Verb Company has just introduced its new Media Relations service. While a recent addition, it is at the heart of our business and of the services we provide to our customers.
Even though we have just added the Media Relations category to the list of services we offer, the truth is that we have been providing it in one way or the other since our company started in 2015. It’s just that we have now standardized it into a service we offer to our customers at a flat rate of $3,600 per release, which helps you budget much more easily and get a key service at an affordable rate.
Our Media Relations services include:
- Writing, editing, and distribution to a targeted list of journalists in 48 hours
- Follow up on any reporter requests
- Report with open rates, CTR, and mentions if any. Remember that PR coverage is never guaranteed.
- Build up relationships with publications and reporters
“Disruption” may have become a trite word yet nothing describes more accurately the state of journalism today. It is true that there are a myriad ways to engage with media that were inconceivable not such a long time ago.
Yet access is not everything. To get reporters attention relationships need to be cultivated.
The key word here is a targeted list of journalists. And that involves a lot of hard work that include long hours of meticulous reading and analysis:
- Identifying the relevant publications, blogs and reporters for the customer and the news it has to share
- Drawing up a list with pre-selected publications and reporters
- Analyzing patterns of coverage by selected publications and reporters
- Identifying key topics of interest to individual reporters
- Drawing up the final targeted list of publications and reporters
What Next?
And that’s only the beginning. After you have told us what you have to say, we write and edit the press release. True craftmanship goes into this as our team of reporters and editors works around the clock to have the final writeup ready for you to sign off on and send out. All of this happens in 48 hours.
We then distribute it to the targeted list and shortly afterwards we start to analyze who opened your message, who clicked on your links, who unsubscribed from the list, and we start identifying patterns that help us hone our future messages and update our mailing list with new additions.
The messages we send out are personalized. This means we highlight the part of the story that we think is of more interest to each reporter according to the profile we have developed after following the stories they write and their social media feeds.
They are Your Relationships
Here is where the really hard work happens. That is, cultivating relationships with reporters. Bear in mind you are talking to very busy people with a short attention span and with no time for fluff. You need to give them real news, because that’s what they want to offer to their readers: Why should your announcement matter to them?
"If you’re pitching me on weight loss-related content I’ll mark you as spam, babe" and other sage pitching advice from @morningbrew writer @mattynotmaddie https://t.co/d5yeWaHhfw pic.twitter.com/c0qLJOTtam
— Muck Rack (@muckrack) September 16, 2021
And finding the right words, so your press release does not get lost in the ocean of information overload we are all swamped in, is an ever-evolving art. We are all bombarded with headlines that are mostly of little or no relevance to us, and journalists probably more so than people in other trades.
But more importantly, reporters value honesty and reliability of their sources above everything. And they always get that from Verb Company and our clients.
The trick here is experience. With a team of writers and editors with each at least a couple of decades in this career, Verb Company can craft your message to the exacting standards of what is still legitimately called “serious journalism.”
Truth is absolutely always the best communications policy: telling it may often take a lot of effort and long years of writing and erasing until finding the right words. That does not happen overnight.
Are we on The Wall Street Journal Yet?
Your story will not always get published and will hardly make it to the cover of the big papers of New York. Yet quality is a function of quantity: by dint of exhaustive analysis, follow-up work, and trial and error, we help you build up your own relationships with journalists and publications.
And we offer you that for a flat rate of $3,600 per release. You will not find this service at this price anywhere else.