Kayley Hamilton came on the show and talked about working new clients.
Here are the key takeaways.
- Spend your day keeping up with the news in your client`s industries. e.g. use Google Alerts.
- Knowledge of their news helps you figure out pitches, new angles, and also shows new potential media contacts to approach.
- Every day reinforce relationships with contacts you have even when you don’t have a story to pitch. Can you help them personally?
- If you don’t already have one, come up with a pitch framework it can help you repeat success.
- PR yourself. Practise what you preach. Go on podcasts, media, etc. To get clients they need to know about you.
- Newsjacking is a powerful tool. If everyone is talking about a legal change in your state or country, outlets will be looking for content around that conversation.
- If no one has heard of your clients yet, start small. Podcasts, local news, anything and everything you can do and just line it up. Do as much as possible and it will grow.
- Every appearance can be leveraged to go onto the next bigger outlet by using the last outlet as an example of how good a guest the client is or how they were featured in “X” publication.
- Small is also the best place to start with new clients as they can practise being interviewed.
- Be consistent. Don’t just do some media then stop. Keep going. This is about the long haul. Consistency builds. Moments that stop create curves that also stop.
- Try to focus on clients or companies who are experts and really know their stuff and can talk about it. Trying to represent a boss/client who doesn’t share ideas openly can be very tough.
- Use research on your topic area to gain traction. If new research comes out that is “news”. So, be the person who comments on that and can explain it.
- Does the client have personal experience with the problem they are talking about? In that case, they are the “case study” by default and outlets will love that.
Listen to the episode here
Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-notes-beside-a-pencil-on-brown-wooden-surface-733854/