Achieving the Media Attention You Deserve

Recently our company was instrumental in the building and construction of a new sustainable retailer.  This new building received a lot of local and trade media coverage; however, our involvement is getting overlooked.  Is it too late for us to get a piece of the pie?  If not, how should we approach the media?

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By Jennifer Manocchio

While you might have missed some opportunities, it is not too late to get the media attention you deserve.  Below are a few reactive and proactive steps you can take to ensure your company gets credit in the next media story.

1. Determine the Source: Read the stories already published by the media and see if you can determine where the communication breakdown is.  Is the sustainable retailer’s spokesperson not mentioning your company?  If you can identify the source and it is appropriate to contact this person, simple ask them to include your company in his or her talking points next time.  It probably wasn’t intentional and was simply an oversight.

2. Contact the media who already wrote stories: Simply requesting the media contact make a correction to their story isn’t going to help your cause very much.  Corrections tend to be small and overlooked.  Rather, read each story that was published and determine a different angle to pitch or a follow up story for the same media contact.  Since they already covered the story, you will know they consider it news.  Your pitch just has to be compelling enough to get the media contact interested a second time.

3. Develop your own pitch: Be proactive and develop your own case studies, pitches, news releases, etc. and distribute to media who haven’t covered the story.  Consider horizontal and vertical media.  Simply because it is a retail story doesn’t mean other vertical media will not be interested.

Want to learn more about achieving quality media coverage, contact me at 910.772.1688 or jennifer at sweeneypr.com.

Jim Sweeney

CEO & COO

Jim is a veteran of the agency industry and the founder of Sweeney. He is uncommonly passionate about the idea of creating and implementing insanely great marketing campaigns that achieve insanely great results. He pioneered the full-service, full-circle agency model and continues to forge new ideas in an ever-changing industry. And he is accessible to everyone about anything, seemingly all the time, serving as a mentor to all agency personnel and clients.