How to get good press

Few of us can afford to employ a PR company to get the word out about our new products or services. If you’re lucky you may be able to ask a friend to do it for you but for the most part the job of marketing comes down to you (along with most other things, right?)

It can be a daunting task. Once you’ve mailed all your blogger friends and asked them to post about your new ‘thing’ and pulled in a few favours from some sites, you may be running out of ideas to get yourself noticed.

You could try online advertising. Create a Google Ad campaign and put a daily rate of $5 to ensure you don’t break the bank, or create a banner and do an exchange if you have a high traffic site of your own to bargain with. We’ve all been there.

But if you’ve got no budget for marketing and you can’t afford single display ads or some of the ad networks out there, then you’re going to have to pull some lively rabbits out of the hat if your idea is ever to feature in the favourites of more than just you and your mum.

But there is another way to get yourself noticed - print media. Pah! I hear you say - no one reads magazines anymore. Not true. The magazine industry is still huge, especially when it comes to niche industries. Also, people are not exclusively either online or off. I bet some of you read Wired, and Business 2.0 as well as Vitamin, A List Apart and Signal vs Noise. Magazine circulation figures may not be what they once were, but they still offer valuable marketing real estate for your idea. Not least because they give you the opportunity to connect with potential clients who are not exclusively part of the online world.

So, assuming that you’re not Google and the press isn’t forming an orderly queue to interview you then here are some ideas on how to get mentioned in print media. And by print media I mean magazines, newspapers, trade journals, fanzines and well, even PDF magazines.

Research

Do some research. Read as many magazines and newspapers as you can. If you can’t afford to buy them stand in Borders all day reading them. But either way find out which covers your chosen market. And remember we are talking about your potential customers’ chosen market not yours, so hands off Mac-Porn Monthly.

With magazines it’s helpful to be able to pinpoint the ‘market leader’ within your chosen sector. And by that I mean the most respected and successful magazine. Don’t be fooled by flashy statements like:”Number one magazine for…” this is an empty statement. Look for “The Best Selling magazine in…” - get concrete figures for circulation from relevant bureaux (in the US, Magazine Publishers of America¹, in the UK, the Audit Bureau of Circulations²). Check out how many pages there are in the magazine compared to its competitors: the thickest magazine is more likely to be the market leader. And, nitpicky I know, count how many editorial pages there are versus advertising pages. The more ad pages, the better the magazine is probably doing (financially), which is normally a good indication of how the magazine is viewed in the marketplace. Look at the quality of the adverts: are the big players in your space advertising in this magazine?

Get to know your publication

Buy three issues of the magazine and read it cover to cover.

1. Observe which sections change month on month and which don’t.
2. Make a note of what the cover theme is each month and which words or themes are repeated. Anything that is repeated time and time again on a cover means it’s a core topic for that magazine.
3. From your own research form a picture of who the reader is.
4. Create a profile of a typical advertiser and who they are trying to reach - this will help you understand where most of the magazine’s ad revenue comes from - and also who is currently successful in this market.
5. Imagine your product or service appearing in the mag. Does it fit? Will the readers be interested in it? Can they afford it?

Once you have chosen the publication that is perfect for you and your idea then you are ready to begin your marketing onslaught. First things first: find out who is responsible for which areas of editorial. This may not be clear from the editorial panel so ring the magazine to find out. Speak to the secretary if you can’t speak to the team. The same goes for a newspaper or indeed any other media.

Armed with this information, there are four main ways that you can get the attention of a publication: as an Expert in your field, as an Ideas Machine, by sending a Press Release, or by requesting a Review. We’ll deal with each one in turn.

The Expert

If you are indeed an expert in the topic the magazine is covering then offer yourself up as an expert in the field.

1. Write an e-mail setting out why you are an expert
2. Offer to write for the magazine
3. Offer to be an ‘expert’ who is willing to give quotes or opinions on news stories or feature topics
4. If they ask you to write, or to submit some copy, make sure you fulfil the whole brief (that means headlines!) and send the copy in by 9am on the day of the deadline.

The Ideas Machine

All magazine editors are busy and they need to fill pages with good feature ideas. If you send in enough ideas, one of them will get chosen and the likelihood is they will ask you to write it.

1. Send in all types of ideas (interviews, features, Q&A, columns, tutorials)
2. Don’t write the feature, just send a synopsis of around 100 words
3. Don’t send in news. They already know about it
4. Ask them which ideas they liked and which were way off the mark. Fine-tune them next time to hit the mark.
5. Be polite and don’t hassle the magazine team. If they don’t go for an idea even when you’ve given a good explanation of why you think it’s right for them, it’s simply not going to happen this time.

The Press Release

If you don’t know how to layout a standard press release find one online and copy the format. Use a release from a large and credible company in the chosen industry. Take a look at this from Adobe³ as an example. Bear in mind that US press releases are laid out differently than say European ones. Choose one layout and stick with it. Remember that to write a press release you must have some ‘news’ to announce. There’s nothing worse than a ‘non’ press release so make sure you have something to say. Here are some dos and don’ts.

Do:

1. Check it for spelling and grammar mistakes
2. Ask a friend to read it through
3. Put your contact details at the bottom
4. Put a link where you can download your logo and photos online
5. Attach the press release as a Word document but also copy and paste the text into the body of the e-mail
6. Send a follow up e-mail in a few days asking if you can provide them with any extra information or images.
7. Check the magazine the following month. They may have used it without telling you.

Don’t:

1. Title your e-mail ‘press release’. Write in the subject line the gist of the release, for example: ‘New photo-sharing website launched’.
2. Send the same e-mail to lots of different magazines - personalise it instead.
3. Cc: your e-mail to the editor as well as the section editor.
4. Attach large image files
5. Call the magazine to find out if they got your press release - they did.
6. Get pissed off if they use the press release without telling you.

The Review

Be sure that your product is in tip-top condition, fully finished, out of Beta and completely bug-less before you offer it up for review. The last thing you need is a bad review.

1. Find out who the Reviews Editor is
2. Make a list of the features that make your product perfect for the readers of your chosen magazine.
3. Ask yourself ‘is my product affordable for the readers of this magazine’?
4. Call the reviews editor and ’sell it’. Construct a tight argument as to why the readers will be interested in the product. Leave no room for them to say no.
5. Give the reviewer a full, unrestricted account
6. Help him or her set it up, or do it for them.
7. Ask which issue it will be appearing in and when the ‘press day’ is for that issue, i.e. the deadline for sending the issue to press.
8. Call the day before to ask if all is well and if they need anything else.
9. Don’t ask to see the review or what the score was.
10. If you want your review to go into a specific issue (maybe to coincide with the launch) then send the product in at least 2 weeks before press day. Press day is usually 3-4 weeks before actually publication (i.e. available on the shelf).

You might be thinking, ‘it seems like a lot of work for a small mention in a magazine’. And you’d be right if that’s all it was. However, it is worth the effort. It may only be one mention in a fairly small magazine but you can use it to get more coverage. You can take cuttings, extract quotes, use logos, put ‘as featured in Blah Blah magazine’ on your site - basically milk it for all it’s worth. This will encourage others to feature your product too. You never know who will be reading that magazine - a potential customer yes, but also an advertiser, investor, another journalist, etc. Thus the wheel is in motion and eventually, given enough column inches, the magazines, newspapers and TV stations will be coming to you rather than the other way around. Okay, you may need to work a little harder for the TV stations!

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URLs in this post:

1. Magazine Publishers of America: http://www.magazine.org
2. Audit Bureau of Circulations: http://www.abc.org.uk
3. Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200604/040306PDFPrintEngine.html
4. Digg it: http://digg.com/business_finance/how_to_get_good_press