3 Creative Tips to Get More Publicity for Your Brand (that involves no cost)

There are so many source of news these days that it can get overwhelming for PR professionals to constantly try to get the attention of journalists.

It used to be enough to get media publicity for your brand only when you have something to announce: launch of a new product, business expansion to a new market or a change of key person in your company.

However, with fiercer competition in the market, I would beg to say that it is more crucial than ever to build relationships with media and get more coverage to build credibility and trust.

Your next question would be: but, no company would have any new announcement every so often.

When there is nothing new, how can we be newsworthy?

Does it mean that I should be satisfied with getting a media coverage once every year? Of course not.

PR professionals need to step up their game and be more creative in getting their news out there. In my company, typically I get an average of 3 media coverage per month from an active pitching effort (not inclusive of any announcement news, press conferences, or journalists who come straight to us to request for a quote or supporting materials — the latter is especially great.)

And think about it — the more publicity you get, the more journalists from other media will notice you — and the more likely they will approach you directly the next time they have a story that relates to your industry. It’s a cycle — a pretty awesome one if you keep the momentum going.

Firstly, you need to get the basics.

Do your research on each media and the different sections they have.

This may seem obvious — but the worst thing you can do is send a pitch for a sports-related news to a fashion and beauty publication.

Make sure you do your research and segment your media list accordingly.

Once you narrow that down, study the media even closer and find out the different segments or columns they have. Don’t strike off the publication too soon, you may be surprised. A health publication may have a travel column. A travel publication may have a tech column to feature the latest gadgets. Just like how hard news sites also have lifestyle and entertainment section.

Research the journalist too and the beat they are writing for.

Once you have the list of each beat within a certain publication, the next thing you can do is find out the journalists who are writing them.

There are many ways to find this out. Some media will list down their editors’ names and email addresses in their website.

Those who don’t: there’s always google search, Linkedin profiles, or in some cases, find the stories they have written before and see if it includes their email addresses.

Never mass-send your press release. Personalization is key.

Now that you have the exact journalist’s name and email address and the beat they write for, you can directly shoot your pitch their way. Your relevant pitch.

A tip: Make sure your subject title is catchy and straight-to-the-point. Also, if you can’t find the journalists’ name or contact details — the next best thing is to send your pitch to the general editorial team’s email.

Next, for your pitch. Here are some creative methods that I do to constantly make news when we don’t necessarily have anything new.

Newsjacking

Here’s something I recently love doing (and has yielded great results so far!)

Newsjacking refers to art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story. This is great because,

1. You are essentially riding on another story that has made news but…
2. You offer a fresh perspective. This can either be an opposing opinion that the previous story, or it can be a response/follow-up story that features quotes or expertise from your company/brand.
3. You have higher chance of your pitch being picked up by the same journalist who wrote the first story.

My suggestion is for you and your PR team to read the news more — flip more newspapers, browse more online news sites, subscribe to newsletters by media etc. Inject yourself with an abundance of news and your newsjacking skill will thrive!

A tip: Your follow-up story can’t be too far from the original story. So once you see any news you’d like to newsjack — do it quickly.

Ride on trends and festivity

Hustle hustle. Trends are ever-changing and unpredictable. It’s crucial for PR team to be aware of any local trends and cater your pitch to go along with what everyone else is interested in.

For example, when Pokemon Go trends was hitting the country, we immediately spearheaded a series of events called Dating Go — where singles come together to catch Pokemon. The events garnered many publicity, all because the game was trending everywhere — and we made the most of it.

Another thing is festivity. Always plan ahead and know any upcoming holidays, celebrations or commemorative occasions that you can leverage on. During International Women’s Day, we managed to secure some publicity for our Founder as she’s a notable woman entrepreneur in the region.

You can always respond to a particular trend or offer interesting news about your brand that relates to the trend or festivity to get journalists interested to write about you.

Look at your products or brands from another angle

This is where you can be more creative in your pitch execution, and my team gets increasingly more excited to come up with new ideas to peak media interest.

The key is a change in our mindset.

Everything can be newsworthy. It just depends on how you look at it.

If your product is a phone, does it mean that you can only pitch to tech publication? No. Some may be obvious, some not so. Think about:

1. The different features of the product. Aside from the main purpose of your product which I’m sure is already something known, are there other specific features that may not be so well-known that you can build on? Perhaps you can get your customers to give testimonials on those features? Stats on how many people have used that feature and the comparison of those who don’t and how it helps them? What about the journey of implementing certain features, how they came about and what kinds of resources you had to make it happen?
2. The creators/founders of your product. Aside from the typical entrepreneur and startup story, can you build another story? For instance, do they have interesting hobbies, stories, or other expertise that many people don’t know about? A travel publication recently featured our Founder as she is an avid traveller despite us not being a travel-related brand at all. Another publication also published a story about how our Founder spent her weekend. This is also great to establish more dimensions to them and create connection with the public (as if to say, hey, our founders don’t only talk about their business and product — but they also have a life outside of their work.)
3. Look at your organisation and its people. There can potentially be stars in your company who have unique stories to tell, how they came about getting this job. Since our company is mainly consisting of millennials, we pitched a story about working with millennials to HR publications.

Once you think about it this way, you can practically have tons of ideas of stories to pitch to get your brands out there in the media!

Tip: Practice makes perfect. What would help is to sit down with your PR team and brainstorm ideas — really throw them out there, shortlist the most feasible ones and try. More brains equal more ideas and more creativity as well.

Let me know how this works for you or if you have more ideas to share on how to get more publicity at no cost!