Converting PR Efforts into Sales
Whenever a media outlet starts covering a company, plenty of businesses start to believe that that’s all they need to get more sales. That’s actually not how things work. Although media coverage does mean that more prospects will be directly looking for the company, it still takes a couple more steps on the company’s part to turn that media exposure into sales.
Adding to any new website media coverage that a business has previously received is one of the best ways to utilize press coverage. This is especially true for B2B companies. Over time, interactions with leads can slow down or even completely stop, which means that sales teams have to start looking for other reasons to follow up with those prospects.
That’s exactly where media coverage -can be utilized to follow up with those prospects and reignite relationships between companies and their potential consumers. When reaching out, the message can be as simple as reminding consumers of a topic that’s already been discussed.
However, research has shown that reaching out to prospects with the help of media coverage can work a lot better if the sales team can help the lead feel like they’re a part of the coverage itself. This can be done by letting the prospect know that the media coverage was inspired by the prospects themselves. Additionally, this type of approach also works very well with existing clients who should be reengaged.
Although for many people, it might be obvious that any press coverage should be shared on social media, it’s easy for some businesses to miss the mark.
The first step in sharing media coverage is to make it clear to audience on social media platforms that a given company is actually being mentioned in the story. Of course that’s unless it’s obvious from a preview photo or the article’s title . Otherwise the audience will think that a business is simply sharing an interesting article.
Not only that, but the media outlets and journalists who put out articles featuring companies should also be tagged in company social media posts. That’s providing that they have active accounts on the platform. Although they don’t share every single story they’ve published on socials, by tagging them, journalists will be encouraged to share that post with their own audiences. That will put companies directly in front of brand new sets of followers.
The key to getting a media outlet to share or simply to like apost is to write it in their style. To do this, businesses should show their audience why that piece of content is valuable to the readers, and should also mention companies’ own contributions.
Finally, sharing media coverage from a company’s social media accounts is crucial for more sales when a story is talking about an individual within a company. However, it’s best if that person also shares the story on their own socials.
