In the fast-paced world of brand management and public relations (PR), time is of the essence. Building a strong brand presence, reaching target audiences, and securing positive media coverage are crucial for the success of any business. However, the traditional methods of PR often involve a significant investment of time, effort, and resources. This is where the need for an efficient PR tool arises – something we here at Press Loft can help with!
To kick off, let’s take a look at the traditional approach to PR…
Traditional PR
As we’ve said many times before, dedicating time to build and nurture your PR strategy is essential for growth, recognition and ultimately increasing sales. While traditional PR methods may have long been the go-to approach for brand exposure and media relations, it requires a big commitment in terms of your already limited time.
Researching and Building Media Lists:
In the traditional PR landscape, a substantial amount of time is dedicated to researching and building media lists. Identifying relevant journalists, bloggers, influencers, and media outlets requires extensive research, including studying their beat, audience demographics, and editorial preferences. This painstaking process involves scouring through numerous sources, manually compiling lists, and constantly updating them to ensure accuracy. The hours spent on this essential task can be overwhelming, especially for brands with limited resources.
Manual Outreach and Follow-ups:
Once media lists are compiled, the next step is to reach out to these contacts with personalised pitches and press releases. Crafting compelling messages tailored to individual journalists takes time and creativity. Additionally, following up with these contacts and managing multiple email threads further adds to the workload. The back-and-forth communication required for securing coverage demands persistence, patience, and substantial time investments.
Press Release Creation & Distribution:
Distributing press releases to various media outlets is another time-consuming aspect of traditional PR. This process often involves emailing press releases to individual journalists, which can be a time-consuming and tedious task. Furthermore, without a comprehensive tracking system, it becomes difficult to monitor which outlets received the press release and whether it led to any coverage.
Monitoring Media Coverage:
Monitoring media coverage is vital for assessing the impact of PR efforts. Traditional PR methods often require brands to manually track mentions, articles, and reviews across different publications and online platforms. Scouring through newspapers, magazines, and online articles to identify brand mentions is not only time-consuming but also allows certain sources to be overlooked. This makes it difficult to gain a complete picture of media coverage and assess its effectiveness.
Ultimately, the hours spent on researching, building media lists, manual outreach, press release distribution, and monitoring media coverage can be overwhelming, especially for brands juggling multiple responsibilities. In 2024, brands need to leverage the power of technology to streamline and simplify their strategy. And that is exactly where Press Loft comes in!
How does Press Loft differ?
Simplifying the PR process between brands and the media is what we’re all about. Gone are the days where journalists have to request a high res image one-by-one. Housing all PR content in a dedicated online press room allows journalists to access everything they need to feature a brand in an instant and, as a result, leads to increased press coverage.
Our clients not only save hours of time with automated image distribution and contact management, but having an online press room also broadens their media reach, bypasses foreign language barriers, and tracks all activity and results with detailed reporting.
At Press Loft, we work with hundreds of brands around the world as well as helping hundreds of PR agencies to generate more coverage in less time for their clients. In 2022 alone, we confirmed an additional 42,000+ pieces of coverage for our clients and PR agency clients.
Here are just a few ways Press Loft helps to simplify PR:
Host all of your images in one place 24/7
Upload images to your brand press office and be discovered by our network of over 25,000 journalists and influencers. Plus, our system makes it easy to track where and when your images appear in the press!
Send your news to our network in minutes
Drive even more press coverage and create beautiful press releases in minutes with our easy-to-use press release creator. We host published releases online as well as emailing them to thousands of journalists in our network, giving them immediate access to the latest news.
Tracking and reporting
Our user-friendly platform has systems in place for tracking, reporting and measuring results (i.e. the most frustrating part of PR). We make it easy by allowing you to access all your data on your dashboard. Monitor downloads and generate coverage reports within seconds so you can keep track of what publications your products have been spotted in by our team!
Influencer marketing
The Press Loft platform offers an easy and efficient way for brands and social influencers to connect and collaborate on sponsored posts, giveaways, product reviews and more. Channels include Instagram, Twitter, vlogs and blogs – read more about our influencer outreach tools here!
Get the inside scoop on what journalists are working on
Journalists and influencers can submit requests through our platform to help them source content to feature. This might be product images, news, prize giveaways, expert testimonials, loans for shoots and more.
In summary, we help streamline and automate your PR so it can work in the background, leaving you (or your PR team) to focus on other important areas of your business. Over 25,000 media members are waiting to connect with you – rare you ready to give it a go? If so, brands can enjoy a free 60-day trial of the platform to see all of our tools in action!
Registration takes less than 2 minutes and our friendly team is always just a message away to offer a hand. Click here to sign up ✨
