Neem je klant mee naar de wereld die PR heet

Nog steeds kloppen veel merken bij een PR-bureau aan met de vraag of ze ervoor kunnen zorgen dat ze in 'De wereld draait door' aan tafel komen. Want dat is toch het enige wat een PR-bureau doet? Ervoor zorgen dat een bedrijfsnaam ergens online of offline wordt genoemd. Hierbij maakt het voor de klant soms niet eens uit of het medium wel door hun doelgroep wordt gelezen of bekeken. Zelf ben ik het hier niet mee eens. Maar hoe vertel je dit je klanten?

Tips van PR-professionals
Hieronder nog een aantal tips van andere PR-professionals en Gini Dietrich zelf.

Gini Dietrich: One of my favorite lines to use when a client (or prospect) says they want to be on the front page of the newspaper? "Are you planning to go on a shooting rampage tonight?"

@JGoldsborough : For example, when a company just wants to broadcast their key messages, I use throwing business cards as an example. Usually ask: "You go to conferences or networking events, right?" Response: "Yes." Me: "Do you get up on a chair and throw business cards at people or do you seek them out, start a conversation and actually try to get to know them?" You may need to even stand on a chair and throw business cards for full effect.

Sarah Lafferty: I have managed to crack this so thought I'd share and idea that works. When a potential client comes to me with a request to write press releases, I ask them very sincerely and openly why they want to do this. The tricky part here is to wait for their answer without being tempted to fill in the gap of stunned silence. (So many people just think that's what we do, they are stunned that we have asked this!) Let's say they come back with the answer "well, we just need to get our names out there". I then ask, "when you've tried this in the past, have you been satisfied with the outcome?" Then, "Okay, so let's explore this objective of wanting to get your name out there a bit more. What does that outcome look like to you?" They say, "We'd really like to get into the Economist" Okay, "great," you say, "let me tell you how to get in the Economist. The least effective means is through a press release. The way to do it is..." and so on. This is how to transform a request to take an order for a commoditised service into a consultative selling engagement. But it really works. I write a press release about every six months these days. I had one client for whom we didn't write a release for three years and we generated lots of coverage.