Business Digest April 2021
What’s the best way of promoting your business, would you say? by Simon Hall Creative Warehouse
One company I work with, Fluidic Analytics, has fantastic cutting edge life sciences, right out of the University of Cambridge. Our angle there was:
Testimonials from happy customers are great. Word of mouth is lovely. Advertising is OK, although people are always a little wary.
- A faster, better and cheaper technique to develop treatments for humanity’s most feared diseases.
But for me, by far the best form of promotion is media coverage. It’s authoritative, it can reach hundreds of thousands of people, and best of all…
Did we get coverage with that angle? You bet! Ask yourself what’s the most important, interesting and impactful thing about what you’re doing. Use that for your angle and you won’t go wrong.
It’s free. Apart from an hour or two of your time. Yep, that’s all it can take to get your business in the news. Just a couple of hours. Don’t believe me? I’ve done it plenty. And here’s your five stage guide to how.
Headlines Good one hugely increases your chances of coverage.
The All Important Angle You love your business. You think it deserves to make the media on its own merit. I get that.
One of my favourites was for a Cambridge course in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which I helped to promote.
But sorry, on its own the fact you’ve got a business isn’t going to interest journalists.
We played on one of the most famous AI villains, and for a headline used:
Instead, you’ve got to answer this fundamental question:
- Taming The Terminators That worked a treat, helping to get coverage aplenty.
- Why should anyone care? That’s your angle. The difference you’re making to people’s lives. My latest book is about business communication, and I was chuffed with it.
When dealing with journalists, never forget it’s one of the most time pressured professions. You’ve got to hook your hack fast, or you won’t get them at all. Which means your headline should be based on your angle, and:
But if I approached the media saying, Hey, I’ve written a book, I’d get diddly squat interest. If I put it this way, though: - I show businesses how to sort all their communication needs and really get noticed, from winning media coverage to raising investment, in one short and simple read. I get featured on the web, radio and in newspapers. Believe me, I know. Because I did.
17
- Interest, inform, and intrigue In other words, it’s got to catch the eye of the editor, tell them something of what the story is about, and intrigue them into reading on. Use the headline as the title for your email when you send it out, to ensure your story gets noticed.
