7 Proven Strategies To Get Media Coverage For Your Brand

Got something to sell but not getting noticed? Have something to say but can’t get yourself heard? Media coverage can be essential if you want to break the big time with your brand, but achieving it is not that simple. Belle About Town spoke to PR guru Fiona Harrold to get her top tips on how to get media coverage for your brand. Here are seven of Fiona’s strategies to get you started with gaining media coverage for your business or brand.

1/ Find a news hook

A news hook is a topic or issue that’s already in the news. For example, my client, Alicia Eaton, is a leading child and family therapist and when news broke about King Charles’s cancer diagnosis, she was featured in ‘Hello’ magazine, ‘The HuffPost,’ ‘The Daily Express’ and a range of radio shows. Alicia gave tips on how to talk to your child when a grandparent is ill and in hospital. It’s much easier to join in a conversation that’s already taking place that try and start a conversation from fresh! Offer your help for a story that is already of interest to journalists.

2/ Pitch for media coverage

Journalists are busy people and you have to get their attention fast. Use a short subject line in your email that could be a headline. If you don’t have a gripping subject line, they may not open your email. When I wrote a pitch for my client, Ziggie Bergman, founder of The Zone Face Lift, I made the subject line, ‘Fresh – not Frozen.’ My pitch was all about women eschewing Botox for a fresh, natural look.

When the feature appeared in the Daily Mail, those same words were used in the headline. Make sure your ‘pitch’ – the proposing of your idea, is a short paragraph or two. I wrote the pitch for Ziggie in two short paragraphs and the journalist came back with five minutes. It led to a double page feature that brought 4,000 new subscribers to Ziggie’s website, positioned her as a celebrity facialist and transformed her business overnight.

3/ Provide images

Always attach a photo of the person you are proposing to be featured, whether it’s you or someone else. Bear in mind the demographic of the publication or news channel. If the readership is 50plus, give your age and attach a photo that shows you would be an appropriate fit.

4/ Establish your credibility

A journalist must feel they can trust you. They must feel you are someone who is an expert in your area and can ‘sell’ you to their editor and put you in front of their audience. Put your credentials and experience into a short paragraph that can sit at the end of your email. Ensure your website and all social media channels all point to the same service. A journalist will look you up and it’s important that they find a consistent theme across your public channels.

5/ Pioneer!

If your field or service is brand new, you have an opportunity to offer this as a story. This was the reason I got so much publicity at the start of my career, when coaching was brand new. The media was keen to talk about this fresh new field and I approached publications whose readership was my ideal clients. Other journalists saw me interviewed and it snowballed.

My client, Dr Sohere Roked, started to offer a brand-new longevity programme a few years ago. This was one of the first of its kind in the UK. I knew we had a small window of time before others would offer a similar service. I pitched the idea to the Daily Mail, with the subject line, ‘she can reverse ageing by 10 years’. They responded in under 5 minutes! A journalist tried Dr Sohere’s programme and the result was a three page feature in one of the UK’s biggest circulation newspapers. Dr Sohere had over 300 new clients within a few days – for a premium programme and was instantly established as one of London’s leading doctors.

6/ Seek endorsement

Endorsement from other professionals in your field, or a celebrity association, is powerful. Obviously, if you have a well-known client who is happy to speak to the press about their work with you- that’s terrific! But, you can also ‘piggyback’ off a trend that public figures are following. When I pitched Ziggie and The Zone Face Lift to the Daily Mail, I pointed out that celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna were giving up Botox in favour of more natural methods. I said this trend was also something that Ziggie had noticed with an increase in people coming to her for her services.

7/ Connect with journalists

Journalists are people too! Build your relationships with journalists so they turn to you time and time again for quotes and opinions. Many are freelancers, so get paid when they get a feature published. Be helpful to them and they will be very useful to you. Study the places and publications you want to be in and look at the people writing the features. When you approach them, you will know their stance on subjects. And finally… The good news is that your competition are all over on social media, leaving you free to get featured in the media of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV!

I hope I’ve convinced you that this is a strategy you must adopt. Book in with me to have a chat and I’ll map out the opportunities I see for you. Here’s my calendar…