Grow Your Small Business with Publicity

Welcome to PublicityShip!

It’s no secret that publicity is a great way to promote your small business.

It carries more weight than advertising.

And the right sort of publicity can get you the sort of exposure that would cost thousands through advertising.

If you’ve been looking for small business publicity services, by now you may have noticed a few different approaches. You can go with a PR agency, often with a monthly retainer. Or you can use one of the many press release distribution services that promise to send your release to thousands of press contacts.

We’ve come up with our approach specifically to meet the needs of small business. Our service comes in easily understandable chunks. And we publish a fixed price for each of them (if you are in a hurry, you can click here now to see our pricing).

So you can get us to help you with just a part of your publicity campaign, where you might need a specialist. Or we can assist you with a whole campaign. Your call.

Our approach is people intensive. When you deal with us, there is someone helping you at each stage. A media specialist interviews you to help get the right angle for your media release; you don’t just fill out a template. We contact - in person - the editors, journalists and bloggers most likely to run with your news. We take a very precise and personal approach because we believe that the best way to get publicity is to think carefully about the angle of your message, your target audience, and the media most likely to pick up your story. If we can help you get the right mix, then the publicity process works its magic!

You can use our small business publicity services in a number of ways:

• Press Release: we interview you and write a media release, and then you distribute the release yourself.
• Publicity Campaign or Publicity Assistant: you brief us for one or more campaigns, and we do the planning, writing and distribution for you. You choose whether to run a single Publicity Campaign, or have one of our Publicity Assistants work with you for a full year and run four campaigns.
• Publicity Plan: if you aren’t sure where to start, we can prepare a Publicity Plan for you to help get your publicity objectives clear.

We operate online, and for print & broadcast media, we service small business clients in all state capitals and regional towns across Australia. For internet media, we service all English speaking clients.

This page provides a detailed description of our services, as well as useful information to help you learn about how to write media releases and get publicity.

Benefits of publicity in newspapers, magazines, TV & radio, and Internet media

• Publicity is a great way to boost your business to the next level by getting your story out to new customers and new markets.
• Publicity generates new customers for your business to increase your sales, by getting their attention and persuading them to get in touch with you.
• Publicity creates awareness of your product by providing information about their new or unique aspects.
• Publicity builds credibility for you and your product, as editorial coverage is far more credible than advertising.
• Publicity can establish your reputation as an expert in your field when you are interviewed in the media about topics of interest to your customers.
• Publicity helps maximise your return on marketing dollars, because editorial coverage is free while reaching a wide audience.

… advertising or publicity? Which approach do you think is more persuasive?

People pay for newspapers and magazines to read the content because they are genuinely interested in the stories. And they watch TV or listen to radio for the same reason. Advertisers compete for readers’ and viewers’ attention by dreaming up new ways to try and interrupt them while they are paying attention to genuine stories.

Publicity is a great marketing tool for letting people know about what is unique or new about your business, or establishing yourself as an expert in an area. The way to get publicity is to start with a clear idea of your publicity goals. Your publicity plan needs to start with these goals, then look at who your audience is, and the messages you want to convey. Next you need to plan the actual media outlets that will best help you in meeting these goals, develop a press release targeted to their needs and finally distribute the release and monitor coverage.

PublicityShip is unique because we are experienced print and broadcast journalists. We understand what editors and producers want, and how to provide it, saving you time and giving you a better chance of seeing media coverage.

Journalists understand what is newsworthy. As professional journalists ourselves, we are able to plan for the specific media outlets that will be most effective for your campaign, and write a media release that is easily translated into a news or feature.

We have worked with editors and producers over many years so we understand what makes the news. Or not. As journalists we’re not afraid to call it like it is! Frankly, editors and producers don’t care about your business. They want great stories, relevant to their audience. So if you want to get a story run, we say get a journalist on your case … someone who knows how to focus on the relevant aspects of the story and identify suitable angles.

Imagine having your own journalist - who knows the media and has contacts among editors and producers - applying their skills and knowledge to your campaign. Well now you can, by working with us.

You can hire us to work on an entire campaign for you, or just one part of it. Our services are flexible.

PublicityShip provides four publicity services:

Publicity Plan	If you need help getting your publicity objectives clear, or are aiming to generate several stories over a period of time, book a Publicity Planning meeting with us. We will discuss your publicity objectives, help you to develop a strategy for your business, and document these in a Publicity Plan.
Publicity Campaign	We work on a story with you, from planning right through to media monitoring.
Publicity Assistant	We assign an assistant to work with you on four campaigns over 12 months.
Media Release	If you just need help with preparing a press release, we will interview you and prepare a professionally written release for you to distribute, optimised for online distribution if this is relevant.

Our Services

A description of each service with pricing is given below. Think how a publicity campaign could benefit your business, and compare the benefits of persuasive editorial coverage of your business to the investment required. Compare this to the substantial costs that can be involved in advertising, or engaging a traditional public relations agency.

Publicity Plan

A good way to get started is to ask us to develop a Publicity Plan for you. This helps you get your objectives really clear, and identify the costs and potential benefits of a campaign. You can then decide whether to invest in publicity.

A Publicity Plan helps answer the question ‘what stories do I have that are newsworthy?’ A journalist interviews you to do this, because sometimes your personal view as to what is newsworthy might not be the same as the media’s. The perspective of an experienced journalist will help you decide on your publicity objectives, and strategies for achieving them.

You will receive a written Publicity Plan that documents your objectives and strategies, identifies stories with the most potential for news coverage, and lays out a plan for taking your stories to the media over the next six to twelve months.

A Publicity Plan costs $350 AUD, paid in two monthly payments of $175.

We have a 100% refund policy on our Publicity Plan service if you are not satisfied.

 

Publicity Campaign

When you engage us for a Publicity Campaign, we work with you from campaign planning right through to monitoring the media for coverage. The diagram below explains how we move you through the process.

The Campaign Process

Campaign Plan

We interview you to establish your campaign message, the audience you want to reach, and the media you would like to target, chosen from newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and Internet news sites. At this stage we also look at what images will be available to support the story.

We then analyse all of the potential media outlets that are relevant for your story, develop a recommended press list and research the contact list for each publication / programme / website, ensuring details are up to date and relevant.

Your Campaign Plan will include:

• A summary of the objectives of the campaign, as they relate to the story
• A press list of selected media publications/programmes/websites meeting your criteria
• A summary of why each media channel has been selected (demographics) and why the story is relevant for their audience
• Prioritisation of the press list, identifying the top six media channels for personal follow-up, as well as supplementary outlets for distribution only.

Issuing a press release via the Internet calls for a different approach - you can talk directly to your prospective customers here - but now we need to pay attention to the right keywords and integration with social media. We take this into account in our campaign planning.

Press Release
We prepare your Press Release applying professional journalism skills with links for further information and contacts. If you have chosen to distribute your release online, we also optimise your release for specific keywords that are most likely to bring the attention you are looking for.

The release will focus on the angle we have agreed with you is most likely to get you publicity. We stick to the facts, prepare the release in a logical sequence with dot points for easy reference if relevant, and provide information on background and images to make the editor’s or producer’s job as easy as possible.

This is your Press Release, so you have the chance to review the content and provide feedback. Only when you are happy with it do we begin Release Distribution.

Release Distribution
We distribute your news release and thumbnail images by email, then contact each person on the press list to make sure the release reaches them, gets their attention and is relevant for them. We also offer more images, an invitation to your event, samples of your product, further information, alternative angles - or anything else that will help to bring your story to the top of their pile.

Our standard Release Distribution service is for six media outlets.
Optional extras include adding additional media outlets (beyond six), and a placement fee to for an Internet release distributed using PRWeb.

Media Monitoring
To track news coverage of your company, we include a Media Monitoring service. This is arranged through Media Monitors, a specialist organisation that monitors a comprehensive range of Australian media.

For each month the monitoring service operates, you receive a digest of coverage of your company in Australian newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, as well as mainstream internet media.

A Publicity Campaign costs $790 per month for 3 months.

 

Press Release

A Press Release brings together a knowledge of your audience, the message and the media you are looking to interest, into a simple one or two page message.

To develop a Press Release, our journalist interviews you to collect information about your news.

They identify an appropriate angle to take, as well as the most useful hooks that will demonstrate relevance for the editors or producers in the press list. They will also discuss images with you. Good quality, compelling images may significantly increase the prospects of getting coverage.

The journalist then writes the release, and sends it to you for review. You are free to make suggestions/revisions prior to approving the final version.

Once the Press Release is complete, it is distributed to the target media. You may choose to do this yourself, or arrange for us to do this on your behalf.

A Press Release costs $195 per month for 3 months.

 

Publicity Assistant

This is your chance to have your own journalist work with you over an extended period to keep your business in the eye of the media.

One of our journalists, acting as your Publicity Assistant, begins by developing a Publicity Plan, setting out the objectives, messages, audiences and media for four Publicity Campaigns.

They then run the four campaigns over a 12-month period, leaving you free to get on with running your business. Media monitoring is in place all year round.

Publicity Assistant $790/month for 12 months. (AUD, GST included)

All our services are subject to our Terms & Conditions.

 

If you have special requirements that are not covered by one of our standard services above, please request a quotation by filling out this form.