Are you an in-house marketer or comms specialist who has tried to get earned media for your company but failed in that mission? If so, this article will help you enhance your PR skills and eventually bring better results. We have worked with hundreds of companies and learned what the most common mistakes are that companies make in their PR campaigns. We’re happy to share our key learnings.
1. Think about newsworthiness
Here’s a cold fact: journalists don’t find your company as interesting as you do. That’s why they’re usually not interested in your new hires, product launches, or financial growth. There are always exceptions, of course, but in most cases, these kinds of news are not interesting to journalists. One of the most common mistakes in PR campaigns is a lack of newsworthiness; companies don’t know what the media want to talk about.
Often, companies’ press releases are pure marketing. They’re explaining the cool stuff they’re doing and how amazing they are, but they don’t offer anything relatable, concrete results, or a real news angle. Your product launch isn’t compelling if you’re not a global tech giant. Your new COO hire isn’t thrilling if you’re not a well-known brand. Your financial growth is not relevant if you’re not a publicly traded company or your growth is not extraordinary. But the good thing is that there are different ways to make these news more interesting (read section 4).
2. Reserve time for pitching
When executing PR campaigns, companies often forget a crucial part of the whole PR process, which is the pitching phase. Marketers and comms people might spend a lot of time crafting the press release, but then they shoot it out with a press release distribution tool to hundreds of media outlets and hope for the best. That’s not the best way to do it unless you’re a well-known brand with big news. Take as much time as you can and pitch your press release to handpicked journalists. When they show interest in your story, send the press release to them under embargo. It doesn’t bring you results every time, but this is how you can build your media relations.
3. Find your VIP journalists
Another crucial part of the PR process is building a high-quality media list. You can use tools, but you also need to do manual work and read the news. That way, you’re able to find the journalists who are interested in your field and the topics you’re covering in your press release. There are all kinds of journalists, but only a few of them are the right matches for you.
4. You don’t always need a press release
Did you know that you don’t always need to write a press release when there’s something cool happening in your company? In fact, crafting a press release is not always necessary and sometimes it might even be a bad idea, because press releases should be like news articles that can be published in the media with only minor changes. Consider doing just a pitch where you can tell interesting stories unofficially and in a more casual way. If we look at the examples from the first section of this blog, it’s easy to say that most of the time, these kinds of news should mainly be interview pitches. For example, a new COO hire might have an unusual background, they/them might have made mistakes that helped him/her learn valuable lessons, they/them might have exciting hobbies, and lots of other things that you can’t use as a news angle in a press release. So forget the press release and create a compelling pitch that aims to get a large, person-focused article instead of a small piece of news about the new hire.
5. Be strategic, be patient
One unsuccessful PR campaign might be enough to make you quit trying to get media coverage. We have seen lots of companies who have tried once and then put PR at the bottom of their to-do list. The fact is, you need to be patient and build your media relations for a long time. Then, in the long run, you will see guaranteed results. The key to successful long-term PR operations is strategic work, like in almost every aspect of business operations. Think about what makes you interesting in the eyes of journalists and what kind of media coverage you want to see. Then set your OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), create a step-by-step plan, and follow that plan.
