Publicity Campaigns for Beginners

Lately I've been receiving phone calls and emails pertaining to publicity campaigns.

The key questions asked: how do I launch an effective campaign and how do I get media attention? The truth is every campaign can have some sort of effectiveness and gain media attention but you'll need to determine what your publicity campaign goals are first.

You can start by answering these following questions:

What's my immediate need for publicity?
Do I need publicity for one project or a long-term publicity campaign?
How will publicity benefit my business? Aside from the obvious: gaining exposure, determine how publicity can serve a long term goal like enhancing a media kit or EPK.

After years of going through the trial and error phase of maintaining publicity campaigns for my own company I've found a few things to be effective - you can check them out in the tips below. And, aside from my own experiences these two things are equally important: one, making sure your company or product is "publicity ready" and two, providing the media with pieces of news that they can get a story from.

Getting publicity now is easier than it was five years ago - you can thank social media and online marketing on your own time. Results are not likely to happen over night but they will happen, with your hard work and patience.

Here are three tips on how to get started:

1. Make sure your project, event or service is ready to go. It makes no sense to start asking media personnel to cover your story when things are tentative and still in the planning phases. Things need to be definite now, you can make changes later.

2. Compile a list of media outlets that would be likely to feature your product. This doesn't necessary mean since you're an music artist you should start mass mailing BillBoard Magazine to review your debut album, although it'd be great if they did. Face it, you have to crawl before you walk. Likely media targets for new artists without a load of previous publicity or accolades would be media outlets who feature upcoming artists.

3. Building an online press room for your company or product that features latest press releases, media kit, events or previous media. This of course, gives prospective media targets a place to check out your company's track record.

All of the above will help you with creating a publicity plan suited to fit your project. You'll also want to keep in mind that publicity campaigns are a process and take time. You may not see immediate results but starting with something as simple as a press release are steps in the right direction.

For more articles on publicity and marketing for beginners visit: http://www.keetria.com/topics/marketing-and-publicity