Big coverage for small brands

Media coverage can be one of the most effective forms of marketing for brands.

When that coverage also comes with backlinks into the brand’s website it is doubly effective, having valuable SEO benefits as well as growing brand awareness and delivering traffic. 

But many marketers wrongly believe that the media is only interested in big brands. They think that to benefit from huge amounts of coverage they have to be on the Footsie 100. But the truth is media professionals are constantly seeking good stories and any brand can benefit from this thirst for content as long as they understand it and present their messages in the right way. 

At Motive we are really proud of our track record at winning massive media attention and mountains of links for independent ecommerce brands. Last year we won an average of 376 items of media coverage for every client we worked with - more than one for every day of the year including weekends and bank holidays. For a full round-up of our results during 2022 please click here. 

None of the brands we worked with are on the Footsie or could be considered as household names yet we got them featured in the UK national media throughout the year. We have proved many times that every brand can enjoy high levels of media coverage no matter how large or small they might be.

How to win media coverage 

The key to winning media coverage for a brand is to understand what editorial media coverage is and, perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t. Every marketer should understand the distinction between PR and advertising or between editorial and paid for content. Click here if you’d like to read a discussion around this. 

If you are buying content then you can pretty much say anything you want to. You can load your content with sales messages if you wish. No one will cut it because you’ve bought the space. But media consumers are a savvy lot and the chances are they’ll be able to spot your bought content a mile away and therefore it will be far less effective as a marketing tool than it would be if it were editorial, or earned content. But to earn content you have to approach it slightly differently. 

Editorial content has to satisfy the journalist’s need for a great story. It can’t be purely self serving. That doesn’t mean it can’t contain sales messages but they will have to be much more subtle than they appear in adverts. To earn editorial coverage you have to be creative and to devise something different which stands out from all of the other content being pitched to journalists on a daily basis. 

Campaigns to secure earned coverage would be thought of as brand building and link winning rather than advertising. It’s important to understand the type of content target publications are already running and to give them something which fits. The best way to win coverage is to give busy journalists something they can simply cut and paste. 

The best campaigns offer something different and novel which the media simply can’t resist. Click here to download Motive’s Greatest Hits which collects some of our big hitting campaigns down the years and should provide some inspiration. 

Remember any brand can achieve masses of media coverage if they take a creative approach. This is one area where the phrase, ‘Size doesn’t matter’ really is true. 

© MOTIVE