Generating Publicity for Your Company

by Stacy Zemon

Have you ever read a story about a company and then contacted them to learn more about their product or service?

Publicity in the media can be extremely valuable in building credibility and awareness for your DJ service.

For example, a legitimate news story is an endorsement that can reach a wide audience for very little cost beyond your own creativity and time.

The Benefits of Publicity

Publicity is a highly cost-effective strategy that can:

Build awareness about your products/services, expertise and entertainers
Drive prospects to your website
Drive participation in a promotion or event
Educate the market about event problems your company can solve

Develop Newsworthy Story Ideas

The key to success: create newsworthy stories. They should be interesting, relevant, timely, and offer new information or insight to your prospects.

A press release is not the first draft of an article-it is the spark designed to prompt a reporter to want to write the story or an editor to assign it.

Every day, journalists are bombarded with press releases touting new product releases, business alliances, research discoveries, etc. But journalists don’t just make announcements — they need to tell compelling stories that their readers will find interesting and useful.

Target the Right Person

When you have a story, you have something to offer. With a quick, courteous phone call and a simple pitch, you may get a journalist to say, “Yes, I’m interested in that story, send me your material.” That three-minute phone call could potentially make a substantial difference in your campaign success.

It’s critical to target the right media person. Whoever it is, make sure to spell the name and title correctly. (Find out when the publication or program is on deadline, and don’t call at that time).

It’s difficult to measure the return on publicity, but if you’re really focused on creating stories and reaching out, you have strong potential for success.

Want to see an example of how this all works? Check out this newspaper article that includes DJ Steve Moody and PMDJ Contributing Writer, Betsy Fischer by Clicking here.

Have you had success in this arena? Tell us how you achieved it.

Stacy Zemon - Publisher & Chief Scribe

Stacy Zemon is a self-described serial entrepreneur (Equal parts creativity and business). She is a distinguished industry leader who is widely considered an authority on the DJ business. Stacy is a veteran disc jockey, writer for DJ Times magazine and author of the world’s best-selling DJ books: The Mobile DJ Handbook, The DJ Sales & Marketing Handbook and The Mobile DJ MBA. For the complete story about Stacy’s career, click here. To check out Stacy’s copywriting, business consulting and other services, click here.