How To Sell PR For Fun And Profit
By Paul Entin, as published in ADV Magazine - Advertising and Marketing, Philadelphia, March 1997
Publicity may be the most misunderstood weapon in the marketing communications arsenal. It's nebulous. It's intangible. And the results are unpredictable and immeasurable. This explains why many marketing professionals encounter resistance when recommending publicity for their Clients. While nothing else delivers credibility with the impact of a focused, well-crafted feature article or press release, it's meaningless if the Client doesn't understand how publicity helps achieve his/her goals.
If you educate your Clients to the following four "principauls," you'll find selling PR to be more fun and more profitable.
1) Be sure your Client understands how PR differs from advertising.
Paid advertising helps position your company or product and, over time, tells the marketplace that you offer something they may someday need. But most research indicates that consumers find advertising to be less than truthful, often deceptive and sometimes downright misleading. Consider how many food products tout "Fat Free" and "Lite," for example, and it's easy to understand why many consumers mistrust advertising.
Information published in newspapers and magazines or broadcast on TV or the radio, however, appears editorially endorsed and is believed to be true. It's credible. Consider the impact of a positive review in the New York Times Book Review, for example. And consider that most published material is not written by editors and reporters, but by professional public relations firms. According to the New Jersey Press Association, 90% of its members use and depend on articles and press releases submitted by these firms.
In submitting these articles and press releases for publication, control over what is actually published must be sacrificed. While we enjoy complete control over our advertising messages, we have no such control over the publication of publicity. Editors and producers control what is published and what is not. In fact, it is possible that a press release sent to 100 or more publications may never be published (although I've never encountered that situation). It is also possible that a two-page press release may result in the publication of a single paragraph, or less. Or material may be printed erroneously, positioning the Client in a poor light. It is imperative that your Client understands you cannot guarantee placement nor can you control what finally reaches the airwaves or the newsstands.
2) Personal relationships do not guarantee publication.
Personal relationships guarantee your phone call will be returned. The reason PR earns publication and helps achieve Client goals is because it's newsworthy, timely, well-written, and well-presented. Use a hard-hitting headline that demands editorial attention with benefit-oriented copy that addresses the needs of the readership or audience. Sell it that way, on the merits of your work, and you add value to your PR services while differentiating your company from your competitors.
Realize that relationships are based on experiences. If you continually present editors with hard-hitting concepts and well-crafted written materials that really appeal to their readership, and then you deliver on what you promise, without stretching their deadlines, they will begin to rely on you. When they're conceptualizing an article, or have space to fill or when they need a quote, guess who gets the call.
Now that your Client understands the inner workings of publicity, and is eager to use it to his/her company's advantage, it will have to be sold upstairs.
3) Show your Client how to justify the cost internally.
In their book, Strategic Selling, Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman point out that every organization has an economic decision maker, the person who controls the money. Often, this person believes in numbers and documented facts. To this person, allocating money to a PR program which cannot guarantee an immediate, tangible return is just outrageous.
To stimulate his/her buy in, establish specific goals based on numbers he/she can understand. Numbers that can be tracked, analyzed and printed out on a spreadsheet. If your industrial Client operates in the trade media, base your goal on sales inquiries. If your home building Client seeks traffic through their model homes, base your goal on the number of prospects who visit their communities. If you succeed in creating and implementing an effective PR program, meeting these goals will be an easy task and will soon cease to be an issue.
4) Show your Client the results.
Hire a good clipping service. Then present your Client with a binder bulging with clippings. He/she can even keep sales inquiries in the binder as further evidence of your good work. If your value is ever questioned internally, or if new personnel join their team, your Client has tangible evidence in your support.
When you and your Client establish specific goals and expectations, and when your Client is educated to how publicity drives his/her marketing communications program and multiplies exposure and impact, you have the makings of a positive, long-term relationship that profits all parties. Client, Client's customer, agency, editor, producer, audience and readership.
--Paul Entin is president of epr, a full service marketing and PR firm based in Hunterdon County, NJ.