The Focus 5: Building a Successful PR Campaign

It’s time for this month’s Focus 5! We get a lot of questions from clients and potential clients about building a successful PR campaign–it is an area that is cloaked in a lot of mystery for most business owners. Here are our thoughts on how to build a great campaign that will have a real impact on your business.

5 Tips for Building a Successful PR Campaign

1. It’s All About Timing. This one is a little bit of a bummer because it means that you can’t control everything about the campaign. PR is all about what else is going on in the world that might demand more attention than your campaign. There is always the chance that a breaking news story will hit the wires and trump your story. It happens to everyone, and you have to roll with it. BUT by doing some research you can avoid some of the more predictable conflicts. In Colorado, that means, for instance, paying attention to the Broncos: Do they have a game? Are they starting training camp? Did they just hire a new coach? We are in Broncos country, and they tend to beat out a lot of news!
2. Pitch on the Right Day. This really goes back to timing as well. Pitching your story at the right time can make a big difference. We usually recommend pitching a story on Tuesdays or Wednesdays (the same days that we recommend for sending out email campaigns). Avoid Mondays and Fridays, when people are either catching up from the weekend or wrapping up and trying to get out of the office. Seasons also matter–spring and summer are often quieter news seasons because football is over, school is out, and there aren’t any big holidays.
3. Be Relevant Locally AND Nationally. A successful PR campaign addresses both the local and national angle. Think about addressing both sides in your pitch: Why should someone in Denver care about your story? Why should someone in Virginia care about it?
4. Follow Up!! Just sending out a press release to media contacts usually isn’t going to cut it. In fact, we recommend THREE follow ups for each press release. Very friendly, polite ones, of course.
5. Oh Yeah, the Release Itself. The four tips above don’t matter much if you submit a shoddy press release. We have fine tuned our press release template over the years, but if you’re starting fresh, make sure to at least include the basics: contact information in more than one place and quick quotes and snippets of information that a reporter can easily pull for a story. Think about what would be useful to have from the reporter’s end.

If you have any questions about building a successful PR campaign for your business, or if you need a little assistance getting started, please contact Niki at [email protected].