ZMarket Scoop

Mass Emailing - How to Ensure Your Press Release Will go Unnoticed

While working in the field of media relations for past 7 years I have had the opportunity to speak with hundreds (if not thousands) of editors. And the one comment I am always guaranteed to get from at least one editor per day is, "I get hundreds of emails a day." They are not exaggerating.

Many companies know the power of editorial coverage and those who know, want it. In the pursuit of editorial coverage many companies write a press release (most often a very promotional press release) then mass email it to hundreds of editors hoping for some type of coverage. Or they place it on a news wire and hope that it will be noticed by a writer. It doesn't work.

It's an honest attempt to do what is suggested by so many "experts" out there. Once in a great while it may work, but that is the exception. Every now and again, I'll still try it in an attempt to boost a campaign for one of my clients who doesn't have the money to pay for additional pitching—a freebie so to speak "just in case" something has changed out there. Even with the best cover letter and dazzling subject line, it's a shot in the dark.

Media relations. Re·la·tion: a meaningful connection or association between two or more things, based, for example, on the similarity or relevance of one thing to another.

Mass Mailings. Mass: a body of matter that forms a whole but has no definable shape.

Making a story stand out above hundreds of others requires special skills that develop that meaningful connection between an editor and the person pitching the story. Knowing how to talk to editors, respecting their time, how their editorial process works, the types of stories they publish and a very succinct pitch that will allow them to decide in that 30 seconds whether or not it is a story that interests them is key.

When an editor is anticipating your story, it has a much better chance of being read than one that gets buried among the hundreds of unsolicited press releases.

Back-to-School Marketing for Industrial Manufacturing

I just skimmed the newest batch of marketing, search and online newsletters I get in my inbox everyday. It was filled with back-to-school marketing news and I realized that for the next few months there will not be much of value in those newsletters for me.

I subscribe to them because it keeps me up to date on the marketing arena as a whole and every once in a while there is a little pearl of wisdom I can transfer to the B2B, and more importantly, the industrial manufacturing arena. Those newsletters also give me ideas of what to write about in my own blog. Understand, I am not poo pooing them, I just haven't found a really meaty industrial manufacturing newsletter or publication that focuses on marketing.

Then I had a flash! Why not start my own Industrial Manufacturing Marketing Newsletter?! One that is truly helpful to marketers whom focus on trade magazines. Next project. I think I'll start it off in the form of a blog and accept content submissions. We'll see what happens.

I'll let you know when I get it up and running.

Industrial PR – It Isn’t About the Contacts, It’s About the Story

Often I see PR companies touting their "media contacts." But having "media contacts" doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the story isn't right for the publication.

There are several elements that can make or break a public relations strategy. First and foremost, the story must be right!

A story must match the tone of the industry. That may seem simple enough, but it takes a good amount of research to make sure the story you will be writing meets the needs of the publications in the industry. Without research into media calendars and into the pages of the magazines themselves, you may end up writing a story that just doesn't fit their editorial style or choosing a angle that has recently been covered; and, now you have a dead story.

The type of story is also important: case history, tips article, application, technology, issue. If you've decided to write a case history and that isn't what the publications are printing these days, you end up with a "filler" story that will gather dust waiting for empty pages which almost never come.

After discovering which story is best for magazine coverage, the story must be carefully crafted to engage the reader through the end while still positioning the client's product or service as a solution without being overly promotional. Overly promotional articles almost never make it to the magazines pages and if they do, readers end up not disbelieving the content anyway.

The closer a story is to a publication's journalistic style, the better chance it has of getting published.