One of the strongest benefits of earned PR is the halo effect of having trusted third parties saying nice things about your product or service. There’s also a substantial benefit to having a trusted platform, such as a magazine, give you valued space to tell your own story, in your own words. When Home Business Magazine asked our CEO Lonny Kocina to write this article about marketing for small businesses, he’d earned the opportunity to talk about his award-winning best-seller, “The CEO’s Guide to Marketing.” These articles can then be used for marketing letters, such as this one, and in your other promotional materials.
Even though PR has gotten a lot more complex recently, earned media coverage still delivers the best ROI because it is inherently credible. You can’t get it by sending a swag box. You can’t charge it to a credit card. You pay for it with the time and hard work necessary to build strong relationships with reporters and producers. That’s why it often results in more brand loyalty and higher conversion rates than paid, shared or owned media.
For us as a marketing agency, earned media coverage is like the biggest jewel in a crown. It shines brighter because it’s the cornerstone for our clients’ marketing campaigns. It’s the backbone that supports the other media types. It’s the third-party filter that tells buyers a product has been vetted by people they trust, and it’s worthy of their time to listen to what’s being said whenever they come across a conversation about your product.
Our publicists have strong relationships with reporters and producers for good reason. They know we’ll deliver high-quality, factual and informative stories that are relevant to their audiences. They know we will provide them with complete stories, including photos, graphics and experts to interview who will deliver messaging in a manner that is educational and not too commercial.
It’s in our best interest to put ourselves in the media’s chairs … to be the media. Over the last 30 years, we’ve developed a proprietary database of media contacts who will take our calls and respond to our emails because we’re not going to try to saddle them with a sales pitch they can’t use.
The result for our clients is a library of positive media stories with staying power. One story can first reach thousands then continue to live on through indexed content on the internet. The more positive earned media stories you have about your product, the more likely it is that people will trust it to work for them.
To start earning media for your product, you could begin by trying to reach reporters and producers on your own. Or you can keep it simple by asking us to include your story in our conversations that are already taking place with the media. Let’s talk about how much media coverage we believe we can get for your business. Call us at 952-697-5269 or contact us using this form.
