Have each address, including cross streets, both in written form and logged onto your phone. In many cases, your team will be in and out of cabs, up and down elevators and checking in at front desks with heavy-duty security. Know where you are going. Timing and travel can get crazy during a press tour. Include all relevant information about the outlet and journalist, contact information, and any details that should be easily referenced before or after a meeting. Your clients needs to feel secure and confident about each journalist that he or she is meeting. Preparing your client for a press tour isn’t just about media training. Clients want and need to know about the journalists and outlets with whom they’ll be meeting. Schedule to your advantage wherever possible. Consider how long each meeting is expected to last and use several online map estimates to determine how much travel time is needed. Schedule smart. Before setting definite times with any meetings, double check the location of the meeting to ensure that you have enough time for travel. Make sure to follow these tips for the rest of the preparation process. You’ve already done a lot of the grunt work by setting a framework for when the press tour will be and what your goals are. Plus, you are more likely to establish a connection over the phone, making it easier to portray your message and learn what would be mutually beneficial for both your client and the journalist. Phone pitching allows you to “get real” with the press and tell them why it would work for them and their audience. It’s often hard, if not impossible, to truly portray the coolness of some products or services over email. Begin the relationship on a more personal level and pick up the phone to pitch for a press tour. No one wants to haggle with an outlet like the Huffington Post about timing! This formula also allows you to have a clean, open schedule for your most sought after meetings. It isn’t always easy to know what kind of response you’ll get, so be sure to separate your press list into tiers, starting with top-tier and highly targeted outlets and working your way down. It’s a hard two weeks of pitching, but allows you to pitch at the most effective time, instead of spinning your wheels too far in advance. A month or so prior to the date is too far in advance for coordinating with press schedules and allows too much time for schedules to adjust prior to the tour dates. From experience, our team at BLASTmedia has determined that pitching for a press tour two weeks prior to the tour dates is ideal. Take your time considering all of the relevant options and what will truly benefit your client. The product may also be relevant to national news, women’s, men’s, outdoors, or parenting outlets, to name a few. If your client’s product is an iPhone app or a tablet case, for example, don’t just assume that the only correct fit is technology outlets. Determine the appropriate audience(s) for your announcement. Lay a firm foundation for the impressive coverage that’s to come by following these steps.ĭetermine your audience. If you and your client have agreed that a press tour is an ideal way to showcase what’s next in your client’s product or services lineup, it’s time to get organized. Here is a quick checklist to guide you through how to plan a press tour, prepare for what will happen once you’re there, and execute it perfectly for your clients. Managing a press tour requires plenty of preparation and an eventual skilled execution from a public relations team to pull it off. Getting a journalist at an outlet like the New York Times, Engadget, Real Simple, or Bloomberg to invite your client to meet is not an easy task. For example, check out Senior Account Executive Kiersten Moffatt below as she enters the New York Times offices as part of a press tour for one of her clients.Īs PR professionals, it’s our responsibility to secure those crucial face-to-face meetings with press when our clients have important new offerings. But with some products or services, this does happen-during press tours, one of the jewels in the crown of a strategic PR plan.ĭuring a press tour, a brand receives face-to-face meetings with the press in order to provide a hands-on look and real-time presentation on what the company has to offer to consumers. Because of the fast-paced nature of news, journalists need to absorb information quickly and efficiently-picking out the high points of a pitch or press release via email or a phone call and reporting in a flash! It isn’t every day that a respected journalist at a top-tier outlet reserves time out of his or her day to sit down with a brand to hear all of the details about a new product or service.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |