How important is local PR coverage?
And how do you secure it?
Let us take you back to March 2020 for a moment. At the start of the pandemic, when we were able to see the number of Covid cases in our area, we became a bit obsessed as a nation with checking these numbers daily. How many cases were in our region, city, or even on our own street?
As the number of Covid cases grew, so did our consumption of local media. As a nation, a lot of us changed our news habits, with many of us becoming switched on to local headlines. As consumers, we wanted information we trusted and clarity on events impacting those closest to us.
But Covid only highlighted what was already there. While the pandemic made a lot of people sit up and pay attention, they only found what engaged consumers already knew – local news is trustworthy and often specific to their interests.
Unless you have a nationwide client base, most people reading the national media won’t be interested in your brand, product or service, making the coverage here a waste of time, money and effort.
The power of local media is a highly effective and influential PR tool. It’s an effective way of mobilising an already engaged audience of local consumers who either know your organisation or are open to hearing about it based on their location.
But what about the audience figures?
Local media still reaches a wide following, especially if you consider a combination of local newspapers, online content, radio, TV and social media. If coverage reaches more than one channel, its message is only strengthened as audiences hear and see it multiple times, ensuring those crucial key messages are delivered and made memorable.
Still comparing local to national? Think quality, not quantity!
Social media is a particularly big focus here. Local communities are active and highly engaged on social media (because we’re all nosy at heart! Aren’t things just more intriguing when they’re on your own doorstep?). People are reassured by local voices, so creating opportunities to put our clients forward as the expert of choice in local media is a really strong way of building trust in their brand, and this only multiplies on social media with user comments.
Combine a strong social outreach using news platforms’ own social content, plus user content pushing it further still, and you have a platform that teams with print news, TV and radio to reach a huge demographic variety.
Let’s look at our care home client, Vida:
Local TV news coverage would reach the target client – the elderly. A radio segment could be heard in the car on the way to work by their adult children – the people making decisions about their care. Both would likely be reached by print news coverage, and the decision makers and older grandchildren could even access the positive reinforcements of the coverage on social media when seeking out more information from public discussion. Overall, everyone involved in the family feels reassured and informed about care decisions.
But how do you generate strong local coverage?
At Lucky North, we don’t just love PR, we live and breathe it. The lucky local media get to experience this first hand with our continuous relationship building. We know our local writers, reporters and researchers like the backs of our hands, and exactly who to call for what when we have a press release ready to deliver.
Networks are built on two things – history and trust. We’ve known our network for a long time, and we’re always building on it for strength and opportunities, but it’s more important to us to know that people trust us. If a publication needs some input we can help with, they know that we provide great content that they’re just as happy with as we are. And that doesn’t happen overnight.
Getting strong PR coverage is competitive – there’s no hiding it. It’s not a case of calling up our writer mates and giving them some juicy goss – there’s work to getting those headlines!
From the start of our PR careers, everyone on the team has become an expert in building great, genuine relationships with a big media network. Knowing one or two journalists doesn’t cut it – we have a carefully curated go-to list in the media for every eventuality. Our clients range in sectors – we look after people in law, care homes and retail – so we need variety in our media network too. Whatever the story we’re pitching, we handpick the right people to go to. And we know that they trust us to deliver only what’s relevant to them, gaining us a much bigger chance of landing that coverage.
A great way to achieve coverage is through regional data splits to identify specific news hooks and angles. We use local case studies too to give a voice from the communities that are relevant to the target media. A story needs a proper news angle and to be relevant and interesting to their audience. This is the very foundation of PR and something we start every single campaign message with.
Have we convinced you to love local? Have you ever wondered what a focus on local media could do for your organisation? Let us throw some ideas around with you at the centre. Get in touch today for a chat.
