PR is all about writing and sending press releases. Although part of my job includes creating and distributing press or media releases, it’s actually a fairly small part of my job description. The truth is a press release isn’t always appropriate; a pitch is generally a much more effective tool for securing media coverage for a product or service.

PR will double my sales within the quarter. Public relations isn’t designed to translate into immediate direct sales. Sales can be a result of PR, but the primary goal is to gradually build brand awareness and name recognition. It is a predictable, sustainable way to effect managed growth for your company, but that doesn’t mean your business will explode and you’ll double sales right away.

PR and advertising are the same. Although PR and advertising both fall under the umbrella of marketing, there are a couple of key differences. In advertising, you get to control your message: How long it is, when and where it appears, what exactly it says. The downside is the cost. Ads can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the outlet. Public relations practitioners go after free editorial coverage, which means you wouldn’t need to pay the media outlet for a story; you just lose control over the message they present.

PR is all about distorting the truth through spin. A lot of people think of public relations as finding creative ways to spin the story and distort the truth, but a good PR professional will never lie. In addition to it being unethical, they would lose their credibility with the press and the public. Public relations pros simply find an angle that puts the story in the best frame of reference for the right audience at the right time.

What else have you heard about PR? Let me know in the comments and I’ll let you know if it’s true or simply another myth!

Photo Credit: kirstyhall

Before seeking editorial media coverage, it’s wise to produce a press kit. Press kits used to be hefty packets, sent via mail or fax, to editors and contacts in traditional media fields. They are expensive to produce and mail and ultimately end up in the trash bin. Today, Three Girls Media & Marketing Inc. advocates virtual press kits (VPKs), containing key information and downloadable hi-resolution photographs, accessible over the Internet 24/7 by any interested party.

One way a professional PR agency like Three Girls Media helps their clients is to secure editorial media placements. By keeping abreast of various industries, a good marketing partner ‘pitches’ the press offering newsworthy information about you, your business or product. If the media is interested in the pitch, they will often ask for additional information, images or an interview. Once the journalist writes the story and it is published, you have a media placement. These build brand awareness and name recognition and bring credibility to your company.

So now you have a stellar press kit, your marketing message is targeted and launched, and coverage begins. Next, evaluate the media coverage you are actually getting to determine its true PR value.

1. Is your information accurate? Is a picture of yourself, your product or a business logo included? Does your website or other key contact information appear?
2. Is your business the story’s sole focus, or are you mentioned alongside competitors? If you are mentioned with competitors, is it a favorable mention? If it’s negative, is there truth in it? Can you learn something valuable about yourself or your competition?
3. Does the story invite further discussion? Can you link this media coverage to your social sites or blog? Does it encourage potential customers to want to find out more?

If you find inaccuracies in your media coverage, by all means seek to correct it. An outright error is more likely to be corrected than a simple preference, for example, a more flattering picture. Free publicity is free publicity and, libel notwithstanding, is usually good. Decide what is worth your effort to correct – a misspelled company name or wrong web address absolutely, an opinion about your business is not.

Three Girls Media’s 25 years of experience working with journalists in media outlets nationwide ensure our clients regular press exposure. Making you look good often and in the right places is what we love to do. Where can we Spread the News About You?

Media coverage can help your SEO

Media coverage can do a lot of great things for your company. It can give you credibility, raise public awareness of your brand, make your name recognizable to the general public, etc. Here’s one more thing it does: Media coverage helps SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

As most of you know, SEO is the process of improving your ranking in search results. There are all sorts of tactics to help increase your site’s SEO, such as using key words in your blog posts, tags and categories. Another factor in determining your SEO is the number and prominence of links to your site.

We recently came across an article, Why PR Should be Part of Your SEO Strategy, that explains how PR increases your SEO through external links:

Traditional PR increases your external link portfolio because you can get a ton of links from domains that may have never found your content. How likely is it that a Forbes editor will find your website or blog and want to link to you without you reaching out to them first? But if you can get linked to, you must be a pretty reliable source since such a big publication is mentioning you, and that will be picked up by the search engines.

Traditional PR in conjunction with a strong website and marketing plan can be powerful. Check out these posts for DIY PR tips, or contact us to talk about your PR & Marketing needs.

Photo Credit: Danard Vincente

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A website needs to be created the same way. Ask yourself what kind of feel you are trying to create around your product or service. Does your website reflect that? Before you begin any sort of marketing campaign, you need to be sure your website is exactly the way you want it. Building awareness of your company will drive traffic to your site, but what will the visitors do when they get there? Will they actually invest in whatever it is you’re selling? Does your site offer all the information they’re looking for?

Three Girls recommends the following for every single website:

1. Information about what your product or service is and why consumers should care.
2. Email and phone contact information for any questions potential customers may have.
3. Clear links to navigate the site easily.

We also recommend crisp graphics and a clean feel to the site – it will build a more professional feel into your site, making it easier for consumers to trust your product or service. Small business owners and entrepreneurs can use all sorts of methods to drive traffic to your site, but without a solid website those efforts are wasted.

For a few examples of excellently-designed small business and non-profit sites, we recommend the following:

1. Eat My Dust Janitorial
2. Expanding Your Horizons
3. OhMiBod (WARNING: Adult Content)

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Do you think about your product presentation?

A lot of small business owners & entrepreneurs don’t realize that the way a product is packaged represents their company as much as they and their employees do. When someone orders your product online, do you think about the presentation when they open it?

At Three Girls, we work with our clients to create Sample Packages that will impress the media because if a journalist isn’t impressed, why would they tell their readers to buy one? The same is true of customers – if they aren’t impressed, why would they tell their friends and family to buy one? Why would they come back and order from you again? Packaging can’t make a bad product good, but it can help a good product receive more attention and build brand awareness.

An article on PlugIn.com by Suzanne Rodriguez addressed this issue as well. Rodriguez gave an example of why an excellent product might be overlooked without a package that draws attention to itself:

Early one cold winter morning a couple of years ago, a young man clad in blue jeans, a baseball cap, and a long-sleeved T-shirt walked out of Washington, D. C.’s L’Enfant Plaza Metro station carrying a violin case. As if by long habit, he claimed a spot against a wall, opened the case, pulled out a violin, and placed the case open before him to collect money from rush-hour pedestrians exiting the subway and heading to work.

The man played away on his violin—all Bach pieces—for about 45 minutes. During that time, six people stopped to listen, most of them briefly; and 27 threw or placed money in the violin case. More than one thousand others walked by, most never slowing their pace or even glancing toward the musician. At the end, the young man gathered the $32.17 he’d collected, carefully secured the violin in its case, and walked away.

What makes this subway busker story interesting is this: the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the world’s most acclaimed classical musicians. The Bach pieces he played included Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor, considered by Bell to be “one of the greatest pieces of music ever written;” experts agree that it’s also one of the most difficult of all violin pieces to play. As to the violin used that day, it was Bell’s own: a 300-year-old “Golden Age” Stradivarius known as the Gibson ex Huberman, it’s worth about $3.5 million.

That day Bell was participating in an experiment initiated by Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten. The event was videotaped, and Weingarten’s April 8 2007 provocative cover story about it, Pearls Before Breakfast, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Reporting.

Rodriguez sums up her point with:

In the best of all possible worlds, packaging wouldn’t matter. But we’re living in a less-than-perfect reality where sometimes it does matter. The right packaging can guide opinions and make something stand out from the crowd.  The classic example of this is the classic blue box associated with Tiffany & Co since 1837. That “little blue box” is instantly recognizable.  Empty boxes are sold on eBay, and Tiffany stores even guard against people sifting through the trash to find  damaged boxes.

So how can you make sure your packaging is helping rather than hurting? Here are five tips Three Girls has to offer:

1. Include concise information. We recommend one or two pages that answer your most common questions and direct the recipient to more information on your website.
2. Don’t include unnecessary brochures or papers in the package. It can look cluttered and overwhelm consumers.
3. Include colored tissue paper to add some color without excessive expense. A little tissue paper can go a long way in spicing up the visual appeal of a package.
4. Make sure you include packaging materials to protect the product. Personally, I hate the packing peanuts because they get everywhere when the box is opened. Whatever you decide to use, think about what it will be like to open the box up.
5. Be creative. You know your brand best, so think about what sort of packaging would support that brand to make it stronger for your consumers.

Photo Credit: Vanessa Yvonne

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