PR Results

Positioning

Not every com­pa­ny has already for­mu­lat­ed a suf­fi­cient­ly clear “mes­sage”, the foun­da­tion for tar­get­ed press work. For this rea­son, the rela­tion­ship with in-​house Agen­tur often begins with a work­shop, where we exam­ine the posi­tion­ing of the prod­ucts and the com­pa­ny with a care­ful, crit­i­cal eye. The result is a writ­ten doc­u­ment that will pro­vide us with a basis for all fur­ther measures.

Backgrounder

Posi­tion­ing an IT com­pa­ny and its prod­ucts in its respec­tive mar­kets is often not an easy task. In order to make it eas­i­er for jour­nal­ists to under­stand a com­pa­ny, in-​house Agen­tur cre­ates a cor­po­rate back­grounder for every client. If desired, a prod­uct back­grounder may be added.

Exam­ple: Back­grounder

Boilerplate

The boil­er­plate, an abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the back­grounder, is insert­ed at the end of every press announce­ment. At the begin­ning of the rela­tion­ship with in-​house Agen­tur, based upon the posi­tion­ing and the back­grounder, the required boil­er­plates (“About XYZ Com­pa­ny” and “About XYZ Com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts”) are gen­er­at­ed and approved.

Exam­ple: Boil­er­plate

Press Distribution List

In prepar­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with jour­nal­ists, it is first impor­tant to choose the pub­li­ca­tions and the edi­tors that the com­pa­ny will focus on. In this selec­tion process, less is often bet­ter than more, as the goal is to build long-​term rela­tion­ships with jour­nal­ists. in-​house Agen­tur com­piles indi­vid­ual press release dis­tri­b­u­tion lists for each of its clients, which not only con­sid­ers the respec­tive prod­ucts but also such specifics as the indus­try sec­tor focus.

Press Release

One of the clas­sic results of press work is the press release. It is pri­mar­i­ly a vehi­cle to present new infor­ma­tion about the com­pa­ny, which is sent to the entire press release dis­tri­b­u­tion list or only a part of it. In real­i­ty, press releas­es rather end up being vehi­cles for jour­nal­ist rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, accord­ing to the mot­to: “nice to hear from you again”. At in-​house Agen­tur, press releas­es as a rule are only sent out in con­junc­tion with an offer for fur­ther action.

Exam­ples (by occa­sion): Grad­u­a­tion, award, trade fair, part­ner win, per­son­nel, prod­uct launch, study

Press Visit

A more per­son­al form of con­tact with jour­nal­ists is the press vis­it, often com­bined with a press tour. Gen­er­al­ly car­ried out to mark a cur­rent event — for exam­ple a prod­uct launch — the edi­to­r­i­al vis­it also serves above all to get to know each oth­er per­son­al­ly. At in-​house Agen­tur, we feel that it is impor­tant for our clients to have direct con­tact with jour­nal­ists on a reg­u­lar basis. In this way, over time, the com­pa­ny will build up its own trust­ing rela­tion­ship with the press.

Trade Show Representation

Trade shows and con­fer­ences pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­tact with the often large num­ber of jour­nal­ists attend­ing. With­out too much effort, exhibit­ing com­pa­nies can pro­vide the press with infor­ma­tion and obtain feed­back for lat­er press work. By uti­liz­ing its press con­tacts, in-​house Agen­tur arranges meet­ings at trade shows, briefs the com­pa­ny’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, attends all on-​site appoint­ments and looks after the agreed upon follow-​up measures.

Press Conference

If you want to get the news out — in per­son — to a large num­ber of jour­nal­ists at the same time, a press con­fer­ence is a good method. How­ev­er, it must be not­ed that edi­tors nowa­days only have a very small crew of per­ma­nent jour­nal­ists and that free­lancers, as a rule, do not receive any fees for attend­ing press con­fer­ences. There­fore, press con­fer­ences should only be used by very well known com­pa­nies or for very impor­tant occa­sions. in-​house Agen­tur advis­es its clients regard­ing the occa­sions for call­ing a press con­fer­ence, pre­sent­ing mean­ing­ful con­tent and the appro­pri­ate frame­work. We will also invite all of the rel­e­vant mem­bers of the press.

Featured Articles

To show exper­tise in a par­tic­u­lar area, fea­tured arti­cles are the way to go. Sub­jects for fea­tured arti­cles arise out of a com­pa­ny’s busi­ness lines, the top­ics main­ly focused on by the tar­get pub­li­ca­tions and indi­vid­ual con­sul­ta­tion with the edi­tors. Some but not all pub­li­ca­tions even per­mit the com­pa­ny to men­tion its own prod­ucts. As in-​house Agen­tur knows the rules for the var­i­ous edi­tors, we gen­er­ate tech­ni­cal arti­cles that pro­vide the client with the great­est ben­e­fit by mak­ing opti­mum use of the “rules of the game”.

Exam­ples (by pub­li­ca­tion): Com­put­er­woche, Com­put­er­world (CH), Entwick­ler­magazin, IT-​Management, IT-​Mittelstand, Per­son­al­wirtschaft

Contributed Article

Some pub­li­ca­tions accept con­tributed arti­cles by com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as a mar­ket overview or to describe a new trend. How­ev­er, in such cas­es, the edi­tors strict­ly enforce the rule that nei­ther the com­pa­ny nor its prod­ucts may be men­tioned, thus leav­ing the com­pa­ny with lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty to posi­tion itself. in-​house Agen­tur has cre­ative approach­es that nev­er­the­less make it possible.

Exam­ples (by pub­li­ca­tion): Com­put­er Reseller News, IHK Mag­a­zine, Midrange Mag­a­zine

Quotes

If you have made a name for your­self on a cer­tain top­ic, it can hap­pen that jour­nal­ists ask for a back­ground dis­cus­sion on their own ini­tia­tive, from which they then quote appro­pri­ate­ly in a overview arti­cle. Instead of wait­ing for such requests, in-​house Agen­tur proac­tive­ly con­tacts the authors in ques­tion and offers suit­able quo­ta­tions. For the read­er the opin­ion lead­er­ship of the com­pa­ny becomes clear, in addi­tion to its spe­cial pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence in direct comparison.

Exam­ples (by pub­li­ca­tion): Busi­ness & IT, Com­put­er­woche

Case Studies

Par­tic­u­lar­ly the prod­ucts mar­ket­ed in the soft­ware sec­tor are very abstract. It often there­fore makes sense to pub­lish a case study, which not only describes the prod­uct but details a par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer’s expe­ri­ences with using it. From the first inter­view with the user to enhanc­ing the report with appro­pri­ate pic­ture mate­r­i­al to get­ting the report in the press — in-​house Agen­tur’s com­pre­hen­sive case study expe­ri­ence will help reduce the co-​ordination efforts, even in com­plex sit­u­a­tions like the inclu­sion of part­ner companies.

Exam­ples (by pub­li­ca­tion): Banken & Sparkassen, CIO, IT-​Business, IT Direc­tor, IT & Pro­duc­tion, Krankenhaus-​IT-​Journal, mon­i­tor (A), Per­sonal­magazin

Product Review

Already very com­mon for con­sumer prod­ucts, some busi­ness IT edi­tors will also con­duct prod­uct tests referred to as prod­uct reviews. in-​house Agen­tur helps its clients by prepar­ing the appro­pri­ate “review­er guides” and due to its decades-​long expe­ri­ence in soft­ware, also pro­vides the edi­tors with sup­port from con­duct­ing the reviews up to the final publication.

Exam­ples (by pub­li­ca­tion): Com­put­er­woche, data­base pro, dot­net mag­a­zine, dot­net PRO

Clippings

Results have to be made mea­sur­able, but how? In press work, results can be mea­sured qual­i­ta­tive­ly and quan­ti­ta­tive­ly, via press clip­pings. in-​house Agen­tur works with the lead­ing clip­ping ser­vices; they observe the press and imme­di­ate­ly report back on arti­cles pub­lished. Depend­ing on what has been agreed upon, clients receive high­light clip­pings imme­di­ate­ly (email), week­ly clip­ping overviews (email) and a month­ly analy­sis in a print­ed clip­ping book.