A few years back, I worked as a subcontractor for a marketing firm in California that served a number of home services companies including tiling and flooring, HVAC, pool installation, landscapers, and roofing contractors.

While their initial request was to attain PR for the goal of converting customers, we found that PR was not very effective and had a very poor return on investment for what they spent to get it, so we looked to other options for building their online presence including social media, blogging, and SEO. 

After about 3 months on a course-corrected path, we learned that the most impactful processes for two of the clients we were working with began to materialize and SEO was topping the list. Aside from asking a friend or checking Home Advisor, businesses in this category are the most likely benefactors of individuals who search for solutions amidst an idea storm or a really big problem. 

They might be looking at HGTV and decide they want to get a few quotes, or they may have a leak or major issue that needs immediate resolution and can't wait for their neighbor to pass a business card. These are customers that are on their investigation journey and ready to talk with a service professional. 

Capturing these leads on a buying path means having a solid process that's designed specifically for them. The top factors include:

1. Driving customers in the searching process by boosting your SEO to reach specialized keywords. Local SEO is the strongest strategy as it allows them to use the "near me" function to find companies within their service area.
2. Creating a lead capture process that allows you to quickly gather information and respond to those searching for vendors. A website form is an easy way to gather basic info and call or email to get a meeting. 
3. Responding within 24 hours (or faster if possible) to set a meeting, provide a quote, and follow-up.

Other factors that are essential to your process include:

• Having a website that loads quickly and showcases service offers clearly.
• Showcasing public reviews from customers you've worked with. 
• Demonstrating expertise with photos, content, and certifications.
• Retargeting website visitors with advertising on Google and social media to continue the conversion process if they don't fill out your website forms.

What should I budget for digital marketing?

Your marketing should be a portion of the long-term value of each customer. For example, if one customer usually ends up working with you 2x and each service averages $2,500, your customer lifetime value is $5,000 each. Your marketing should be a portion of that value that leaves you with a comfortable profit after expenses. 

So for example, you spend $2,000 per month on marketing and generally land 5 customers per month from your conversions. Those 5 converted customers represent $25,000 of revenue for the company, which means your marketing budget was about 8% of revenue. 

The goal of your marketing should be to acquire customers at an expense ratio that still leaves you with a strong margin for profitability. While it may take some experimentation at first to get the right marketing mix for you, the power of turning your online brand into a repeatable process is well worth the strategic work it takes to develop.

I remember the old days of PR. 

When I wanted to reach out to the press to share an announcement, I'd run and grab the official company letterhead, print a well-written document explaining the news, and fax it over the newspaper to consider for their next edition. Then I'd wait for the paper to arrive and read it cover to cover to see if it was picked up or not. 

We're clearly in a very different world today, and the ease of putting out press stories means the news is now inundated with press releases that didn't need to go through painstaking hours of work to release. There are literally thousands of news stories placed daily onto the newswires, which are emailed to news stations, newspapers, and directly to reporters. Further, the abundance of ways to get direct journalist email addresses means many people skip the wires and simply email them directly with news any time of day.

So what does this mean for press releases?

This means the likelihood of your release being read depends on catching the right person at the right moment with the right story.
More than likely, no one will ever read your press release.

So what's the point anymore?

Press releases are still relevant for large public companies that are required to send out financial information or disclose major business decisions; they are also relevant for major brands that people are waiting to hear from such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Tesla and Facebook.

For small to mid-sized companies things work a bit differently. 

Smaller companies can use press releases for a few main reasons. 
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1. To build SEO by creating content that links back to your website: The search engines change a lot, so this may change, but press releases can be helpful in building links that drive SEO relevance to your brand. To get this impact, you'll want to post it to an official wire such as PR Newswire or Newswire.com. 
2. To have an official document explaining your story after a "pitch" has been sent: Sending a quick briefing to get attention in an email body is the way to go, but it's helpful to link to a nice polished press release in PDF that they can pull further information from if they want to know more or cite quotes and details directly from the brand. Never send your release in an attachment as you may be stopped by the email system's protection mechanism. Use tools such as Google Drive or Dropbox to share a link to the PDF instead of using attachments.

If you want to try to reach the news, what should you do?

The best way to reach the news for potential features is to send a quick pitch and link them to your press release for more info. Here's an example. 
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Why does this pitch work?

• It shows the reporter that you've paid attention to the kind of work she does and knows that what you are sharing will be relevant to her current focus areas and audience interests. 
• It showcases the newsworthiness of the story by simply incorporating it into the short paragraph (Grandpa riding 20 miles per day with a toddler is seriously unique).
• It's short and sweet with links to more information should she choose to read more.
• It shows there's already an audience for this by showcasing the monthly readers on the blog. 
• The most relevant newsworthy piece is bolded to show up well to make it easy to glance.

The goal is to find the right person at the news station to send your pitch to, or you can make it general and talk to the admin who filters stories and distributes them to producers by sending it through the website contact form. 

So, the idea is to send quick, snippy paragraphs that sell stories to the news that are digestible and catch their attention.

What other factors should you consider?

• What's going on right now: The point of the news is to tell people what's happening, not to advertise your business or give you your 15 minutes of fame. If what you're telling them isn't interesting or related to current events it will not pass the basic requirements for a story worth telling. 
• How well known are you: Being a local or national influencer certainly makes a difference. If they know your name they are more likely to feel you're relevant to their audience and credible as well. Building your brand first is a great initial step towards getting future news publicity. 
• Is it a good fit: Just because it's news, doesn't mean it matters. You're likely reading this because you're hoping to attract your target customers through news features. That means the most important thing is making sure you're hitting the right niche audiences in the publicity you spend time earning. Think about the people that matter for you to be successful and where they spend the most time. While getting on a cat show would be cool, if only 1% of your audience is into cats you won't make a dent in your sales. Look for niches that are general or cover adjacent topics that might reach some of the same people that normally buy from you. 

A recent example:

I recently provided a press release distribution to a cyber-security company. They had been covered in news previously and were announcing an acquisition in the midst of a pandemic where meeting in person had been difficult due to local health rules. The acquisition was done 100% remotely and created one of the largest MSP providers in the state they operate in. That's big news, and super-timely. 

Rather than submit the release publicly on a wire, we sent it directly to the local business news publications during a series of days in the order of importance to the local market. 

The result: 

• 6 pieces of coverage
• Readership of 811M
• 613K estimated coverage views
  
• Average domain authority of 74

Stats per coveragebook
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News, at its most basic level, is simply a way for people to find out what's going on. With that being our agreed definition, approaching news pitching at its core is simply telling the news what's going on, so they can decide what happenings are most worth telling their audience about. 

The difficulty is that in larger markets, or national news covering the entire US and world, there's a lot of stories to tell and just a few people who are responsible for deciding which stories are most relevant. Your job as the storyteller is to explain in one quick glance why your story deserves to supercede the others in the lineup for space in their media network.

​The first story I ever pitched was the announcement of a local contest being hosted by a nonprofit organization. That organization bought a home, renovated it, and donated the home to a local hero. The program garnered over $20,000 in cash sponsorship, numerous donated construction team hours, and cost about $45,000 to buy the house and bring it to code.  

My job was to pitch that idea to a radio station host that our company CEO listened to, so that he would be interested in being part of the selection process and to talk about the contest the entire way through, announcing the winner on air and on television as he was also a TV reporter. 

What made it newsworthy:

• The program would be life changing for a special person who would be gifted a home they would own outright. 
• There were numbers that could be tracked including the sponsorship dollars we earned, hours of free construction by local contractors, and the full cost of the donated home. 
• Detroit, the city this was hosted in, had been a struggling real estate market, so the contest provided investment into the city to potentially move someone from the suburbs back into Detroit.
• Our CEO was an avid listener of the show and a super fan of the host, so he was excited to work with a fan. 
• The company was nonprofit and therefore could fit into their annual public service hours at the station.

Because of these elements, the radio host accepted the offer and was part of the program from beginning to end. 

Once the initial program was over, the next part of the project was to promote the awarding ceremony. The company hosts an annual Christmas Party with top business leaders and dignitaries on the invite list. This year, we also invited the winning family and celebrated the contractors who donated their hours to complete the home renovations.

What made it newsworthy:

• The party would celebrate a Detroit police officer, woman of color, and mother of three who would be awarded a ceremonial key to her new home. The police had taken a 10% pay cut, so it was timely to support someone on the force by reducing their life expenses.
• The key presentation ceremony was led by a local leader who was at the time the city council president. 
• The event was intentionally held at a Detroit arts center with a long and celebrated history.

These pitch elements drove interest from the local TV news and two cameramen arrived prior to the ceremony to film it and record an interview with the city leaders present.

The key to getting press for an event is in finding all of the most relevant elements surrounding the programming. What makes it locally relevant? What makes people care about this more than other things happening at the same time? What part of the daily news lineup does it fit into? Which producer or writer will care most and why? Knowing the answers to these questions will make the difference between being ignored and getting featured. 

When possible, inviting and confirming local leaders that are pressworthy on their own is a great way to solidify newsworthiness and get journalists to show up.

Lastly, it's all about timing. There are things you cannot control and much of PR is about being in the right place, with the right story, at the right time. Don't take rejection personal and always be prepared to keep trying with other news opportunities along the way.