by Felicity Cowie, author of Exposure
In my earlier blog for LoA, What Exactly is Media Relations, I said there are at least eight mega benefits of media relations for any business to consider:
Gain exposure with zero to low financial investment
Build credibility
Build pipeline faster
Get highly valuable shareable content
Find product-market fit
Become a thought leader and ‘category queen’
Get funding and more funding
Gain external validation
In this series of blogs, running across the next eight weeks, I want to give you more detail and tools to gain each of these benefits.
Let’s look now at the first one - how you can gain positive exposure for your business with zero to low financial investment, using media relations.
Unpaid media coverage has none of the up-front costs of advertising, marketing campaigns or events. Even social media channels, free to set up, often require budget to acquire a consistent stream of meaningful content if they’re to gain traction.
However, just one strong piece of media coverage will win you exposure to thousands if not millions of readers or viewers and is ‘evergreen’; you can showcase it on your website for years. What you do have to invest is some time to prepare and offer journalists something they’re willing to report on. I recommend focusing on 3 things.
Where you have control over your advertising, campaigns and events you have none over how journalists independently report the information you give them. For this reason, it’s wise to upskill yourself to help you best navigate those risks and gain the coverage you want.
You can read more about all of this and gain tools to do it all in my new book Exposure: Insider Secrets to Make Your Business a Go-To Authority for Journalists. The Media Toolkit, which forms the second part of the book, includes everything you need to successfully gain exposure. Get Exposure
Felicity Cowie has worked as a media relations trouble-shooter for some of the world’s leading organisations and is a former BBC News and Panorama journalist. She’s worked on 100,000 story pitches from both sides. She now makes her insights and tactics available to the founders and leaders of today’s early-stage businesses, helping them gain exposure and competitive advantage. She is the author of Exposure: Insider Secrets to Make Your Business a Go-To Authority for Journalists. More information www.themediarelationscoach.com
More articles by Felicity
