Public relations is used to raise brand awareness and develop and protect an organisation’s reputation. In today’s competitive market, reputation can be a huge asset for an organisation, it can set it apart from its competitors, giving it a significant advantageous edge. This piece explains how your business can maximise its PR coverage at a trade event and tips to help you make an impression where it matters most.
YOUR BUSINESS PROMOTED IN THE MEDIA
Your customers, suppliers, employees, investors, stakeholders and influencers have a powerful effect on your business success. Their positive experiences of your products or services, told through word-of-mouth or media stories, drive decisions about whether to work with, spend with and support your business. PR communicates your positive stories and helps mitigate the impact of any negative ones. A media story or comment with an independent endorsement of your business, or its products/services, can be far more powerful and valuable than a paid-for advertisement.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD STORY
A major role of PR is to tell stories about businesses that help editors and journalists engage their audience by giving them content their readers enjoy. When thinking about what makes a good story, it’s often worth considering what you like to read, watch or listen to. Publications like stories that are new, current, different and, on occasion, controversial. They like to see stories with comment and opinion and with statistics attached.
Always remember, a story must be based on real news, otherwise it will not be of interest to editors and will fail to secure media coverage. This is where you come in!
It is important to send your information through to the designed PR agency ahead of the trade event you are attending. Tell them about anything new, unusual, quirky or relating to interesting people within or working with your business. Sometimes the most mundane things can spark a good idea so don’t worry about whether it’s useful or not – let the PR agency decide that. The key message here is to keep them informed – the more they know the more they can generate powerful PR coverage. Even if the news idea is in its early stages, the team may be able to help add a more newsworthy angle, which can generate even more interest.
When and what to share – a few examples:
Your news – a new sales record broken, a major new client win, a sudden influx / trend towards a certain type of client or event, a client doing something different or ground-breaking, a new technological innovation, a new conference centre or facility, a major new hotel opening or investment in a particular part of the world. Even if the final contract hasn’t been signed, the PR team can begin discussing ways in which they can offer PR support ahead of the event – PR teams DO NOT share anything and everything with the media. Anything they are told is treated as confidential until they have approval from you to share it with the media.
MORE HELP WITH YOUR PR
At IBTM, davies tanner monitors the media daily to ensure PR content reflects the current news agenda, taking advantage of the opportunity for a good news story. They talk to journalists on our behalf, looking at ways in which we can place stories about IBTM and our exhibitors in key media titles, and they issue regular news releases, interviews and announcements on a wide range of IBTM activities, including new show innovations, keynote speakers, portfolio updates, destination news, awards and more.