By Melissa A. Vitale Be sure to check out the other posts in this series: PR Your Self: Social Media is your Bestie, PR Your Self: What's in a Media Kit?, and PR Yourself: Why a Press Page is so Important Publicists and marketing aficionados alike learn how to position products early on even if you’re like me and were never formally taught. Curating a thoughtful storyline or showcasing relevant expertise requires patience, timing, skill, creativity, and commitment. Most brands and entrepreneurs have hundreds of storylines about them. Not every consumer, editor or investor will find relevance in each storyline. Start by thinking about your target audience and look into the trends of those demographics. If your target is Gen Z, you’ll want to think about getting on tiktok as opposed to an email marketing campaign. When thinking about how to position your brand, you’ll want to do some market research, which sounds fancy but often is just going down a google search rabbit hole. Look at what other brands in your industry are doing. Visually, does it look garish and distracting? Exciting and appealing? What have they done that worked well? What would you do differently? Also look outside your industry. Think of your favorite brands and why you love them. To position your brand to media is a bit of a different line of thinking. It’s basically very intense therapy where you have to ask yourself a lot of questions and be very open with yourself. When I’m working with a new client about positioning them in the media, I walk in with zero assumptions, a lot of research, and having read up on brands in the industry. I call this my Kick-off process, and I’ll walk you through it so you can do it for yourself. Over the course of a two to six hour of kickoff calls, broken up into two or three sessions, I interview a brand’s founders on every aspect of the brand. I start with asking about the brand. During a kickoff call: I'll cover the following topics:
Think about the product or service you’re offering. What are the goals of the product? Does it to save a consumer time? Is it a similar quality but half the price as what’s currently on the market? Is it in a category that usually is not travel friendly but your product was designed to be compact and portable? What makes your product different and better than anything else in the market? These are your value-propositions or competitive advantages. While many of us are raised not to brag, when it comes to positioning and promoting your product, now is not the time to be humble. If you don’t tell your first customers why your product is so wonderful, how are they to know to give you a chance? That said, I always advise against using terms like “best” or “first-ever”. Rarely is something ever the first. Unless you had a lengthy patent and copyright process, avoid First as a descriptor. Consumers and Media alike are immune to the word best. Best is not only subjective, it’s also a filler word that doesn’t really tell you anything about the product. Instead of using best, ask the question “Why is this the best,” and use that language instead. Next I’ll move into the founders’ individual backgrounds. This is where we’ll find a lot of topics for thought leadership. When telling your executive story, don’t be afraid to get raw and bare it all. It’s incredibly fucked up that when a client tells me about a personal trial like battling cancer, suing an ex-business partner, a nasty divorce, losing a loved one, or getting ripped off by a corporate conglomerate, that I have a huge smile on my face. Personal tragedies allow readers to relate to entrepreneurs and incentivize loyalty. We all love to support the underdog. Next I’ll move into the founders’ individual backgrounds. This is where we’ll find a lot of topics for thought leadership. During a founder interview, I’ll ask about:
Ask these questions to yourself and your cofounder and record the answers. Next, spend a little time to write the potential stories up in a document so you can easily refer to it when pitching journalists. Some other notes to keep in mind when creating your brand positioning: Storytelling over headlines There can be only so many articles “Introducing the latest women-led tech company.” Rather than pitching another feature with that tiresome headline, generate unique and original storylines that will pique the interest of journalists. Education over sensation Many brands with low media exposure can feel “all press is good press.” Publicists who sell that notion tend to curate the type of sensational brands that trigger negative backlash in the comments section, and sometimes even in broader published reports. Rather than curating a headlines around the price, a celebrity following, or the sensational reaction, educate the media beyond just introducing the brand. Adding education to your media strategy creates loyalty among audiences who seek brands out for their expertise beyond their product. Media relationships over news blasts Many consumer-focused PR firms have databases containing thousands of press contacts, most of whom don’t cover specific topics regularly but will gladly accept product that may sit in their office unopened for months. Often, brands are startups lacking the ability to gift 50 samples for just a couple of placements in return. Relying on media relationships to create a powerful campaign always produces more ROI than merely blasts information into cyberspace and hopes it intrigues an influential reporter or blogger. Executive expertise over product placements Googling “best [CATEGORY] products” reveals to anyone with an eye the top journalists and writers featuring your industry’s products. Merely placing a product in a roundup of “Ways to get high at a summer festival” doesn’t spotlight the brand as much as coming up with topics and commentary points for executives that fit into news cycles. Think about topics that you’d love to be interviewed about. Think about insight that only you have through your unique experience. For plant and intimate wellness brands hoping to distinguish themselves in their industry and cement their name in history, become a client:
https://www.melissaavitale.com/become-a-client.html To learn more about Melissa A Vitale PR, view Client Case Studies: www.melissaavitale.com/case-studies.html
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
MAVPRA public relations agency specializing in brands and startups across plant and intimate wellness Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|