Media outreach has become an art form, and businesses that master this craft have a distinct advantage over their competitors. By effectively communicating their brand message and building relationships with journalists, businesses can boost their visibility, credibility, and ultimately, their bottom line. However, successful media outreach is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each business requires a tailored strategy that aligns with its brand voice, values, and target audience.
Whether you’re a startup looking to make a splash or an established corporation aiming to stay relevant, having a well-planned PR strategy is key.
In this article, we will delve into the art of media outreach and explore why it is crucial for every business. We will provide practical tips and insights on how to develop an effective PR strategy that not only captures the attention of journalists but also resonates with your target audience. So strap in and get ready to take your business to new heights with the power of media outreach.
Why Your Startup Needs Media Outreach and PR
Startups realize very quickly after launch that they need to build their brands, credibility, SEO, customer numbers, and revenues over and over again. Several founders will usually adopt a very disjointed process to try and build each of these things at a time using different methods.
Startups do not have huge teams trying to achieve all these things using various strategies. This is how media outreach can help you win at all of it without breaking the bank or stressing your small team out:
1. Brand awareness
Media outreach involves pitching and successfully placing an article in a popular blog or publication. Depending on the popularity of the publication that publishes your story, you can gain a lot of publicity. The more the readers, the higher your reach.
A powerful story or piece of content published where your target audience spends most of its time can have unwavering benefits. It can be shared across social media, emails, and other popular networks. In this way, your story could easily go viral.
Ultimately, a story with your company’s name and link on it will be out there getting shared across the web. As more people interact with it, they get to know about your startup too.
2. Scale
Growing a startup is a numbers game. You want to reach the most people within your target niche in a short duration. To scale your outreach efforts, reaching out to one potential lead after another is not the way to do it.
According to industry data, out of all the people you reach out to, only 10% will open your email. Additionally, only about 4% will take the time to reply to it. Even more depressing is the fact that less than 1% will successfully convert.
This means that to get 10 users, you may need to send hundreds of emails. Media outreach tips the scales in comparison.
Once your story lands in the right target publication or blog, users come to you in the tens or hundreds. This turns things in your favor such that you are not going out there to cold email potential leads. Instead, your potential leads come to you. This is the right place to be as a founder without a huge budget and time to spend on a manual cold calling process.
When potential leads come to you having been referred from popular sites, they ask questions, request free trials, ask to see a demo, etc. It is sweet when they are coming to you with these questions because all you need to worry about is setting up a great sales and customer support system. The scale and numbers at which your startup grows with media outreach can only be rivaled by oil-money-advertising; money that you most likely don’t have.
3. Credibility
For startups and large companies alike, customer confidence is key. You can only generate customer confidence if you give your customers a reason to trust you. Large and established companies can do this easily. Startups that have not built trust have zero customer confidence, and therefore barely any credibility.
When launching a new startup, you have to know that you will be attempting to win customers who already use alternative solutions. Due to the trust that customers have with their selected choice of brands, it becomes very difficult to convince customers to leave the products they have been using for years and convert to yours. It is at this point that media outreach helps.
Getting published in popular industry blogs and media ensures that you get credibility. While most media placements are not endorsements, the fact that a trusted publication is talking about you is a source of social proof.
Readers of these outlets trust journalists and bloggers. If they see a story published in their preferred outlets about your startup, they are bound to take you seriously.
In other words, media placements are indirect endorsements that build people’s trust in your brand, put your name in trusted media publications, and eventually result in leads who want to try out your product.
Consumers trust these publications and blogs because of the authenticity they reflect. Through media outreach and PR, you can align your startup with trusted target publications that will boost your credibility.
4. Search Engine Optimization
When you first launch your startup, your domain name has no authority. As per Google’s policies, domain names gain authority when they get links from relevant external sources. Once your startup gains domain authority, you can improve the chances of getting organic traffic from search engines. In order to do this, you need to start building links from credible and trusted sources.
Through media outreach, you can get high-quality links from trusted publications and widely-read blogs. Consequently, your domain authority will start to grow. Within a few weeks of getting published in many outlets, you will have a domain authority that commands several organic visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing!
Ideally, media outreach doesn’t just refer potential leads from trusted outlets. It is also the avenue via which you will get search engine referrals in plenty.
5. Ripple Effect
Interesting stories can create amazing returns. Usually, media outlets will compete on stories. However, for potentially viral stories the ripple effect can be huge. Even when you initially pitch the story to one popular publication, several other publications and blogs in your niche will eventually publish the story as well.
The result is thousands of leads referred to your site and hundreds of links gained to build your SEO. You can also boost your trust level among readers from several publications, and put your brand in front of the right audience.
These are the benefits that come out of media outreach and PR for your startup. Nonetheless, there are ground rules if you want to do this correctly:
a) You should build a media list of trusted target publications and blogs in your niche – This is where your potential customers hang out.
b) After that, find the right journalists and bloggers who will be interested in your story – These are usually journalists who are highly trusted by your readers in that niche. Pressfarm has a trusted platform where you can easily find 1 million+ journalists across various industries to pitch your story to.
c) Have a newsworthy story, product, launch, data or news item – Your story angle has to be something worth telling. You can consider many story angles and find something worth pitching in your media outreach.
d) Start sending out your email pitches. Here are some email pitch templates you might want to check out. Do reasonable follow-ups one or two days later. If you hear nothing back, it’s safe to assume that your target contacts are no longer interested.
How Pressfarm can help with this
Alternatively, Pressfarm can take care of all this work. As a startup, you want to focus on improving your product and getting feedback from the customers you already have. Let Pressfarm handle media outreach for you and earn you placement in media outlets and blogs in your industry.
With a professional press release, some compelling guest posts, and a creative media kit, you can make a splash in your industry. In addition to creating this content for you, Pressfarm can help you distribute it widely to put it in front of the right eyes. By submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility. With this distribution strategy, Pressfarm helps your brand to feature in relevant search results across different search engines.
Finally, with custom media lists and access to a database of 1 million+ media contacts, you can connect with the best journalists, bloggers and influencers in your niche. With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can take your media outreach to the next level.