One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of our work in PR is driving coverage in the absence of hard news. Without funding announcements, partnerships, or new products to announce, how can PR pros drive meaningful coverage for their clients?
With a little persistence and a clear plan in place, PR professionals can drive stellar results for clients even without formal announcements. This is of particular importance for clients in the service industry, such as consulting firms or advertising agencies, who have compelling stories to tell but may not have hard news to announce regularly.
For these clients, we recommend an integrated approach focused on the following strategies and tactics:
- Build thought leadership platforms for the executive team – Get to know the executive team’s interests and areas of expertise by scheduling short one-on-one brainstorming sessions with each key executive. Come prepared for these sessions with specific questions, and recap what you heard from the executive after the meeting so there are shared expectations.
By developing thought leadership platforms for each executive, PR pros can effectively offer the executives as sources to journalists, develop bylines on their behalf, and pursue targeted speaking opportunities that resonate with the client and their audiences. Taking the time to become rooted in your clients’ platforms helps you establish them as thought leaders, particularly in the absence of hard news.
- Monitor and leverage relevant industry trends – For each executive, monitor industry trends that are relevant to his/her thought leadership platform. For example, is he or she interested in dealflow and financial trends? Invest a certain amount of time each week to reading key publications (e.g., Marketwatch, The Financial Times, etc.) to understand what’s happening in the space and identify opportunities to insert your client’s perspective.
When you find a relevant story or angle, do the heavy lifting of flagging the opportunity and outlining a potential perspective for the executive based on what you know from your brainstorming session. When the angle is agreed on and clearly articulated, move quickly to share the perspective with key journalists in the space to book briefings and drive coverage.
- Build thought leadership through contributed articles and speaking opportunities – Contributed articles are a wonderful way to drive coverage and establish thought leadership, especially in the absence of hard news. They also have the added benefit of helping drive additional editorial coverage; once an executive has been published in a number of publications, it can be easier to secure journalists’ interest in briefings. Based on your brainstorming session with the executive team, develop a plan that includes potential topics, outlets, and timing for bylines for each executive. When there’s consensus on the plan, begin drafting! You’ll find that the more bylines you develop for an executive, the more natural it becomes to capture his/her tone, perspective and style.
Bylines can also be repurposed for speaking abstracts at targeted events for the executive team. Speaking opportunities require a large time investment, often involving travel, so it is important to identify opportunities that are a good fit for the executives’ thought leadership platforms and that reach their respective target audience(s).
- Establish a process that works for your client and your team – As with any PR program, it is crucial to execute on account activities in a strategic and sustained manner. With hard news, there’s the inevitable date that the news crosses the wire, forcing the PR team to act aggressively prior to the announcement. With proactive pitching and bylines, however, the lack of a deadline could create a lack of urgency – the PR team needs to create a rhythm for these activities and stick to it.
It is important to establish regular times throughout the week to keep these activities moving forward and clearly delegate roles and responsibilities across account teams. For example, dedicating a certain amount of time per week to reading relevant industry news is crucial to driving coverage, so the team needs to have a clear process in place for identifying and flagging proactive pitch angles.
By becoming rooted in the executive team’s thought leadership platform, monitoring industry trends, aggressively pitching reporters proactively, and crafting contributed articles and speaking abstracts, PR teams can secure fantastic coverage – even without a single press release. The key is to strategically plan these activities and delegate across the account team, so you can create a steady cadence of coverage for your client.