Business owners and key executives are always eager for their enterprise — and themselves — to generate positive media recognition. The attention and media spotlight validate their business as a leader in their business category and underscores their leadership as an individual.  

When we first meet with clients and potential clients, one of the first things that we hear is “We want to be in the news. We want our business to be ‘out there’ in our field.” 

And one of our first reactions to hearing that is “Are you ready for the media spotlight?”  

Media coverage, after all, can work in two ways: positive and negative. And that means that we must ready our clients to tell their stories before we go about attracting media attention for them. At the same time, we ready our clients for any potential negative situation that could land on their desk. 

“Can’t I just use sales materials for the press?” 

Clients often fall into the mind-set that sales materials are the same as media-oriented press information materials. After all, clients have spent considerably to have sales materials produced to tell their story. 

Both kinds of materials are informational in nature, but media-oriented materials differ in that they are tailored to meet the needs of journalists. Reporters and writers work under continual deadline pressure and have little or no time to edit materials provided them.  

Like Joe Friday in the ancient TV series Dragnet, used to say, journalists “just want the facts, ma’am.”  

At Wellons Communications, we use a three-step approach to putting together basic media information for our clients:  

Step one: Build and maintain a professional press kit. 

Press kits help explain the core facts of your company to journalists in general in a neat, digestible package. The idea is that anyone sifting through your press kit can identify your key people, key facts, and key information about your business without having to speak to you. 

Better still, they can download the information assets they need for their story without emailing you first and then sitting around waiting for a response. 

Press kit information saves their time and yours, while considerably improving your media relations without too much effort on your part. They get to the point and highlight the key information that matters to the press all without having to decipher company terminology and endless marketing speak. 

But it’s not all about them. It’s about you, too. 

Having a press kit at the ready also saves you time running around to put together content when you get a call for a breaking story or a last-minute information request. 

Step two: Distribute the press kit 

Wellons Communications uses press kits as an aggressive, not a passive, marketing tool. Once we have a press kit prepared for a client, we find ways to immediately put it to work.  

Our PR firm identifies the news categories that might have the most interest in your business (journalists with general and trade news sources who cover your business category).  

 Then we develop the means of getting your press kit information into the hands of those media in the most efficient means possible. 

We use a variety of electronic distribution services and platforms to pinpoint and deliver your press kit to the newsrooms of major and trade news publications, the in-boxes of targeted journalists, along with relevant social media.  

By putting your press kit in the hands of the media, we identify you as a willing and credible source of information for what you do and how you serve your clients.  

Step three: We prepare you to polish your message 

Developing and distributing media materials is one thing.  

Preparing for the media spotlight and to respond to inquiries is another.   

Once your materials have been distributed, you have made yourself available as a resource to respond to ongoing news developments that could involve your business category These can be positive (e.g., a new trend, an uptick in business) or a negative development that could affect your industry (e.g. an economic downturn fostered by instability in the Middle East that affects oil prices and your industry). 

Either way, you must be prepared to respond to questions. Serving as the foundation of information for you and your business is your press kit (who, what, and where) with you providing the “why” or “how.” 

Our job is to help you have your answers ready…in an easy-to-understand, succinct manner that journalists (and their audiences) can easily grasp.  

Take a new look at your marketing mix and plan to include a public relations agency as an integral part of your marketing plan.  

And as you look ahead, call us at Wellons Communications to learn more about how we can develop an affordable three-step publicity and information program that can help you set the stage for increased visibility that can lead to increased sales and revenues.