Getting cut through with your travel & tourism press release

Getting cut through with your press release with Angela Thompson from Travmedia Welcome to Tourism Upgrade the podcast unpacking marketing trends from travel, tourism and marketing leaders. I’m your host Holly G and today we welcome Angela Thompson, Regional Director for Australia of TravMedia and Food4Media. Today on the Podcast we will be talking about getting […]

The post Getting cut through with your travel & tourism press release appeared first on Holly G.

Getting cut through with your press release with Angela Thompson from Travmedia
Welcome to Tourism Upgrade the podcast unpacking marketing trends from travel, tourism and marketing leaders. I’m your host Holly G and today we welcome Angela Thompson, Regional Director for Australia of TravMedia and Food4Media. Today on the Podcast we will be talking about getting cut through with your press release and Ange shares the formula!

HollyG: So on this podcast I normally talk about all things digital marketing and I recently sat through a presentation which I think you might have been at as well, telling me that the press release is dead. Where does the press release fit into the marketing mix these days?

Angela: Yeah I think this is one that’s popping up a bit lately, interestingly possibly by content marketing agencies so a bit of their agenda and probably really excited about their product but to me it’s a bit reflective of those… TV was going to kill radio and then internet was going to kill print and all these stuff. Content marketing is going to kill PR but in actual fact they are all still around, they all still are relevant. I think probably the challenge is the fact that there are so many channels and still one part of marketing funds so how do you split between your limited sources, limited funds in our cases and split between all of your different strategies, but in terms of the press release, something we’ve seen close just on TravMedia Australia online we have seen almost 1400 press releases uploaded just this year so far so we’ve got a media list continue to go so we’ve got about 1700 Australian Travel Generalist on our platform with an average of about 650-700 login within the 60-day period so they’re not jumping onto their online banking or something, they are there to get press releases and that work with PR so I think the purpose of putting there is simply not dead but I do think bad press releases are going to get the boo pretty quickly so…

HollyG: We want to try and avoid and hopefully you can give us some tips today and especially you would see so many press releases come through TravMedia. What are some of the common mistakes that you’re seeing with press releases?

Angela: Probably, why do you actually going out to media? Do you have news to share? Do you have something new, launch events, products or something like that? Timing I would say is a really big one so we often see maybe a festival that’s happening that weekend and some posted press release in our site… for an event I would probably pitch that a month out. Save the day in the diary for a journalist and the follow up maybe a couple of weeks later. Relevance is also a big one, nothing drives a journalist more crazy than getting a totally relevant pitch so think about who your audience is. You’re not going to pitch a lifestyle piece to a Financer so be aware of who you are pitching and same to consumers as well. You don’t want to be targeting an online publication that is a __________ market if you sell 50+ products so be really aware of what your end-result is in your pitch. It’s not always about the hit, it’s always about how is that return on investment and how do you get that person _______ and booking into your…

HollyG: Press release is just a stepping stone essentially for what you want to happen next.

Angela: Sure and such a building block, it’s not a one hit wonder, it’s how it profile your brand on an ongoing basis.

HollyG: Yeah and fit into your overall marketing mix, all the other activities you are doing. And as we’ve talked about this last week, they’re seeing you here and they’re seeing you again with something else in a week’s time or couple of weeks’ time that consistency over time.

Angela: That’s what PR is all about, it’s so hard to measure and I think that’s one of the challenges. This PR is not like a direct mail or campaign, we can’t see the open rate, and it’s not a like coupon that you cannot measure. It is very much an awareness campaign that you need to spit like going to start marketers I guess, you’ve got to be prepared to date in for a long whole and be constantly profiling your brand and telling your brand story to support all of your channels.

HollyG: Yeah great, so I’d love to get into some of the detail. Can you talk us through the key elements we need to think about when we’re writing and then distributing a press release?

Angela: Well, number 1 is the hook. The ‘what are you talking about?’ ‘Why are you contacting a journalist?’… Is it because you’ve got a launch? Are you throwing an event? Do you have seasonal campaigns? And that’s a good way to be planning ahead as well so, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, school holidays… how does that fit into or excuse to go out to media really? Likewise, we have a lot of success with timing with localized events, Vivid is a big one for Sydney, there may be a destination has sort of light event every year so how do you then tap into those campaigns.

HollyG: So, it’s also looking at your hook but maybe how you can hook in with other things that are going on to add that relevance I guess.

Angela: So, it’s always keeping our eyes open to the opportunity. So next is the Headline. I would say that this is the most important so people tend to be quite clever with their Headline sometimes and from looking at the back end on TravMedia we say that, that doesn’t always help. So generally it’s the time poor just so like it is, it’s my fear either that’s…

HollyG: You said something the other night when we were talking about this, you know avoiding the cryptic headline, so basically if you’ve got an event or you’re launching something you need to be super straightforward?

Angela: Absolutely, so I say cryptic headlines impact results in a negative way. If you’re launching a new cruise ship or something say “___________ Cruise Ship Launches” I would open that. Time with the Celebrity Shift that’s catchy, if you too is clever and often those cryptic headlines tend to be salesy so people are time poor, they are going to scan through a bunch of headlines; if it’s not relevant to them they’re not going to open it so make it relevant to them, make it catchy. Also include your hook in your headline basically, those new sort of words like new launch or invite… spell out the destination that’s all.

HollyG: So, make it as clear as possible for people to know what journalists are about to read.

Angela: Journalists get mix reports; they get hundred emails, some media gets 500 emails a day… how are you going to stand out in that saved emails? So your headline is your one shot.

Your press release headline is your one shot to stand out #Travmedia #TourismUpgrade
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HollyG: Yeah okay good. So the headline is the first step. What about the content?

Angela: Content is King as we all know but content of press release is absolutely a formula; just nailed the formula and that’s all you need to remember. Going back to my PR 1 on 1 days… it’s an upside down pyramid so your first paragraph is always: who, what, when, why and how. Don’t make them fish through a bunch of copy to find what you’re talking about, just give it to them straight up just like your headline.

You don’t need to write a very clever editorial phase, you should probably do a little bit of content marketing if you are very good at that but just tell like it is, include all your facts, usually I include a quote from maybe your third paragraph or something quote from your CEO or your company’s spoke person, might be relevant to include a testimonial from one of your customers, it really depends on what your objective is to the press release but most important information at the top, but actually don’t forget your Call to Action which is so many press releases where people just forget to guide them somewhere else.

What’s your address? What are your social media handles? The idea I think with every piece of communication is to give that somebody that next step. How can I further engage with your brand? Take them. If you’re talking about tour highlight then include the link, you don’t need to talk about it every single detail of the tour, pull out of your really key highlights to get people to go to that next level of finding more information – guide them through.

HollyG: Cool! What else is in our important formula for press releases?

Angela: Know who you’re targeting. So that’s really next point with the target. Get your nose, spend a lot of time researching all your publications, sign up to other newsletters to find their voice, request their media kits, I’ll issue that if I am pitching a journalist to do… I am not really familiar with their publications and media kits have a lot of demographic information about who the leadership part is, does that fit in with your customer?

HollyG: Yeah, so you’re researching who you are targeting that’s going to fit in with what your product is.

Angela: Yeah I mean if you’ve got to target your media first to then target your customer so make sure you’ll tie the release for the audience so you’re going to build a really relevant media lists so most cases in trouble, you’re going to have your Trade Media contacts and that’s going to be relevant for your releases and any appointment with your company. Trade partnership, you might have to start a new promotion with clients centre or something and that sort of stuff that trade is going to be interested in.

Consumer media – not so much and even breaking it down further. I mean freelancers don’t necessarily write stories about deals because they don’t have those _________, they write features. So doing a showcase on an amazing tour writing is really relevant for freelance audience. So it’s really thinking about what they are going to do with that information…

HollyG: Yeah that’s a good point! That’s awesome. Okay, so what else do we have here?

Angela: The distributions – this is often the tricky one. I spent many a day searching through media contacts and building media list and then how you do send out that content, so they’re getting hundred emails a day, so don’t make it tricky for them. A lot of people really love to put together this really fancy media for touchments which look great but that’s another step for a journalist to then have to open their email, open the PDF to get the information so I just give them the information right there…

HollyG: So you want the release essentially in the body of the email?

Angela: I think that works best or if you want to do your own tire release at least the first part you know is who, what and where so they know exactly what they are looking at… maybe the first couple of paragraphs if you are driving for an interview or something, you could include such as the company spoke person is available for interviews and then attach a PDF. I would probably do something more like a fact sheet, so it’s giving them again that next step of information but they don’t have to go sitting through what you’re actually trying to communicate with them.

Holly: What about images and emailing images and things like that?

Angela: This is a bit of a touchy one with media, sometimes it can be tricky especially with the travel industry if they’re travelling so you don’t want to bombard their emails if 50 images but it is really important to give them at least one or two hero shots, high raise if they’re print publications, if they’re online publication then they’re not going to need high raise, you don’t need to necessarily worry about that but make sure they are really well-captioned, that everyone want to go back to you and say I don’t know what I am looking at here, what is this destination and be googling images themselves so… the whole point of PR is to make a journalist’s life easier so do that. Make it as easy as possible.

On the distribution you want to be complementing your own media list, you’re always going to have those key contacts that you work with so send them an email direct like lovely to see you at the event last night! Whatever your little personal messages is and your pitch or your press release but then also complement it with distribution channels like TravMedia that is very targeted to your audience, reaches people who aren’t going to be on your radar. Like I said we have about 1700 journalists, a lot of them are free lancers, they might be working out for Gmail, and they pop out all the time digital influencers, I mean that’s a huge growth areas so it’s just give you that extra…

HollyG: And also even if there’s some double up, you’re hitting them again essentially so more likely that they might see it.

Angela: What if I get 500 emails a day? You know they might have missed it so the next is your touch point and that’s like anything any marketing mixes… how many touch points can you cover?

HollyG: Hmmm, okay. And then the follow up?

Angela: This is a tricky one too! So media don’t tend to like the follow up calls, I remember when I started my PR crews, you’ll be told by Boss to send them a media release and then pick up the phone and say Did you receive our media release? That doesn’t happen so much anymore. A lot of journalists don’t like to be contacted like that. It can be relevant to make follow up calls so that’s why I think an event is always a really good time to press release because if you are… it doesn’t have to be a fancy expensive event, you can do a very intimate style like dinner or whatever and that’s a great excuse to give them a call, like after you have sent a press release.

HollyG: And I guess also with the follow up, it could be potentially like picking and choosing the ones that you do follow up? Like if there’s something really massive going on and it’s really important you probably feel a bit more comfortable doing the follow up as opposed to if it’s just the appointment of a new staff member or something like that?

Angela: Definitely, it goes back to news worthiness isn’t it? So if you got something that you want to share about, then pick up the phone and do it but I think it’s a good idea as part of your strategy to almost feed out your campaign in stages. Like in TravMedia I always say to people post your press release one day, then next week post your video that matches the campaign and then the following week, post the little alert on the community board saying “with a great attraction on our new blog” or something like that, “what’s your feedback? So, you’re saying top of mind and you’re keeping that campaign momentum going without saving that one press release.

Sometimes the follow up email is appropriate too but make sure that you’re not just saying have you receive my press release? Give them something else. If you’re running a competition, go back to the media and say our competition has been over for a couple of weeks, here are entries so far we’ve seen great results… that was an excuse to go back to them.

And then media monitoring is another big one. So this can be a really expensive exercise especially for a small tour operator so don’t just sort of think that a journalist is going to contact you and say oh thanks, we run your story! Here we go, here’s the copy and you really need to stand on your own proof media monitoring… so go back to your distribution list and see who you really were targeting or who’s really a good fit with that messaging, search their publications, have a look at their website if they run the story, sign up to all newsletters of publications that are relevant to you so that you might see a news pop up one day and that is something more exciting and sent you google alert, something that’s pretty simple on and we’ve got media uploading stories within our websites so check those targeted channels as well.

Holly: Yeah excellent! Next?

Angela: So the next, this goes back to my early days of PR training as well but the relationship. This is the key to PR and probably business and life if I guess but building and maintaining those personal relationships with media. If you have now manage to send your press release out, get a response, make a follow up call, or you’ve had a chat or maybe like came to your event, you’ve got a relationship with that journalist now and I probably saying to my crew having to meet somebody face to face, I might have gone for my zero percent success range to a hundred percent with them just like that. That’s so much easier to work with someone once you’ve met them face to face.

Holly: Yeah so I think it is important to integrate into… if PR’s part of your role is to work out how the ways that you can develop relationships with media, what events should you be going to so you’re crossing paths with these people?

Angela: Join industry associations, so I am part of the Australian Society of Travel Writers, so that’s a great network of meeting media on a really casual environment. It’s not pitchy, it’s just fun but that’s a relationship that I developed with them. Contact them to do a desk side, I mean that’s a very old school PR to…

Holly: What does that mean?

Angela: So literally, if you’ve got 5-10 minutes to come in and show you through our product or 10 minutes for a quick coffee, spend that budget on some coffees and every now and then they have might… it’s harder for media to get away from their desks, they are managing so many channels and social media pages etc. but maybe it’s relevant to invite them out for lunch so have a small dinner style media event where you can really meet that one on one connection with people and build a relationship.

Holly: I am writing this book at the moment called the “Remarkables” which is written by Lauren Murphy who used to work on a PR Agency and then started a blogger agency and she tells in the book the story of not expecting the relationship to happen super fast and that you might then need to build this relationship over months or years to then get a result and how important it is to not just think that you’re going to meet someone and then straight away they’re going to do whatever you want?

Angela: Yeah it’s like speed dating, isn’t it? And friendship I mean you can’t push these things. It’s even more on a natural situation because it is a work context where maybe you are going to an event and small talking; just be real and just be yourself, people expect that really honest about your product. No PR person will ever say that they are spin doctor it’s not about that. It’s about telling the media exactly what you’re doing and then they respect that and looking after them, interests as well as your own.

Holly: And then a final tip?

Angela: My whole approach to communication is integrated. So where does your Press Release fit in with your integration strategy so like I always say, it’s always another touch point. PR is not a magic bullet, it’s not going to… you’re not going to send these press release out and then look at your website the next day and then you’ve got how much more traffic and then sold out two hours… it’s not like that as it is a building block. So how does that fit in with your website? With your marketing channels? With your advertising strategy? How can you be making all those things work together to support each other as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket and then…

Holly: Yeah, good point actually. So we’ve talked about the hook, the headline, the actual content, the target of your publications, the distribution, the follow up, the relationship and then ultimately it all fits into and integrated strategy with across all your marketing.

Angela: That’s it! Proactive that’s the key really. It’s not if you build it, they will come. You need to constantly pushing that content out and then making those connections with people.

Holly: Yeah great! So, any final tips or comments there?

Angela: I think we’ve covered it all. Nailed the formula!

Holly: Yeah that’s so valuable. Now, while you’re here, for those that might not know what TravMedia is, can you give us just a brief overview?

Angela: Sure, so TravMedia is an online news distribution service and social media network that connects travel media and travel PR’s. So we’re bit of a LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter of the Travel Industry. The strength of the network is the fact that we’ve got a really widespread highly targeted and highly engaged media database and as much an offline network, so we do a lot of connecting people behind the scenes. We know a lot of people, things are coming in across the site so I am making those connections and then that’s a common _________ in our fact sheet media event every year that we do globally. International media market place is actually building these one on one relationships so we provide the forum for you to meet the Travel Media one on one.

Holly: And although, you mainly look after Australia, TravMedia works across the range of markets, don’t they?

Angela: TravMedia is in ten ranges globally; biggest markets of Australia, UK, US and Asia. We’ve got lots of markets with active databases in New Zealand and yeah it just really depends on who your costumers are. We have a lot of people who are part of TravMedia Australia but then they work with our other ranges to target those media that is much harder to reach from where you are.

Holly: And really, I mean all the best media contacts are on TravMedia. I know as I am user so if I ever sort of trying to find out obvious the PR contact for these, or how can I get in touch with these? You guys normally know what’s going on there.

Angela: Absolutely, and I am often out and about events with media and they are promoting for me. I don’t have anything. My glass of champagne and doing a lot of hard work. So it is a really an engage network because it simplifies the job and boss is an ex-travel journalist, he created the site in the early days in internet for that exact reason; to bring together news, connect people in this online platform that makes a travel journalist specifically because you’re often out on the road…

Holly: It’s spinning around for a long time!

Angela: Yeah 16 years.

Holly: Alright cool, so how can people find out a little bit more about you or TravMedia.

Angela: So, head to TravMedia.com, we’ve got all our registration details there and we can sign you up on a trial so we generally encourage brands to get on, experience the platform first chance to see if it fits in with their strategy, send out a couple of press releases and see how that forms for you, we can work for you on giving you feedback and putting you on the right direction and off you go!

Holly: Yeah perfect! Okay, are you out for the bonus question?

Angela: Absolutely!

Now it’s time for our thousand dollar bonus question!

Bonus Question: If you only have a thousand dollar marketing budget, what would you spend it on?

Angela: Alright well, I would spend my budget on firstly setting up a good website that I could manage myself so maybe the WordPress or something inexpensive but that I can be constantly updating. I would definitely incorporate direct elements into that so subscribe to my newsletter or have a blog or whatever it is that I can say top of mind with the people who are interacting with my brand on my website, obviously develop a PR campaign, build relationships with media, advertising (it’s obviously going to blow that budget totally) thinks of content marketing growth, there are a lot of ways that you can I guess cost effectively do things like responsive posts so it’s in an editorial style of voice which really that third party credibility goes along way, so spend a few dollars on getting some responsive posts with their publications that really target your market and then that also helps your link back to your own channels especially online, they might include your website, they might include your social media handles that’s then going to drive traffic back to your website, help your SEO, drive traffic back to your Facebook page and increase your likes so it goes back connectivity again.

Holly: Yeah cool, and what if you only have a $100?

Angela: I would pound a pavement. I would get back to basic so will build relationships with people, attend networking events so spend a hundred bucks on buses and coffee I think and that goes on the line so it’s really about you often go to a networking event and you never know who you’re going to meet and you don’t know where it’s going to lead and I think that’s really the essence of PR – it’s relationships not just with media but in all sorts of directions and who you can be constantly partnering with, how can you be helping each other out and taking advantage of those opportunities.

Holly:  Thanks Angela!

Angela: My pleasure!

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The post Getting cut through with your travel & tourism press release appeared first on Holly G.