April 26, 2012
Landing a placement in a major media outlet, from a national morning show to a high-circulation magazine, is a major win for any PR pro – but the work isn’t done there. After you get over the high of earning some great coverage for your client, it’s time to get to work and make that placement do double duty by extending its consumer reach into owned digital assets.
- Highlight on social media channels. Tout a brand’s appearance on Facebook and Twitter to add credibility and give a fresh perspective on the message. Watching a media personality demonstrate a product can be more exciting for consumers than reading about it on the company website. Case in point – when we placed Eureka’s AirSpeed vacuum on “The Martha Stewart Show,” we posted links to the Eureka Facebook and Twitter pages so fans and followers could see the vacuum being used by Martha herself!
- Give it prime real estate on the brand’s website. Create a banner for the brand’s homepage to help consumers who saw the coverage find what they’re looking for. If possible, obtain permission to use the logo. If not, plain text can still highlight the coverage. Our client Vermont Castings always highlights coverage in the week following a placement, most recently using a banner to trumpet that the product was seen on DIY Network’s “Money Hunters.”
- Tap into current customer base. Consumer e-newsletters are another great way to highlight major media placements. This will allow consumers that already know and love the brand to learn about other products – spurring further purchases. When an Electrolux vacuum was on “The Nate Berkus Show,” the company added a link to it in its bi-monthly consumer e-newsletter, as seen here.
Once you’ve juiced all you can from the placement with consumers, start thinking about how you can use it to excite employees, sales teams and dealer partners. Read tips on how to do this in Tim’s blog post, “Merchandising PR – How to Make the Most of Strategies and Success.”