How to Get Publicity
Sunday April 24, 2005
Publicity is far more affordable and often more effective for small business than advertising. Contrary to popular opinion, most of the time, all it takes is a very little effort -- at the right time and in the right way. Most important is that you be consistent and jump on the opportunities when they present themselves.
The advice featured below has gotten me quoted or published in ABCNews.com, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, Sales and Marketing Management, Christian Science Monitor, Southwest Airlines Spirit, and many more. I tell you this not to toot my own horn, but to tell you it works! And I didn't spend an arm and a leg on a professional PR firm (though they certainly have their place), and I didn't spend hours and hours and hours sending pitches off to every editor in the world. It's all about sending the right message to the right person in the right way at the right time.
Comments
I couldn’t agree more about publicity being more effective than advertising. We are bombarded every day with thousands of ads making it easy to forget which one you saw where. A relatively inexpensive way to get publicity is to contact newspapers directly with a unique story pitch. Both local and national papers are hungry for stories. I found some success with local papers by sending my press release directly to managing editors. Most news websites have ways to contact their managing editors, or you can take the easy way out and use a relatively inexpensive service like NewspaperEmails.com which has already taken care of the grunt work for you. Either way, the trick is to make sure you have a unique and worthy story. Good luck.
I run a small company and the recession makes me re-examine my advertising budget. I ran across claims that publicity may be much more cost effective than advertising, but found no formal studies on it. I always thought PR was too expensive for small businesses but in doing my research I posted my project on AllPublicists.com (it’s a free service), and got many low-cost offers from publicists. One firm for example, called Publicity Guaranteed (PublicityGuaranteed.com) doesn’t charge anything unless they deliver results. However, most companies still put much more reliance on advertising than on PR. Is it because pay-for-results-only publicity such a new option or am I missing something? Are there any studies on the subject?