Public relations is an important and power lead generation tactic for professional service firms. The press release is still a powerful tool for reaching out to the media. Just like any other marketing tactic, we need to be strategic about how we use press releases in order to effectively generate leads.
In order to be strategic about PR, we need to focus on the needs of our audience. In the case of PR, writers want to provide useful information to their audience. Therefore, the important question is, how can we help them help their readers?
This requires us to spend some time learning about writers and their audience. Luckily, the internet makes this relatively easy. Do you target writers have blogs? Do you read their articles on-line? Using tools like Google Alerts can help you find and keep up journalists who write about your subject matter expertise.
Take the time to learn about them, what they write about. Figure out how you can become a valued source for them. Work at becoming the person they turn to when they have a question about your area of expertise rather than being the guy who sends them a release once a year about the company picnic.
To get better results from you PR efforts, focus on the needs of reporter(s) you are pitching.
