As an exhibitor, maximizing your media outreach can significantly enhance your visibility and impact at events. Here are eight steps to help you optimize your media outreach efforts:
1. Identify Your Key Messages
- Core Message: Define the main message you want to convey about your products or services.
- Supporting Points: Develop supporting points that highlight your unique selling propositions and benefits.
2. Build a Media List
- Targeted Media: Identify journalists, bloggers, and influencers who cover your industry.
- Contact Information: Gather their contact details, including email addresses and social media handles.
3. Create Compelling Press Materials
- Press Release: Write a clear and concise press release that includes your key messages, event details, and contact information.
- Media Kit: Prepare a media kit with high-quality images, product information, company background, and any relevant case studies.
4. Leverage Social Media
- Engage Online: Use social media platforms to share updates, behind-the-scenes content, and teasers about your participation in the event.
- Hashtags: Utilize event-specific hashtags to increase your reach and visibility.
5. Schedule Media Appointments
- Pre-Event Outreach: Reach out to your media list to schedule interviews or product demonstrations during the event.
- Follow-Up: Confirm appointments a few days before the event and provide any necessary details.
6. Prepare Your Spokespeople
- Media Training: Ensure your spokespeople are well-prepared to handle media interactions. Provide them with key messages and practice potential interview questions.
- Availability: Make sure your spokespeople are available and accessible during the event.
7. Engage with Media On-Site
- Press Room: Utilize the event’s press room to distribute your press materials and connect with journalists.
- Live Updates: Share live updates and photos on social media to keep the media and your audience engaged.
8. Follow Up Post-Event
- Thank You Notes: Send thank you notes to journalists and influencers who covered your participation.
- Share Coverage: Share any media coverage you receive on your website and social media channels.
- Evaluate: Assess the success of your media outreach efforts and gather feedback to improve future strategies.
Off-Floor Options
Press relations at a trade show aren’t just about what happens in the exhibit hall. Below are several ways your company can connect with journalists off the show floor.
Conference Sessions: If your company is hosting a learning session, inviting the press can provide more exposure for your firm and demonstrate its involvement in industry education. You can also issue a press release announcing the session or spread the word via social-media channels to alert attendees and position your company as a thought leader worthy of being on industry reps’ radars.
Press Rooms: While many shows have done away with elaborate press rooms, most provide at least an area where writers and editors can work. And more often than not, show organizers allow exhibiting companies to stock that room with press kits free of charge. Having a few company brochures, copies of your latest press release, product data sheets for any new items being displayed at the show, or business cards with contact information for your company’s spokesperson can be a great way to get the attention of a press rep who signed up for the show late and therefore was never on your list to begin with – or to remind press reps of their prescheduled meetings with you. Also, some events allow exhibitors to sponsor breakfasts, lunches, and coffee stations in the press room, which will give your company additional exposure.
Seven Deadly Sins
Today’s media-relations strategies are a far cry from what they were before email, social media, and Millennials entered the equation. So to help you adapt to the modern milieu, Erienne Muldoon of Virtual Press Office (a PR Newswire company) shares the seven deadly sins of media relations in our current digital age.
1. Catering to Google:
Many press releases seem written to appeal more to Google’s algorithms than journalists’ needs. Search-engine optimization is important, but don’t sacrifice substance for searchability.
2. Going Old School:
It’s great to have hard-copy press kits available, but always offer a digital version as well.
3. Failing to Focus: Don’t include an excessive number of links or news items in a single press release or email. One message with one link is best, because if writers need to pore over your copy to find the nuggets relevant to them, you’re not likely to make it into their publications.
4. Sending Dead Links: Ensure any links in your press releases work and will continue to function long after the show. Also make certain all links are to mobile-enabled websites.
5. Being Camera Shy: Having high-res images and videos ready helps journalists satisfy the multimedia requirements many publications have. Without those assets, you’re forcing the writer to work harder to give your company coverage.
6. Playing Hide and Seek: If journalists can’t reach you, they can’t write about you. So be sure to include direct contact information for media inquiries on your website’s press or “Contact Us” page.
7. Crying Wolf: If you issue a press release every time a client signs a contract, you’re going to become white noise. So make sure you have something important to say before you click “send.”
By following these steps, you can effectively optimize your media outreach and ensure that your participation as an exhibitor garners the attention it deserves. Good luck with your next event!