Free publicity is just what you want, but nothing is ever really ‘free’. It takes a lot of planning and effort to develop good relations with the media. But it can definitely be a profitable investment.
Worth The Effort
Being featured in your local, or even national, media can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a hospitality business. Hotels and restaurants are intrinsically interesting to a wide range of consumers and generally have a high profile in the local community. A sustained effort with the media can help you create word-of-mouth recommendations and a clear personality. Good local relationships can also be helpful should you ever need help to combat some local publicity that might not be to your advantage. No, any publicity is not good publicity!
As with any project, it takes time and effort to generate the circumstances under which you can create free publicity. This publicity can be extremely helpful when combined with your other efforts (direct contact and direct marketing) to generate extra revenue for your business.
The main difficulty is measuring the results of your efforts. If you do everything yourself then you only incur the opportunity cost of all the time spent with journalists. Traditionally results are measured in the number of column inches in media. This is a very subjective way of doing it and does not really prove the impact on your bottom line. Particularly if working with an agency, it is far better to set some specific objectives and then see whether they are achieved or not. Good Public Relations (PR) (although here we are only dealing with media relations) works well in combination with your other sales and promotional activities (a new launch for example) where you can then measure the total outcome from the total input of costs and effort.
Speak to any journalist and they will tell you how many hundreds of press releases come into their organisation. The majority are boring and hardly get read. Make sure that yours are in the top three per cent that make it.
What Do Journalists Need?
Journalists need to fill their papers, magazines, radio and TV with interesting information. This is the bottom line. If you can help them with their task then you are guaranteed coverage of your hotel.
The media is a business just like the one you are in. They are in competition with each other, they have targets and they are evaluated to see if they have been successful. Come up with something that is quirky or creative and you will be at the front of the queue.
How To Meet Those Needs
You can meet the needs of journalists by giving them what they want. This depends on the media that they are employed by. You have to make sure that the business editor only gets business news and that the women’s magazines only get news related to women’s issues.
You have to deliver them the information in the way that they want it: some will want e-mails and some faxes.
- Newspapers and magazines want items that are interesting, informative and educational.
- Radio works better with news that is a bit more unusual or off the wall.
- TV needs anything that looks interesting and is newsworthy from the viewers’ point of view.
How To Pitch
Editors and journalists are busy people, particularly around deadline (usually from 2pm onwards for daily morning papers) so check to make sure you avoid this stressful time. Nevertheless the lifeblood of any publication is information; they really do need your relevant story.
- Pitch in about 20 seconds with something newsworthy either on the phone personally or to voicemail. Check that they are ready for your pitch.
- Don’t sound as if you are reading from a script.
- Make your story exciting and relevant to their needs.
- Include statistics if you can. Surveys sell.
- Follow up immediately if asked for more information.
- Maybe send a pitch letter first, rather than a press release.
- Try to involve the journalist prior to the event – maybe they can try out your new spa prior to the official launch?