4. PR tools

Press material

Well designed and eye catching publicity is as important as well written copy. Your press releases are competing with hundreds if not thousands of other press releases and announcements.

Press packs

These are needed in situations such as conferences and trade exhibitions as the allow you to give journalists more than a press release. These media packs need to present your company in a professionalism manner before they are even opened.

Press releases

A press release is simply your news story, written in a journalistic style. Journalists rely on these releases to help them compile news reports, features and stories.

On receiving your release, a journalist will only glance at the headline and the first paragraph to get the gist of your story. If what he or she sees fails to attract the all important attention, it will be discarded. It is estimated that this happens to some 97 per cent of releases.

Customer case studies

With trade media, it is often the 'bigger' story that is the most interesting. This means a project story written in conjunction with other companies who are involved with the project.

When this approach is taken everyone wins, the journalist is able to provide the readers with the whole picture and a number of companies receive positive publicity including yours. If your company has led the way with the story, you also win the journalists gratitude.

By-lined stories

Your company is often in possession of interesting market trends or research data that can be released to the market. This kind of story is written in a 'generic' style hardly ever mentioning the name of the company. The editor will credit the author with his or her name and the contact.

This is known 'in the trade' as a by-lined story or article and is generally recognised as the strongest form of PR as the author has in fact been commissioned by the media to write the story. In reality he or she has just become a journalist.