Press Lists
Before starting an active press relations campaign, you have to decide on your target audience – who you are going to send your press releases to. You need to create a Press List.
Now it’s Policy Decision Time, because there are two methods to choose from:
The Sniper
Using this method, you select a limited number of targets in your sector and aim individual releases at them. You can select the targets by asking yourself which trade or professional publications are the most important in your sector, which ones you read regularly, and then ask your colleagues (and maybe some of your customers) the same question. A restricted list is relatively easy to handle; you can take and read all of the publications regularly to judge the effectiveness of your campaign, and maybe you can get close to the small handful of journalists involved.
The Shotgun
There will be certain publications that directly serve your industry. For example, if you sell computers, there’s
Computer Weekly, Computing, etc. These are known as ‘vertical industry’ publications. However, there may also be many publications read by people who use the products of your industry for computers this might include accountants, engineers, production managers. These are your ‘horizontal’ publications. List every vertical publication and horizontal industry publication, all the industry correspondents of national newspapers, all the freelance writers, anybody who might have an interest in your products or services, and fire off copies of all your releases to the lot of them. This could give you well over a hundred addresses.
Which Method To Choose
Although the sniper is more economical in terms of stationery, postage and time, we have tended to favour the shotgun method for our clients. Over the years we have
often been pleasantly surprised at the results. For example, if you were a small company making machinery to produce sandwiches, would you fancy the chances of one of your stories appearing in the
Financial Times? The
FTs industrial correspondent was on our client’s press list, and one day it happened – and brought in a lot of very valuable, good quality enquiries. The same release was also sent to (and used by) the
Business Today radio programme, where it was heard by a certain national store chain’s sandwich buyer – who promptly instructed his suppliers to install our client’s new piece of equipment on 26 production lines!
Where can you get press lists from? You can subscribe to services such as PIMS, PRADS and
The Editor, who provide names, addresses and editors’ and correspondents’ names for just about every single publication in the UK. Some public libraries may have copies of them.
Press Release Stationery
You’ll need specially printed stationery on which to print your releases. The design is important, because it’s the stationery that makes the first impression on an editor as he picks up a release off the pile on his desk. A couple of pointers:
- Don’t use your letterhead stationery, the stuff you use for correspondence. Impress editors that you are taking press relations seriously, and produce something special for the job. It should be in line with your general corporate image and quite simple, with maybe your name and logo top left and wording such as ‘Press Release’, ‘News Release’ or ‘Media Information’ to the right, and your address in small type across the bottom of the page. Variations on this are OK, but do keep it simple and low-key.
- Use bog-standard A4 80gsm white copier paper, printed preferably in not more than two colours, and certainly no fancy gizmos like thermofaxing or embossing. To an editor, releases printed on heavy-weight tinted bond paper with four-colour embossed printing say ‘small company trying to look big’. Press releases from one of the world’s biggest companies go out on ordinary photocopier-type 80gsm white copy paper, with the IBM logo and ‘News Release’ printed in blue.