I first became interested in customer profiling ten years ago.
I was working on a particularly tricky client who was struggling to get any traction with the media. They had been through a number of PR agencies, all of whom had failed to generate press coverage.
I like a good challenge but it was clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy task.
The company had very little in the way of news and couldn’t get any of their customers to agree to be case studies.
We were faced with a virtual PR dead end.
So rather than re-tread old ground and get the same poor results, we decided to try something a little different.
What did we have to lose?
Instead of pushing content about the company’s products and services we thought about their customer’s instead. What were the goals they wanted to achieve and the challenges that stopped them from doing so?
Pretty soon we had moved away from the logic of features and benefits and into the emotional territory of fears and frustrations.
We spent time with various people within our client’s business working on content that would help their target audience overcome the issues they were facing.
Stop Selling. Start Helping.
We didn’t try to sell anything. We were just offering some helpful ideas and direction.
The media lapped the content up. It made sense really. Newspapers, magazines, online portals are not just about news. They are there to help people to tackle their issues.
The coverage we got was well worth the effort. We weren’t counting our results in column inches but in half pages, pages and double page spreads.
It didn’t stop their either. Our client would get emails from prospects saying how much they had enjoyed the pieces and how helpful they’d been.
Some turned into customers.
This kind of content generation now lies at the heart of everything we do for our clients. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pure PR, social media or sales collateral creation. We always put the needs of our audience first.
Funny thing is that the results are so much better than a pure play sales pitch.
So next time you want to get some coverage in the media and struggling to do so, think about your customers.
Work out what they are struggling with and produce pieces that address those issues and help to overcome them.
If you’d like to generate more coverage, more often but aren’t sure where to begin, we’ve written a short ebook that might help.
It outlines the exact process we use to get media coverage for our clients.
You can pick up your free copy here.
Leave a Reply