I wanted to share a brief success story on a recent client – Company X and how Catalyst achieved national media coverage for them using their proprietary content and a great idea!
The following case study will outline step by step how we turned a timely piece of information into a survey that led to national coverage for Company X in The Financial Post and other newspapers across Canada.
With the rise in social media and the recession still a looming topic for many small business owners at the end of 2009, Catalyst decided to look ahead and conduct a brief survey about where entrepreneurs planned on spending their marketing dollars for the coming year.
With a set of 11 questions, we were able to distribute and acquire responses from over 200 small business owners in a very short period. The results lead to some interesting observations – among them was the fact that out of a list of the most popular marketing tools, Public Relations was ranked as the most important to small business, ahead of social media marketing and SEO.
We set to work on publicizing the results of the survey:
1. Create a newsworthy story angle
2. Write an interesting release featuring survey results
3. Contact and engage business editors
- Create a pitch note and emailed to reporter with link to the news release
- Provide quotes and other experts around the same topic
- Follow up with media to offer assistance with story development
Our approach worked, and the journalist went on to build a story around the PR statistics from Company X’s survey and even engaged other PR experts for their opinion and point of view. The other benefit is that I was quoted in the article, a rare feat for a PR person!
Public Relations is about telling stories, so if you want to be featured in the media make sure you find a story to share. Through the use of the tools available we created a story that was timely, interesting and relevant.
What has been your greatest media relations success story?
Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash