Marathon season is back! For those people all around the world preparing to take on the 26-mile run, keep in mind some ground rules: wear the right shoes, learn to pace yourself and know how to break through the wall when you hit it.
But planning, practice and perseverance aren’t just important to physical marathons – creative ones need them, too! So as the people of Birmingham, Toronto and Chicago get laced up, the IBA team is running an international PR marathon of its own. These are the four tips that kept our client’s PR campaigns up and running last month:
1. It’s all down to training
If you don’t have the right experience and training, you won’t make it past the finish line. That’s why IBA provides quality journalistic training to its new staff members and involves them in all aspects of PR – from writing and reporting to pitching and media relations. And that’s why I, the newest one on board, get to write this blog!
2. Don’t just do half the distance, run a full PR effort
This past month, the content we crafted for our enterprise communications client received a vast amount of top-tier coverage in both horizontal and vertical publications. Focusing on the client’s new wireless technology release and participation in a world-renowned technology trade show, the IBA team ran a smooth and effective campaign, which included news stories, social media and journalist engagement and thought-leadership opinion pieces. The full PR effort.
3. Keep the pace and stay focused
Meanwhile, we took long-term planning seriously for our enterprise software client. For its annual world conference in May next year we’re inviting, hosting and accommodating six international journalists – and preparations start eight months ahead. From the initial contact with guests to the goodbye tweet, we know that endurance and time-management are key to delivering a good end result. Along the track, we’ll remember to keep the pace and grab some water now and again!
4. Report your success
Coverage drives brand-awareness, and similarly to the Greek messenger Pheidippides, we too go to great lengths to report a victory. This past month IBA had plenty to report on. Our US-based payment processing client had a breakthrough moment with their first mobile-enabled payment technology, which received great coverage in some of the industry’s top publications. Back in the UK our insurance analytics client was shortlisted for two major awards, further consolidating their reputation as industry leaders and building on success from awards earlier in the year.
Running a marathon is a big deal – we get it. So as the year cools down, the IBA team is all warmed-up to keep the PR momentum going past the finish line. Then there is the next race to think about.
Réka Ágopcsa is PR Executive at IBA International.
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