketing, direct mail and on your website. Publicity marketing is more than a news release. If you leverage your news you get a lot more value.
Take advantage of analytics.
Each of the four channels mentioned above under “New channels and tactics…” comes with analytics that allow you to measure your publicity marketing efforts, ranging from basic to robust.
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