Public Relations: 5 tactics for getting your message to the media
Several weeks ago, my B2B newsletter article — Public Relations: Getting corporate data out of subject matter experts heads and into quarterly trend reports increased media coverage 261% — was a case study featuring Commtouch, an Internet security services company based in Israel.
Commtouch’s marketing team was able to leverage its internal subject matter experts — in this case, data analysts — to create valuable content and grab the attention of traditional media and influential bloggers in its field.
Like many MarketingSherpa interviews, I had more good information than could fit into the article. The source for the article, Rebecca Steinberg Herson, Vice President, Marketing, Commtouch, provided five excellent tactics for getting your content marketing material out into the wild.
Without further ado, here are Rebecca’s very actionable tactics:
Tactic #1. Coordination
“Coordinating the effort of getting one of these reports out is complicated, involving lots of people outside the marketing team. It’s important to get them on board, motivating them by explaining the importance of providing high-quality data in a timely fashion. We also made an effort to circle back to the data sources with great press coverage or at the very least a thank you. This meant they were more willing to help the next time.”
Tactic #2. Consistency
“Consistency is important. The quarterly nature of the reports meant that we have become a reliable source for high-quality information that journalists (and our partners) look forward to receiving. If we are a little bit late putting a report out one quarter, sometimes people ask us, to make sure they haven’t missed it.”
Tactic #3. Targeting
“It helps when we target our efforts to particular journalists or bloggers, rather than simply ‘spray and pray.’ When we set a particular influential blogger in our sights and craft the pitches specifically for him, eventually the team at our agency was even able to wear him down. He featured us twice within a week.”
Tactic #4. Timing and translation for press releases
“It’s difficult to time translations to go out at exactly the same time as the original English version. It’s really an art to knowing when to ‘freeze’ the draft and send it for translation, even though you know it will undergo some additional changes before it gets released. We try to keep the time lapse between distributing the English and other language versions to a minimum, but sometimes it is inevitable.”
“We have found that certain publications will simply take the English version and publish it in English even though their publication is in a foreign language, and some would take the trouble to create their own translation.
“But the best coverage we achieve in foreign languages is from the translations we send out ourselves to targeted journalists, so it is worth it to make the effort.”
Tactic #5. Spread the message beyond the obvious outlets
“As the world goes mobile, the types of threats across devices are significantly increasing. Our data is increasingly of value to consumer tech media, as well, so our agency is beginning to regularly communicate with those media to further reinforce our brand.”
Related Resources:
B2B Marketing newsletter – Weekly demand generation and lead nurturing case studies
Content Marketing: Four tactics that led to $2.5 million in annual contracts
Content Marketing: Inbound strategy pulls in 25% more revenue, 70% more leads
Content Marketing: Analytics drive relevant content, 26,000 new monthly visits to blog
Public Relations: 5 interview mistakes that drive journalists crazy (and how to avoid them)
Content Marketing: Web-based tool to help email marketers
Blandvertising: How you can overcome writing headlines and copy that don’t say anything
K2 Global Communications – Commtouch’s media outreach agency
Categories: PR Fame Communications B2B marketing, content marketing, press releases, public relations, targeting, timing
