Tag Archives: Ad Agency Publicity

Increase Publicity Opportunities by Segmenting Your Pitch

Maximizing publicity opportunities involves more than just widely distributing a news release or pitching the same story idea to multiple media outlets.

To get the most PR mileage, look for ways to expand your story’s reach to a variety of audiences by identify angles that will appeal to narrower segments.

When I started my own agency, one of my first clients was a lady who was launching a residential steel framing business. Although steel framing for homes had been around for many years in some parts of the country, it was a new concept for our area. In fact, hers was the first company of its kind in Tennessee.

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While the basic facts of the story were the same, I was able to generate some excellent media coverage by segmenting my pitches and emphasizing different aspects to different media outlets:

  • To our local business journal, I emphasized the entrepreneurial side
  • To our local daily paper, I got a front-page feature story about alternative materials for new houses
  • To HGTV, I focused on the growing trend of having steel framing for homes, and the benefits of steel over wood framing
  • To women’s publications, I focused on a female entering the construction business, which traditionally has been dominated by men
  • To my client’s hometown paper, which also ran a front-page story, I pitched a “local lady makes good” angle and tied it to an award she recently won

As I noted in my previous post, the more you can provide reporters with relevant, factual information that is meaningful and targeted to their audience, the more likely you are to get coverage.  Giving reporters an appropriately segmented pitch is one way to make their jobs easier and broaden exposure of your client or business.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: Bogdan Suditu via photopin cc

Ten Tips to Help Ad Agencies and Companies Generate Publicity

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Having worked on the agency, journalism and corporate communications side, I’ve viewed public relations from a variety of perspectives. I’ve also experienced first-hand how the strategic use of PR can help small and mid-sized agencies and companies—even one-person operations—level the playing field with larger competitors.

The key to getting publicity is pitching the right story to the right person at the right time.

Before you attempt to get a reporter’s attention, you need to understand how the news media operate and what they want. Here are 10 suggestions to help you do just that and make your publicity efforts successful:

#1: Define your media focus.

  • Limit your pitches to only those outlets that directly serve your target audience.

#2: Get to the right person at each media outlet.

  • Whether you’re dealing with your local paper or The Wall Street Journal, it’s important to take the time to find out which person covers the particular area you are interested in targeting.

#3: Research a reporter’s previous stories before making contact.

  • Learn all you can about what the reporter covers, his or her interests and reporting style.

#4: Don’t waste their time or mislead them.

  • Reporters are busy people who work under constant pressure and deadlines. When pitching a story, get right to the point. The most important things you can tell a reporter about your story are who will care about it and why.

#5: Respect their deadlines.

  • When contacting a reporter, I always first ask if he or she is on deadline. If so, I then ask when would be a convenient time to share a story idea. If you’re contacted by a reporter on deadline, do everything you can to respond within that deadline; otherwise, you may miss out on a golden opportunity. Even worse, if you don’t respond promptly, the reporter may contact and quote a competitor.

#6: Think and pitch like a reporter.

  • When I was on the editorial side of a heath care magazine, I never ceased to be amazed at some of the obviously inappropriate pitches PR people sent my way. It was pretty easy to tell who had taken time to read our magazine and understand our audience and the types of stories we covered, and who had taken a shotgun approach. When the time comes to make your pitch, be sure you not only think like a reporter, but that you write and speak like one as well. Don’t advertise or editorialize your story idea (reporters are very sensitive to disguised advertising). Whether you write your pitch or give it verbally, be as objective as possible by emphasizing the news or human interest aspect, or your expertise to comment and provide insights.

#7: Make their jobs easier.

  • The more you can provide reporters with relevant, factual information that is meaningful and targeted to their audience, the more likely they are to take you seriously and provide coverage. Plus, if they know that you know their audiences, areas of coverage and deadlines, when they see a pitch from you in the future, they’ll realize you’re credible and are more likely to give you serious consideration.

#8: Know what makes a good news story.

  • Put yourself in the reporter’s shoes and ask: “Would this story be interesting to my audience?” If you can’t honestly answer yes, you need to rethink your pitch.

#9: Give them the first shot at a story whenever possible.

  • Reporters like to be the first one to cover a news story, and not just report the same news that others have.

#10: Make them look good in front of their bosses.

  • The news media is a very competitive business, and more and more media outlets are taking a hard look at the level of interest in reporters’ stories. Like any other profession, reporters enjoy getting recognition and praise for their stories – and success means job security.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

Don’t Miss Publicity Opportunities for Your Agency

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In dealing with the tyranny of the urgent, ad agency can easily overlook publicity opportunities just waiting to be told. These opportunities are valuable in generating awareness and, in some cases, helping to establish or reinforce expertise in particular areas.

Here are my Top 20 Topics to consider:

  1. Awards
  2. New clients/customers
  3. New employees
  4. Employee promotions
  5. Human interest stories about employees
  6. Community involvement
  7. Survey results
  8. Introducing a new product or service
  9. Expert commentary that address newsworthy topics/trends
  10. Appointments to boards
  11. Publications (articles, books, etc.)
  12. New offices/geographical expansion
  13. Mergers/strategic alliances
  14. Trends, projections, forecasts
  15. Speeches
  16. Sponsorships
  17. Mentoring programs
  18. Pro bono work
  19. Guest columns
  20. Case studies that could become feature stories

One of my favorite examples of a good human interest story involves a real estate agent named Alex Delgado.

“Once I got into real estate, I got really successful really fast, and I had all this money I didn’t know what to do with,” he told our local paper. Rather than pamper himself, Alex looked to the needs of others by giving a portion of his commission for every house sold to sponsor impoverished children in developing countries.

At the time the story was published, he was supporting 53 children in 19 countries.

The article quoted from letters he received from his sponsor children, who described the ways in which his involvement improved their lives. One girl from India, who signed her letter “loving daughter,” explained how his money provides her family with food and soap.

A little boy who lost both parents to an accident, and later his younger sister, wrote, “Now I am alone. I thank God for getting you as my sponsor.”

If I were looking to buy or sell a house, Alex Delgado is the first person I’d call. And I imagine a lot of other people felt the same way after reading this story. It obviously was good publicity for his company as well.

What stories like this are in your agency or client roster that ought to be shared?

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: David Boyle via photopin cc

Ad Agency PR: How to Improve Quotes in a News Release

How many times have you read a quote in a news release that sounded canned, stale and clearly was not something a person would actually say?

“…besides clichés, superlatives, and meaningless terms such as ‘cutting-edge,’ using poorly worded quotes will have reporters hitting the delete button before they read your third paragraph,” writes Laura Hale Brockway, author of the writing and editing blog impertinentremarks.com, in Ragan’s PR Daily.

She offers four tips for improving quotes in releases:

1. Trash those lazy verbs. Laura recommends replacing them with clear descriptions of your customers’ needs and how your product (or service) meets them. To which I would add: just be careful not to sound too promotional or sensational.

2. Keep them conversational. Quotes are more believable if they sound like something a person would actually say if you were talking with him or her.

3. Can you paraphrase? She contends (and I agree) that you can often improve a suggested quote your client or an executive gives you by paraphrasing it or breaking it up so that the quote is short and punchy.

4. Step up your interviewing skills. If you’re interviewing someone, ask for real-world examples, metaphors, epiphanies, etc. Doing so is likely to uncover interesting details that might otherwise be overlooked.

The more a news release looks and sounds like an article in a publication written by a journalist, the more likely it is to be taken seriously—assuming you’ve done your homework and targeted the right media outlets and reporters.

In my experience, quotes are often add-ons to news releases, and they aren’t given the time and attention they deserve. Ad agencies and their clients will benefit from taking a few extra steps to improve the quality of their quotes, and thereby improve their chances of them getting on reporters’ radar.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

Journalist Offers PR Pitching Tips

Ragan’s PR Daily recently ran an article titled, “Five Tips for PR Professionals from a Journalist.”

The author, Amy McCarthy, is a content strategist and editor in Dallas. She’s had a lot of PR pitches thrown her way, and some of them haven’t been very pretty:

“Reading pitches from publicists is part of my daily life as a content manager and Web editor, and sometimes they’re just cringe-worthy. When PR is bad, it’s really bad,” she writes.

Here are Amy’s top five pitching tips:

1. Do your homework. If you’re going to pitch me, it’s probably worth getting a little more information than that little blurb that Vocus gives you. Go to my site, look at some of my content, and see what we’re sharing! If you’re not a good fit, nothing that you can say is going to make you a good fit.

2. Do not mislead me. I know that every PR pro reading this blog is going to say that they’d never do something like that, and the majority wouldn’t, but there is a serious lack of disclosure in the PR industry. If a brand sponsors your expert client, you need to make that clear to me. My site isn’t for shilling products; it’s for providing value to my readers.

3. Understand that I am busy. I’m running an entire website and am extremely busy. There are plenty of things I could (and need to) be doing other than uploading your content to my site and making sure that your client’s name is properly italicized. Be respectful of journalists’ time. If you wouldn’t want them bugging you to death, don’t do it to them. Emailing me daily to ask whether your article is ready isn’t going to get it published any faster.

4. Check yourself. I can’t tell you how many times I get pitches with my name misspelled, horrible grammar, and other crimes against English. Spend a little time going over your release and making sure everything is correct. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but if I were to take you on a tour of my inbox, you’d believe that a significant portion of the public relations industry hasn’t met spell- or grammar-check.

5. Provide me with something good. As a publicist, I know you’ve got to say that everything about your client is magical and wonderful. Unfortunately, as a journalist, that really doesn’t do much for me. I don’t want to hear about your “new and improved this or that,” but I would really like to hear about how your “new and improved this or that” is helping families save money, or how your “new and improved this or that” showers its purchaser with the finest jewels. Give me value, and I’ll give you coverage!

Good tips, Amy! Thanks for sharing them. There are probably many others that could be added to this list, but here’s a final tip written from my perspective as a former journalist:

6. Make my job easier. Because I’m so busy, the more you can provide me with relevant, factual information that is meaningful and targeted to my audience, the more I’m going to appreciate you and quite possibly reward you with coverage. And when I see a pitch from you in the future, I’ll take it seriously because I know you’re a credible PR person.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

For Successful Ad Agency PR, Pitch like a Reporter

Something that’s easy to overlook when pitching a story to a reporter is that in most cases the reporter has to turn around and pitch it to an editor. So, getting the reporter interested is only half the battle. The more you can arm him or her with good information about why your idea would make a good story, the more favorable the odds of selling the editor.

The best way to sell a story is to first do your homework and then tailor your pitch as much as possible.

When I was on the editorial side of a heath care magazine, I never ceased to be amazed at some of the obviously inappropriate pitches PR people sent my way. It was pretty easy to tell who had taken time to read our magazine and understand the types of stories we covered, and who had taken a shotgun approach to pitching.

When the time comes to make your pitch, be sure you not only think like a reporter, but that you write like one as well. In other words, don’t advertise or editorialize your story idea; write your pitch as objectively as possible emphasizing its news aspect.

To increase your chances of success, follow this rule of thumb: find the right reporter and make the right story pitch at the right time.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agencies Beware of Speaking with Reporters off the Record

Brian Lewis, a former reporter for The Tennessean newspaper, described in a column the different levels of speaking with reporters:

Off the record:  “To have an off-the-record conversation means that the information will not be used in any way in a story.  Many editors, including mine, don’t allow reporters to have off-the-record conversations.”

On background:  “To have an on-background conversation means that the information may be used in a story, but the person who is talking will not be named in connection with the information that is ‘on background.’”

On the record:  “This is the standard conversation with reporters.  However, reporters should identify themselves as working on an article before beginning an interview…once a statement has been made on the record, it cannot be taken off-record.”

While Brian’s explanation of these three levels is helpful, my advice to ad agencies is to never speak off the record, unless you really know and trust the reporter.

Even then, there are risks.

Consider this headline from a story by the New York Times News Service:  “India’s nuclear identify unclear.”  The subhead reads:  “‘Off the record, we are totally unprepared’ says one of its top military strategists.”

I wonder how the career of that military strategist is going these days. He certainly should have known better than to make such a remark to a reporter, and I suspect he learned his lesson after getting burned so badly by someone he apparently trusted.

What’s even more disturbing than this official’s lack of judgment, though, is that The New York Times  had no qualms about using something he told one of its reporters in confidence and clearly thought was off the record. 

The paper’s subhead admits it can’t be trusted, which is why if you don’t want to risk having something appear in print or on radio, TV or the Internet, don’t share it with a reporter!

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agencies: Here’s an Easy Way to Get Publicity for Your Clients

One of the easiest ways to get publicity for a client is to be able to comment on what’s already in the news, such as trends or breaking news.

Some time ago I read about a PR agency that advised a client with expertise about animal behavior as follows:  “Whenever a kid gets attacked by a dog somewhere in America, you need to contact newspapers and radio/TV shows in that city immediately and let them know you can comment on why it might have happened and how this attack could have been prevented.”

The agency suggested the client use Google Alerts to learn when a dog attack story hits the news. 

Within 90 days of using this strategy, the client had gotten publicity in more than 40 different media outlets.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agencies: Avoid Confusing News Release Headlines

During my days as an editor for a healthcare magazine, I received some interesting mail.  Here’s a news release headline a well-meaning hospital PR executive sent me one day:

CDH TO HOST LAPAROSCOPIC HERNIORRAPY PRECEPTORSHIP

Huh? I’m guessing one in a half-million or so people would have a clue what that headline was about.  And ask yourself: how much interest does it generate?  The release itself was fairly well written, and once I read the first few sentences I realized the hospital was hosting a seminar about advancements in hernia operations.

Trouble is, most reporters wouldn’t get past the headline – the release would end up in the recycle bin before the first paragraph was read.  Why not just say in the headline, in simple terms, what the seminar is about?

Headlines are vital to attracting interest and getting people to read the release or article, similar to how the wording on a subject line can make the difference between you reading or deleting an e-mail.

If you are handling your ad agency’s PR, make sure your news release headlines are compelling and readable, or risk having the releases discarded before they even gets read.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agencies Top 20 Topics for Publicity

Agencies often get so busy marketing their clients that they fail to market themselves.  Publicity is a great way to get your name out in the marketplace, whether its local consumer media, industry publications.  Not only is publicity free, but it also has much more credibility than advertising.

Agency executives sometimes overlook the breath of publicity opportunities that are available to them.  Here are my “Top 20 Topics” to consider:

  1. Agency awards
  2. New clients
  3. New employees
  4. Employee promotions
  5. Human interest stories about employees
  6. Community involvement
  7. Client promotional success stories
  8. Introducing a new service your agency is providing
  9. Services or commentary that address newsworthy topics/trends
  10. Appointments to boards
  11. Publications (articles, books, etc.)
  12. New offices/geographical expansion
  13. Mergers/strategic alliances
  14. Trends, projections, forecasts
  15. Speeches
  16. Sponsorships
  17. Mentoring programs
  18. Pro bono work
  19. Guest columns
  20. Case studies that could become feature stories

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.