Features are a huge opportunity to increase clients' coverage in print media
BY: MATTHEW WHITE | published on Bizcommunity.com
The most under-utilised area of opportunity for PR professionals in South Africa to increase their clients' media coverage is the thousands of print media features and surveys published every year.
Unless you are already active in this field, you may not realise just how big this opportunity is. TimS, a South African print media feature-tracking service (www.tims.co.za) maintains databases of features relevant to seven broad areas of interest from Business & Finance through Information Technology to Lifestyle, Leisure and Sports. In its Business & Finance database alone, it currently lists almost 500 scheduled features.
What makes this such a great opportunity for PR is that, by the nature of the operation, feature writing is among the toughest, most pressured and least glamorous journalistic disciplines. As such, the scribes who labour in this field tend to be more open than many of the colleagues to professional PR.
But before rushing off to phone your friendly feature writer, here are a few ideas that will help you to increase your penetration of this market.
The first rule of feature supplements
First understand that features are far more often born in the advertising sales department than in the newsroom. And while the people who write and edit them are real journalists, the features happen only when there is advertising support for them.
That does not — or should not — mean that only advertisers' copy gets used. In any publication worth its salt, a real story will be preferred to an advertiser's puff. Of course, there is nothing stopping an advertisers offering the writer a good story, which will almost certainly get preference over a story of equal merit from a non-advertiser.
Here's how it usually works. The sales people are constantly looking for ideas that will attract advertisers. They liaise with, typically, the features editor to develop a feature brief and appoint a writer. They then dangle this brief before likely prospects, and if they get sufficient bites to make the feature commercially viable — and only then — the writer gets to work. It doesn't happen earlier than this in case the feature doesn't attract sufficient advertising and has to be abandoned.
Once the go-ahead is given, the writer typically has only a short time to produce the copy and here's where the PR professional can prove immensely helpful.
The writing rules
First, a caveat. Don't waste the writer's limited time unless your client has a worthwhile story that falls squarely within the ambit of the specific feature brief.
Contact the writer early, give brief details of what you have to offer and find out how they prefer to work. Some writers are happy to base stories on a well-written news release, others prefer to conduct their own interviews. Even in the case of a live interview, always supply the journo with written information containing all the material facts relating to your client and the story. This does not have to be in story form... a summary of key facts is often more useful to the writer.
Email is generally more useful than hard copy as the writer can cut and paste from it, but depending on circumstances you may also want to supply the writer with hard copy.
Tracking feature opportunities
This will be routine for the experienced PR person. What isn't routine, however, is keeping a handle on all the relevant feature opportunities. With so many publications, how do you keep track without spending most of your time on the phone.
The simplest and most cost-effective way is by subscribing to a feature tracking service, where they do exactly that. TIMS database manager Jean McCallum has spent much of her time over the past six years developing her media contacts to ensure her data is kept rigorously up to date.
"In the early days, some of my media contacts considered me a nuisance, but once they realise there are benefits to them in what we do they are extremely co-operative," she said. "As well as publicising their features, we save the media contacts many phone calls from people all asking the same questions about the same features."
For PR professionals, the service offers even more benefits. Even when they know the media contact, collating the information and maintaining its accuracy (when publishing and deadline dates, as well as other info, can change several times between a feature's announcement and its eventual publication) is a time-consuming, frustrating and quite costly exercise.
[18 Jul 2004 08:30]
About the author
Matthew White is a freelance writer, e-commerce entrepreneur, and a former features editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
The Second Most Important Task in PR
BY: AUBREY SUSSENS
Prospecting for new clients is the second-most important task a PR executive can do. The reason is simple. PR is a fluid business; clients come and go, and an agency can count itself fortunate if it can keep a client for more than three years. Because of this, seeking new clients is a secondary responsibility of every single account executive.
Just as there are usually many routes to any destination, the one that has provided me with the greatest rewards is the trade show. Most trade shows have media partners, and we always do our best to get good coverage for existing clients in the previews and reviews they publish. It is routine for us to visit clients at the shows to demonstrate our interest in, and support for, their activities.
Once hands have been shaken, backs patted and kind words exchanged, the work of prospecting begins This is what I teach my junior colleagues:
Find a quiet place to sit down. Go through the exhibitor list and check each entry against the coverage in the preview publications. Assign the coverage an A, B, C or 0 rating, with A being good, B fair, C minimal and 0 zero.
Then walk around the exhibition, identify the C and 0 companies, that is those that have receive scant press coverage, and try to gauge which of them are the best prospects. Any company with a good product or service line is a client you would like to have. A company with a pedestrian product or service line might well prove to be more trouble than it’s worth. Similarly a company whose stand looks amateurish most likely could not afford to employ a professional exhibition company. and so probably could not afford us either.
Once the prospects are selected — there will be at least two or three on every show of any size — wait for a favourable opportunity to approach the most senior person present. That is likely to be the person showing most authority; he or she is also likely to be the best dressed, and possibly oldest.
Before making an approach you need to bear a few things in mind. First, be clear about exactly what you are going to say. Don’t, whatever else you do, be so crass as to interrupt when that person is busy with someone; you just may derail a possible deal. Also don’t loiter; if the target is engaged move on to the next prospect, then come back. At most trade shows stand attendants spend more time standing around than talking to potential customers, so you’ll get your chance if you are patient.
Once the target is available, move in quickly. Avoid giving the impression that you are a possible customer, you aren’t, and you don’t want to disappoint them. It is up to you to lead the conversation, which might go something like this:
Me: “Hello, I’m Aubrey Sussens. May I ask what your impressions of the show are so far?”
Target: “Oh, er, so far so good, I think. Early days yet, of course.”
Me: “Of course. I was wondering because we have a client exhibiting here, XY Widgets on stand B23. They are very pleased with the visitors they have seen so far.”
Target: “Oh, good for them.”
Me: “Fortunately we were able to get them very good coverage in the show preview” — flipping open the magazine to show the page — “so many potential customers were predisposed to stop by the stand.”
There really isn’t much of an answer they can make to this, so I press on.
Me: “Does your company have a PR agency to handle such work for you.”
There are three possible answers to this:
Target: “Yes”.
Me: “Forgive me for speaking frankly, but they have certainly missed a trick or three here. I’d really like to speak to your MD or marketing manager. I can seen that you have an interesting product/service line and I’m sure we could help you grow your sales.”
At this stage, he may be groping for a reply, so follow up quickly.
Me: “Here’s my card. May I have yours? Who would be the best person in your company to speak to about this. Don’t worry, I won’t waste their time and this might be a great opportunity for both of us.”
And don’t worry about moving in on a competitor. If the existing agency has failed to get decent coverage for their client, they deserve to be moved in on.
The second answer the target could give is “No”.
In which case I say: “You know, good PR is worth its weight in gold. Done well it is far more cost effective than advertising or direct marketing. I’m sure it would be worth both of our companies’ time if I spoke to your MD or marketing manager ...” etc.
The third possible answer is: “I don’t know.” This tells me that I am dealing with a junior. Even so, I respond enthusiastically: “You know, good PR is worth its weight in gold...” etc.
The important things are to get the target’s business card and the name of the person in the company who, the target believes would have the most influence on engaging a PR agency. Once you have got this information follow up quickly. I typically phone and ask for the influencer’s PA or secretary, I then ask if they are permitted to make appointments for the boss. If yes, I ask them to make one for me. If the boss handles his/her own appointments, I ask to speak with that person. Very rarely have I been asked to write requesting an interview, but it has happened and I have followed through.
Once the appointment is made I try to find out as much about the prospective company as possible, so that I am well armed for the negotiation that follows.
This is hard work, but that, of course, is the foundation of success. I’d like to say we win over half of the prospects but it’s more like one in 15 or 20. Still that’s a hell of a lot better than cold calling or direct mail, to which, if you are lucky, you might get a one half or one percent response.
Oh, I mentioned that prospecting is the second-most important task a PR executive can do. The most important task, of course, is keeping current clients satisfied.
NOTE: As well as providing a comprehensive listing of events together with contact details, TimS’ Conferences, Exhibitions, Trade Shows & Events List:- Provides information on event media partners, where these have been appointed; media partners typically publish event previews and/or reviews, and are open to editorial submission;
- Indicates when conference and seminar papers are being called for, thus providing PR practitioners with opportunities to spotlight key individuals at client companies.