5 Ways to Make PR Profitable for Your Business: Best in Class Insights from Anya Meyerowitz
Doing your own PR is empowering, confidence-boosting and business-shifting. It can literally be the difference between looking at your dream life on a vision board, and living it, but you need to be intentional.
In this Best in Class Insights article, Journalist and PR Coach, Anya Meyerowitz, shares her expertise with 5 ways to make PR profitable for your business. Over to Anya…
For over 13 years, I’ve been a journalist and editor across many of the UK’s top publications - think Red Magazine, Stylist, The Sunday Times, Tatler, etc. During this time, I’ve seen how being featured in the press can take a business from, ‘Ooh, this is going well’ to ‘OMG, I’ve really made it!’.
I’m talking about ‘retiring early, having created a meaningful legacy,’ made it, ‘I now spend six months living in the South of France and tending to my vegetable garden’ made it, and many other vast and varied examples.
I imagine that at this point, you’re picturing your very own version of making it. And it’s either making you feel warm and fuzzy inside, or it’s churning up a sense of longing in your guts.
Either way, whether it excites or terrifies you, we all want to feel like we’ve made it. And to ensure your media outreach helps get you there, you need to be intentional about making your PR profitable for you.
In fact, that’s exactly why I became a PR Coach, so I could show more female business owners like you to make sure your PR helps you take conscious leaps toward achieving ultimate goals.
Below you’ll find my top five easy-to-implement tips to review the profitability of your PR.
KNOW WHERE YOUR IDEAL CLIENT SITS
Clients often tell me that they’d like to be featured in a magazine or on a TV programme because a family member reads it or because they used to watch it during a particularly nostalgic period of their life. That’s a really valid reason, but it isn’t necessarily a profitable one.
If your ideal client doesn’t read that magazine or watch that programme, then being featured there isn’t going to be profitable for you. You need to make sure that your coverage is aligned with your clients.
2. SET OBJECTIVES AND CHECK IN WITH THEM
PR is exciting and actually getting featured in the press is even more so. I get it because I still feel a buzz when I see my name in print somewhere or mentioned on the radio. But setting objectives rather than just bolting out of the gate with pitching is key to assessing whether your PR coverage is profiting you in the way you would like. You need to be able to measure whether your outreach is moving you toward your end goal.
For example, if you’ve been featured in several magazines and don’t feel it’s achieving anything, change things up, pitch elsewhere or pitch a different style of expert content.
3. MAKE THE JOURNEY EFFORTLESS
As your brand is mentioned online more frequently and across various websites, people are more likely to find and visit your site. This also means that as high authority sites link back to your website, your SEO ranking will increase and, with it, the number of leads and, ultimately, sales.
A key part of this conversion is ensuring that your voice stays consistent between media coverage and your own channels (website, social etc.). Do a regular audit to make sure that the way you speak to readers, viewers and listeners in the press is synonymous with the way you speak to people on your own platforms.
Potential clients who find you through the press want to feel that the journey into your world is seamless and that they’re getting the same person they fell for in that piece of media coverage they saw you in.
4. PLASTER YOUR PR EVERYWHERE
The brilliant thing about PR is that your ideal client doesn’t even need to read, watch or listen to you in the press to be convinced by it. Maximise the number of people who poke their head into your corner of the internet and then decide to stay by adding ‘as featured in’ to your social media bios, your LinkedIn, your website and any marketing material you create.
If people see you’re aligned with a household name, they’ll know, like and trust you as an immediate byproduct of that.
5. DON’T LET COVERAGE EXPIRE
Just because you were featured in an article for Forbes six weeks, six months or even six years ago doesn’t mean that you should stop talking about it. Make sure to continually remind email subscribers, social media followers, etc., that you’ve been covered in the press by linking back to your coverage where relevant.
For example, ‘It’s xxxx time of the year again and so time to start thinking about xxxxx. As I mentioned in my article for Forbes xxxxx’. Getting featured in the press shows you are a thought leader and an authority in your field, so don’t let people forget it.
THE FINAL WORD
Doing your own PR is empowering, confidence-boosting and business-shifting. It can literally be the difference between looking at your dream life on a vision board and living it, but you need to be intentional.
Forget sending out pitches willy-nilly or getting featured, telling your mum, and then forgetting about it altogether. Follow it through right to the end, make your press coverage work for you and you won’t need to work as hard ever again.
CONNECT WITH ANYA.
Anya Meyerowitz is a journalist & PR Coach with over 13 years of experience in the industry. She partners with female founders to build and help execute exciting PR strategies that help you elevate your business, generate more sales, catapult your credibility and generally get more visible so that those big opportunities you’ve been dreaming of find you, rather than you having to chase them.