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Heddon Communications
Over twenty years of marketing communications & PR experience |
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Ten Top Tips for using PR to boost your business profile
Ten Top Tips for using PR to boost the profile of your business
Over the next few months I shall be writing articles to give you some ideas as to how PR can help to boost the profile of your business. Whether you are targeting consumers or other businesses, your potential customers need to have heard about you before they can carry out business with you. PR can help to raise your profile and there are many ways to put PR to work for you.
My Ten Top Tips will be based on experiences I have had and activities that I will be carrying out for my clients over the next few months. I hope you will get some inspiration from them. And if you would like to have a chat with me about your business, give me a call.
TOP TIP ONE - Southampton Boat Show 2005 using PR to make a splash
Before I get started on this article, I have to confess that I am an avid sailor. There is nothing I like better than to feel the wind in my hair, the spray on my face and to feel the yacht surging through the water as I wrestle with the elements. That feeling of freedom to go where you please, leaving behind the day to day hassles there is nothing better than a real blast to blow away the cobwebs.
So imagine how good it feels for me as a PR professional to have a client providing technology to the sailing world I have an excuse to talk to sailors and sailing journalists. And better still I can visit the Southampton Boat Show and call it work!
To raise the profile of a business amongst consumers or other businesses, you need to be creative and use every opportunity available. My client was targeting sailors, marina operators and businesses based around marinas. So an obvious place to promote their services was at the Southampton Boat Show. But even then, with hundreds of exhibitors, tens of thousands of visitors and over 500 journalists attending, making a splash (pun intended) was a challenge. Using a combination of a partnership with the Boat Show organizers, creating a memorable but practical stand and offering special deals and prizes, the stand was packed with visitors. For the journalists I sent preview information out to magazines before the Show, prepared dozens of informative press packs for the Show media centre, arranged interviews with key journalists, organized a champagne reception and press briefing on the first day with a variety of interesting people available to carry out interviews, prepared articles for the daily show newsletter and chatted with journalists at every opportunity around the Show. Local TV and radio stations carried out interviews during the Show and saw practical demonstrations of my clients services. The results of these efforts will be seen over the next few weeks.
An exhibition can be an excellent way to put your business in front of a key audience. Business and consumer exhibitions run throughout the year in a wide variety of venues covering most sectors. So often, businesses take a stand at a Show, but dont think through all of the possibilities for levering maximum PR from the event. Plan well in advance the lead time for many monthly magazines running previews for an exhibition can be two months before a Show opens. Talk to journalists at the Show, invite them to talk with you one to one or organise a press briefing. Prepare press packs with clear and helpful information journalists hate the average marketing leaflet. Prepare something especially for them all facts and no puff. Be creative. Putting a planned PR activity into your Exhibition scedule will prove a very worthwhile exercise.
Are you thinking about taking your business to an exhibition? Give me a call and I would be happy to talk through how you can get the most out of it.
Sue Viney
Viney Communications
0118 934 2093
07774 267280
sue@vineycommunications.co.uk
www.vineycommunications.co.uk
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