5 ways to leverage media coverage to grow your business

This interview with Proven Media Solutions founder Dustin Siggins was originally published by Authority Magazine.

Thank you for joining us for this series! Before we dive in, can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was raised in a small town in Northern New Hampshire. I intended to go into the marketing field, but the 2008 recession forced me to consider other options. Instead, I spent a decade in political policy, journalism, and PR before making the transition to the business world.

In your opinion, what separates your agency from others in the space?

We don’t overpromise, we are transparent about how the sausage is made, and we only offer a small number of services.

As a successful business leader, which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?

Three important character traits are:

1. I love helping people tell their stories. I get as excited as they do about helping them craft a message and determine where it can make the biggest impact.
2. I seek new knowledge at all times, so I have been able to quickly accelerate key components of the business to create scalability. This also allows me to be open to constructive criticism.
3. I am very good at receiving, processing, and returning information. This helps create rapport with prospects, ideas with clients, and fast turnaround for client placements.

Wonderful. Let’s now jump into the main part of our interview. If you had a local business, what 3 media strategies would you use to grow your customer base and why?

Securing local earned media is a major challenge in today’s environment. I would use media to grow a customer base by:

1. Dripping out good news of all kinds, from new hires to new offerings to expansion. Large businesses do this very well because they know that local media gatekeepers are desperate for content about which people care. Small businesses can build trust with target audiences with minimal effort by providing these updates to the press.
2. Develop a surround-sound marketing and branding strategy that reuses media coverage for social media, website content, e-newsletters, etc. Almost everyone does this today to some degree — but many businesses do it in a disjointed fashion that creates more work for fewer results.
3. A few times a year, seek bigger press that can be repurposed for local coverage. This is most likely to happen in a regional media outlet or an industry trade outlet.

How about a national brand? What 3 media strategies are typically most effective in generating more business for a national brand?

Frankly, the same strategies apply to national brands as they do to local businesses. National brands do have to be very conscious of risk mitigation in the social media era, so I encourage building a trust reservoir before the sharks attack. This generates trust and business in the short term and reduces business loss during times of crisis.

Would your PR strategy change much if a client is selling a physical product or has a service-based solution? B2C versus B2B? If so, please share an example or two that might demonstrate any differences.

No, the principles of PR and media placements are the same. Every media gatekeeper wants the Three Ts:

1. The right Topic
2. At the right Time
3. From someone with the right Title

If a business is already investing monthly in PR, what other marketing strategies would you recommend they invest in that best complement that work to bring in the most amount of business?

Today’s media environment means that even a big media hit won’t do much for a company’s brand credibility. If you want more than simple brand exposure, invest in a surround-sound marketing & branding strategy to spread content around as widely and effectively as possible.

If someone has already been covered in the media, what are the best next steps after that? What are your “5 Ways To Leverage that Media Coverage To Dramatically Grow Your Business”?

The five ways are:

1. Repurpose your content via your other marketing and branding assets.
2. Use media coverage to secure other media coverage.
3. Show stakeholders your press coverage so they see that you’re building a stronger brand.
4. Get industry press ahead of conferences to turn cold shoulders into warm handshakes at said conferences.
5. Use drip coverage to create momentum for thought leadership. This is a great way for executives to showcase company philosophies, cultures, etc.

One more before we go: If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I would create a network of organizations to help pregnant women in desperate circumstances navigate financial, health, and other challenges during and after pregnancy so they and their children have the best path to fulfill their potential.