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The front page of The AFR is still seen as the Holy Grail when it comes to financial services public relations (PR), unless you’re Tony Abbott between elections who’d probably happily give the space to someone else. However as we all know, print media is dying and companies must look at the many other channels available that can amplify their PR beyond becoming tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.Once you’ve nailed your media relations, it is a matter of asking “where to next” in terms of getting your message out.
Amplify
Amplifying your PR starts with thinking carefully about your overall strategy to drive conversions.Outline the strengths of your product or service, look for the gap in the market and assess how your offering can solve your customers’ problems.
Focus your messaging on related industry issues and the bigger picture. Media and influencers are more likely to cover your story if they can connect it to a broader topical issue where there is the potential to educate or progress the discussion.
Most importantly, get ready to elevate the basics with a number of other strategies. If executed and implemented successfully, they will help you create a newsworthy story that has the potential to drive interest beyond earned media coverage, and ultimately win sales.
Use paid digital to attract people to your traditional media
Looking outside the financial services sector for companies doing it well, consider the example of an e-commerce company that generated $30k worth of sales from one article on Buzzfeed, a huge deal for an e-commerce company selling low-end consumer products.
The company used Google Analytics to track the amount of traffic Buzzfeed was driving to the website and how many of the people who read the article then went on to buy the product.
To fully leverage the power of the article, the company ran a paid media campaign using AdWords, which meant they could keep the article in circulation and in front of people to reinforce the earned media. This added $22k additional revenue as a result – an extremely powerful outcome.
The moral of this story? Track with analytics then amplify your best performing PR with paid media.
How it can work for you too
BlueChip worked with Debtto10k, an online debt-management service start-up, to develop and execute a marketing communications strategy for the business that aimed to increase brand awareness among potential members, increase traffic to Debt To 10k’s website, and grow its membership base (sign ups).
Challenge: we had a limited budget and little resources.
Our approach included:
- Assessed best fit digital and traditional tools, keeping the budget in mind
- Developed initial content plan aligned to Debt To 10k’s broader communication plan
- Created a consumer focused media release promoting Debt To 10k’s services
- Placed exclusive interviews with mainstream consumer media outlets (AAP & News.com.au) to drive web hits from the target audience
- Aligned overall branding and social media content with media coverage to amplify key messages and maintain engagement
Our results included:
- Mainstream media coverage syndicated to over 20 publications including Yahoo, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, News.com.au and The Herald Sun
- Over 60 new sign ups to Debt To 10k’s website in the 24 hours following publication of each media article.
- This figure is comparable to the sign ups generated through an initial radio campaign (spend of +$7k over 1 month)
- Amplified coverage on Debt To 10k’s social media channels
- Created targeted messaging to maintain engagement with new members / capture leads
And all this without any paid media spend… imagine what more?
So get your amplification hats on now! It is a simple strategy that can have amazing results for your company beyond traditional PR.
