Ever look around and see all of these creative businesses around you getting featured in places like Real Simple, Southern Living, BuzzFeed, and more and wonder…how the heck do they get these placements?!
It’s not as hard as you might think.
Yes, you can get your product-based business in the spotlight and featured on prominent publications (heck, maybe even tv!) but you have to know how to pitch yourself!
Before we dive into how to get publicity, let’s first talk about why you should focus on getting publicity.
Reason #1: PR and media opportunities help you increase credibility in your industry.
As a creative business owner, you probably have competitors out there.
Why should people pick your products over one of your competitors?
One way to stand out amongst the crowd of creatives is to be featured in relevant podcasts, online and print publications, and perhaps even tv!
Let’s say you offer similar products to Company A.
But you’ve been focused on getting your products featured in gifts guides, listicles, and have even done a few local tv segments.
Company A hasn’t been featured anywhere.
A new potential customer goes to both of your websites and automatically has more of a trust with you because of all of the places you’ve been featured. Instant credibility!
Reason #2: PR and media opportunities can lead to more qualified leads for your creative business.
We all want more traffic to our website, right? Doing media interviews and getting featured in online publications can work together with your content strategy to get new people to your site and browse your products.
Reason #3: PR and media opportunities enhance your online presence and help you increase your SEO.
Having a routine PR strategy and focusing on building up your backlinks to your website will help you increase your organic traffic to your website.
The more backlinks you have from a variety of websites that have a high ranking domain (aka most online publications and magazines!), the higher you will turn up in search results organically.
Okay now that we’ve covered the reasons why… let’s get into the how!
We walk our retainer clients through the 5 P’s of PR to help them establish their strategic PR strategy for their business.
The 5 P’s of PR
The 5 P’s of PR are:
- Purpose
- Position
- Prepare
- Pitch
- Promote
Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these!
Purpose
Before we do any sort of pitching, we need to define our purpose behind why we’re pitching.
Is your goal to increase traffic to your website?
Build brand credibility and awareness?
Showcase a new product you’re putting out on the market?
You shouldn’t be doing PR for your business unless you are crystal clear on how it supports your bigger business goals.
Position
What are the key messages that you want to share with the world? What is it that you want to be known for?
When pitching your story and your products to the media, you need to come up with a hook to get journalists and producers interested in what it is that you have to say.
What makes you and your business unique? Why is your product the one people should buy?
Prepare
What publications, tv stations, and podcasts are best for your message?
One of the top questions I receive as a publicist is which publications and podcasts should I pitch?
That answer highly depends on where your audience spends time.
What publications do they read? What podcasts do they listen to? Do they watch local tv?
Preparing your research ahead of time will help you not waste time in pitching the wrong places.
Pitch
Now, it’s time to start pitching! You’ve got your messaging, you’ve got your hook, you know where to send it — now it’s time to write the full pitch.
I highly recommend checking out my free pitch templates to give you a jump start.
There are pitch templates for pitching to podcasts, publications, and tv — PLUS examples of each that all were featured by the media!
Promote
Once you’ve landed a media mention (yay, happy dance!) it’s time for you to promote the heck out of it!
You can share in a variety of ways:
- On social media
- Updating your press page
- Updating your press logo bar
- Adding to an email funnel or your next email newsletter
- Listing in your bio
The options are endless!
The thing to remember is that you should definitely share with your audience your amazing press mentions — they want to see you succeed and it’s also the right thing to do if someone has interviewed you!
