Getting press isn’t an easy task. In fact, it’s one of the harder things for a business to do because it’s more an art than anything.
Here are a few reasons why PR isn’t easy:
1. You Have to Get Creative
You have to be able to artfully craft pitches that are targeted for specific writers, pitched in a way making it sound as if the writer themselves would have written such a thing, selling the biggest points of the story so that the writer is in love with the idea. It’s not as easy as restating your mission statement and hoping people will bite.
2. Publications Like New Stories
You may get a nice PR hit in a coveted publication, but the likelihood of other publications picking up the same story is slim because they all want to have unique content and never want to be seen as a follower to the first publication that wrote about you. So, beyond the initial “oohs” and “aahs” you may get from the first PR hit, you might not get many more because your feature story will have been old news.
3. Some Hits Never Work Out
Even if you land an interview with a writer, peak their interest via email or create a great connection via Twitter, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get published. Sometimes things happen, and that’s a fact of life. The writer may have lost interest and didn’t want to write the piece anymore, or their editor lost interest. What may also have happened is that other news got in the way of your story being published, and then your story just went stale and they didn’t want to publish it anymore. It’s life. Nothing’s definite until it’s happened, and the same goes with PR.
4. Some Hits Never Help
You may get the best story written about your company ever in one of the hot publications you read loyally, but the fact is, the traffic might start pouring in or it might not. Even if you get a lot of traffic, none of it may convert into sales, and then what? Traffic that doesn’t convert just leaves you a hopeless entrepreneur.
While PR can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal, it shouldn’t be your only tool. You should vary your marketing mix so you’re not heavily dependent on one channel which can’t always assure solid returns.
Danny Wong is the PR Manager for Blank Label Group‘s brands Blank Label, Thread Tradition and RE:custom. Danny also writes about PR and Marketing at HuffingtonPost, TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb.
