Business-to-business PR

Today we thought you might like to change the focus a little – to business to business PR. It may not be as ‘sexy’ as product PR but for a lot of you, this is what you need. To tell other businesses about YOUR business.

Well, in essence, it’s not that different to any other kind of PR. You still need to work out your target market – what KIND of businesses do you want to get to? The IT industry? Investors or potential investors? Is it general news? Have you just launched a whiz-bang new service? Think hard about who you want to get the news out to.

You also still have to write a good, interesting media release and send it out to your media contacts. But this is where it differs slightly. Jules had the good fortune to sit beside Oliver Millman, Editor of Start-Up Smart (e-mag) and Jessica Gardner from BRW and Editor of The Australian’s Enterprise section at a recent small business event and their PR suggestions included the following:

• Always offer an exclusive story. Don’t offer it to everyone. Work out the media you want to appear in the most. Approach the Editor or relevant journalist and pitch the story to them over the PHONE first.
• They love to speak to business owners directly. In the business media space, they prefer direct contact with the owner or senior exec. DIY PR is perfect for them!
• If the journalist is interested, they will ask you to email them more information. Don’t bother sending an email through cold as they are unlikely to open it. They get too many!
• Friday afternoon is a good time to pitch to a metro newspaper. The journalists on the Sunday shift will often be looking for a good story and one that is easy for them to write about. Monday’s paper is often hard to fill.
• Ideally, provide some stats to back your story up. Conduct a survey yourself or find some research that upholds your claims (and credit where it’s due and quote the source). A good survey is one with over 1000 participants. However, anything over 300 is acceptable.
• You can approach journalists directly (i.e. DM) via Twitter or simply tweet your story. Most business journalists have Twitter feeds on their computer screen all day. They are looking for stories via social media.

There are a million different angles you can use to make your story newsworthy. We have some suggestions on the site in the Advice Centre in the ‘How PR Works’ section.

So get cracking and get your story to the media now. It may take a while to get it published but the sooner you start, the better your chances of getting some coverage in 2012.

You can check out some of our business media lists below…and have a great day!

The HYOPR team