Using PR as a marketing method for product launch requires an understanding of what is newsworthy and what is not. Whether you’re an accomplished PhD or an enterprising young person starting out with a fantastic product, most people don’t understand this. Once I explain it, however, you’ll be able to pick up the phone to a reporter at the Wall Street Journal or Buzzfeed and have an actual conversation instead of being blown off.
There’s nothing worse than calling a reporter and regaling them with a description of your product’s features and benefits, followed by, “It’s so newsworthy!” Did the reporter hang up on you? Yeeeeeah (cringe).
Editorial versus advertising
A little background: You should understand what editorial is versus advertising—the latter known as “buys.”
Editorial content is (ideally) not subject to being bought—it is manifested in the form of unbiased reporting or the earned opinion of a reporter or producer. This is the content between commercials on TV, articles on dot-coms that are interrupted by popups, the organic listings on Google under the ads on the top, magazine feature stories between ads, etc.
Advertising includes anything you pay for—such as pay-per-click, influencers, banner ads, radio, TV, newspaper ads, endorsements, and many other methods. These are biased, subjective, paid-for placements.
Like my Labrador, I am food-driven and see it this way: Editorial is the cream in the middle of the Oreo.
PR is worth its weight in gold because it’s inexpensive to solicit and unbiased. Advertising can be worth its weight in gold, but it usually costs as much as gold, too.
Long term is better
What if you could get your product reported about in 34 media outlets during a 6-month period and be exposed to 109 million potential customers by paying a PR agency a $6,000 monthly retainer? Wouldn’t that be better than purchasing one ad for one month in Vogue magazine at the cost of $270,000?
What about spending $36,000 versus $500 a day ($90,000) on Google Ads? How about spending $36,000 instead of a pricey $5.6 million Super Bowl TV spot (which doesn’t even include the cost of producing something cool)?
By the way, the first sentence of that last paragraph is a real case study from my company’s work for a luxury skincare line that resulted in an 8,100 percent return on investment. Had the skincare line bought advertising, it would have cost $2.9 million to get the exposure it received through PR.
The secret of marketing is to target your customers and spread out your message so they see, hear, and experience it repeatedly. I call this the “Oh, Yeah, I’ve Heard of That” response (September 2020 Inventors Digest), whereby humans only buy things they have heard of. Yes, we are sheep.
Leverage what’s in the news
So, what is news? Anything that is new and/or of legitimate interest. This doesn’t mean your jogging bra made of fabric that measures your heart rate is new. What I just listed is a feature and benefit—the information you put on a package.
What may be newsworthy about the bra is that it’s now possible to weave wearable technology into a fabric for the first time, and your jogging bras are the first to use it. You might think about calling reporters during National Heart Month to make it more so.
If you donated some of those bras to a women’s hospital with patients who are recovering from heart attacks, that ups the newsworthiness. What if you could find a heart institute patient who used your bra and it saved her life when she had a relapse trying to jog too soon after her heart surgery? Now, that is newsworthy!
It’s not about your bra. It’s about using all the trends, statistics, and things already in the news to make your bra significant.
The reason reporters hang up on you or don’t respond to email pitches is because they don’t want to yell at you. Enduring another product soliloquy makes them want to spit in your face like a llama.
I’ll save you the embarrassment and tell you what they really want to say: “Buy advertising, dummy. Don’t waste my time telling me about your widget—because it’s not newsworthy.”
Try product roundups
That said, products have a special place in editorial. It’s usually in product roundups, reviews, or gift guides.
A product roundup is editorial that features all the newest accessories for your mobile phone, all red lipstick shades for Christmas, or the best new electric vehicles.
A product review is a listing of all the newest laptops that have been tested at PC Magazine, Consumer Reports, CNET, or the like. The Good Housekeeping Institute may do a story about the most waterproof mascaras or non-streaking window cleaners.
Gift guides happen all year long. They are organized by a product genre that appeals to the reader, listener, and seer of that media outlet. Holiday gift guides are the biggest—created for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa—followed by Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc., as well as wedding, graduation, and baby gifts.
In summary: Anything that describes how your product works is a feature or benefit. Any trend, statistic, or something that’s hot in the news that points back to the features and benefits of your products is newsworthy. Got it? OK, go and conquer.
If you need any help, I’ve written two books that you can find at POMPrinciple.com or PRHandbookEntrepreneurs.com.