You need to have a strategy in place for marketing your business.
When it comes to public relations, doing nothing with positive publicity about your business is a fatal mistake almost everyone makes. Positive publicity creates a massive opportunity for you to create a lot of exposure and social proof. But by failing to complete a few important steps, your big opportunity can soon disappear.
The big day arrives when you get featured in Forbes
You wake up to the email you’ve been waiting for. Your featured article is live. The interview you did weeks ago is on the homepage. It already has a few thousand views, and shared hundreds of times.
You pump your fist. It’s a hit. It’s sure to go viral. But you check your site’s analytics. Nothing. Over the coming days you keep checking, and each time you’re left underwhelmed. You assumed this feature would result in emails, calls and sales. It’s a popular article on a big site, so went wrong? Nothing, other than your expectations.
It is no longer enough to “just” get featured
There was a time when getting featured on a big site would lead to a lot of traffic. Those days are dead. Today, there’s just too much content. It’s not to say getting featured on a site like Forbes isn’t valuable. Far from it. It’s a massive opportunity. But only if YOU leverage it. In the same way an author’s job isn’t done once they finish their book, your journey begins the moment your media placement goes live.
“Just” expecting massive success is like creating a new product but then refusing to market it. It doesn’t work like that. Yet you wouldn’t believe the amount of smart people I meet who think getting a media placement will solve all their problems. This is an outdated look on PR that has to stop.
This is why I work with my clients to not only get great media placement, but then leverage it for maximum impact. The day your feature goes live is just the beginning. What happens next is when you turn opportunity into success.
1. Shout about it
Don’t be afraid of self promotion. There’s no reward for those who get featured, but tell no one about it. You have to shout about it from the rooftops.
- Share it on your various social media platforms.
- Send a few emails to your mailing list.
- Link to it on your About Page and Homepage.
- Write a short blog post and link to it.
- Personally email your peers and colleagues about your media placement.
- Create Facebook Ads that drive traffic directly toward your feature.
These are just a few tips to leverage your media placement. There are many more, but they all have one thing in common: You taking the initiative. The more people you drive to it, the more the platform will promote and share it (through their own email and social media platforms, and “popular” sections on their site). Beyond this, it means your existing audience sees your media placement. Unless you tell them about it, they may never even realize it happened.
2. Share it with new and old clients
Good media placement can generate new leads and sales, but the real value I’ve seen over the years is how you use it to convert existing leads. Getting featured in a publication like Forbes provides amazing social proof. It showcases you as an authority, and may help get those stuck on the fence to pull the trigger. In fact, studies show social proof has a greater influence on consumers than price does.
So when your media placement goes live, personally reach out to all your warm leads. Link to the article and use it as an opportunity to spark a conversation. Leverage your newfound authority to convert your current leads into customers. And then reach out to old clients and do the same. This is something most people overlook., but I’ve witnessed my own clients see massive success by reconnecting with old customers.
3. Make it part of your long term marketing
This is something else almost everyone overlooks. Their media placement goes live, and they promote and share it for a few weeks. But then, nothing. Please, do not do this. Chances are your feature will be as relevant in two years as it is today. So, use it:
- In your brochures.
- Inside your marketing materials.
- As part of your pitch decks and onboarding processes.
Good media placement doesn’t have an end-date. Used effectively, it can continue to help you convert and close potential leads for years to come.
4. Track the data
The moment your media placement goes live, track the impact it has on your brand.
- How much traffic does it drive to your site each week or month?
- How many social media shares/mentions do you recieve?
Unless you track the impact, you don’t know the impact it has. It’s all just guesswork. So track the data and make informed, educated decisions. Before long, you’ll learn which media platforms have the greatest impact and which content creates the biggest engagement.
Today, it’s easier than ever to track your media placements:
- Use a tool like Snip.ly to track clicks and traffic (as well as using this for retargeting ads).
- Create a specific landing page for the media placement and track its traffic.
- With a monitoring tool like Sprout Social, you can track your reach, mentions and shares.
Tracking your media placement allows you to leverage it further, by doubling down on what works and getting rid of what doesn’t. Over time, you’ll perfect your PR and marketing.
