Media management
With a combined 50+ years of journalistic experience working within the UK’s regional news media, our PR team offers in-depth insight, experience and expertise when it comes to media relations. From headline-hitting press releases and media planning to extensive press contacts across local, regional, national, trade and consumer media, we provide a full range of media relations services.
There’s nothing more valuable to a client than seeing their company’s name appear in a positive article, news report, or blog post. The credibility this presence brings is vital for gaining the attention of decision-makers, stakeholders, and customers. It is key to building brand and reputation – two of the essential pillars of PR.
How we do it
It’s important that the team handling your PR instinctively knows what’s going to work and what’s not, and has the experience and expertise to advise you accordingly. It’s also crucial they are abreast of the media industry as it works today, while always keeping a weather eye on what is developing in the future.
Understanding how the media works, what editors and journalists look for, how to implement a media strategy and where to look for the most appropriate outlets and platforms is not a skillset that is developed quickly. Our PR team has decades behind it in roles that span PR to weekly and daily newspaper editor, and even live TV news producer.
Our media management expertise means we’ll know exactly where, and with whom, your PR needs to be channelled, and what form it should take.
We provide an integrated approach
Public relations defines how a company or organisation communicates with people — customers, stakeholders, partners, journalists, philanthropists, politicians, and the general public. All businesses and organisations can benefit from public relations, regardless of their size or industry.
As a fully integrated agency, our PR team has a whole spectrum of expertise it can liaise with:
- Strategy – elevating your brand by identifying and setting the goals and objectives you want to reach, from sales and increased revenue to establishing a loyal customer base and attracting new customers – all common factors of a content strategy and PR campaign.
- Digital – particularly our social media experts, who specialise in crafting bespoke social media strategies that will complement and maximise your unique industry trends and audience profiles. A positive, upbeat, and active social media presence can be a key driving factor behind a successful media management strategy.
- Design – our in-house creatives can bring some wow factor to your strategy, thanks to their ability to illustrate brand vision and bring campaign concepts to life.
Brainstorming is an important part of developing any media management strategy, so we’ll take advantage of the knowledge, strengths and expertise of all of our teams to ensure the best focus for your PR, and then sense check it before we begin managing the output.
Hitting the target every time
Public relations and marketing are similar in their actions and tactics, but their goals are quite different. The main goal of PR is to boost the reputation of your brand. On the other hand, the main goal of marketing is to drive sales. Of course, given our fully integrated status, we can do both.
So, when it comes to PR what can our team offer? After all the hard work that goes into your PR strategy, you want it to be the best it possibly can. So, it’s knowing what type of PR your business or organisation needs.
There are three main types of PR – owned, paid, and earned media. Each type works towards the same goal of building a positive brand reputation, but they use different strategies to get there. Your PR strategies should include all three, as they all provide different ways of reaching, engaging, and building trust with your audience.
Our PR team has close working relationships with journalists in a vast array of roles and media. For example, our relationship with a B2B editor resulted in a front cover and substantial coverage in a regional business magazine for one of our manufacturing industry clients. We seized the opportunity when we spotted our client’s project perfectly fitted the magazine’s brief.
It’s also knowing how to pitch a story, and understanding its full potential. When one of our health service clients won a prestigious award, our social media team got to work within hours of the news breaking to get the message out on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, one of our PR writers crafted a timely, relevant press release that succinctly told the whole story, regionalising it so the media outlets covering the two counties where our client operates received appropriately angled content.
Reputation and crisis management
Reputations can be pretty fragile. Only one mistake can damage the love and trust customers had for a business, brand or organisation.
If your mission and vision is being swamped in a mire of negativity, that’s when crisis management comes into play. We’re a reliable, reactive and experienced source of advice for our clients – providing swift and carefully considered crisis communications designed to minimise the impact of any negative publicity.
While you might be tempted to say ‘no comment’ to bad publicity, we’ll illustrate just how such a stance could be even more damaging to your reputation. The inside track of how to manage a crisis is priceless – we’re lucky to have it, and you could benefit from it too. Let’s just hope you never need to!
Building mutual respect
In essence, good media management is making the job of the person receiving our output as simple and straightforward as possible. It’s building a mutual respect that we’re not disseminating spam, and what they’re receiving from us is appropriate, targeted and all-encapsulating. It’s not only gratifying when we see our press releases being used almost word-for-word, it’s also confirmation that our work is hitting the bull’s eye!
Get in touch
Quality content that is creative, relevant, valuable and engaging is a compelling combination. It’s important it hits the most appropriate outlets and platforms and that’s not a skillset that develops quickly.
With its combined experience of 50+ years in journalism working within the UK’s regional news media, our PR team brings in-depth insight, experience and expertise to media relations.
If your PR needs a steadying hand on the tiller of media management, get in touch.