Using a multi-pronged PR approach to get you coverage

When it comes to PR, getting yourself talked about consistently in the press is one of the key ways of building awareness about your offering – especially if you’re looking to target a local audience.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, as you may feel you’ve not got lots to shout about.

But, whilst we’d be willing to bet that you have more to talk about than you think, it’s also possible to use some creative thinking to generate news and keep conversations with the press going.

There are multiple ways of doing this, but to demonstrate what we mean, here’s an example of how we’ve done it across February for one of our hotel clients, Bowood House Hotel, Spa & Golf Resort in Wiltshire.

Sitting in the heart of a 2,000-acre country estate with a wide-ranging hospitality offering, there are several strands we can pull on to generate newsworthy content that gives us the excuse to reach out to press. Here’s how we did it.

Using natural news. 
With the hotel having been shortlisted for a tourism award (as part of an award application we helped prepare), we made sure to shout about this to their local press, generating coverage across key local publications such as Wiltshire Live, the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald, the Wiltshire Times and more.

Awards are a great way of underlining your quality, so making noise about them is always advocated – especially as it offers you two potential opportunities: following a shortlisting and following a win.

Making the most of your facilities. 
As the official PGA course for the South West, Bowood’s golf offering is right up there. But you can’t just keep talking about how good your golf is, you need to offer something different to get talked about. And this saw the hotel offer a night golf initiative, where people could play in the dark – using LED battery powered balls, and LED lights to guide people around the course.

With a novelty factor established, it enabled us to approach press with it, again getting a raft of local coverage, whilst shining a spotlight on the golf facilities.

Creating the news hook. 
With sustainability a large part of Bowood’s offering, we played on this to launch “Reductionary” – a challenge for guests to reduce their energy expenditure throughout February as part of an educational move aimed at highlighting simple ways of cutting back on energy use. With guests incentivised by special discounts for future stays, it generated a mix of coverage across both hospitality trade press and local media, including radio, while playing on topical conversations in the media and emphasising the fact that Bowood cares about the environment.

So that’s just a quick snapshot of one month for Bowood – but we constantly suggest ways in which we can get our clients talked about, looking at their offering and working out a news hook. Be that by using naturally occurring news, emphasising an interesting part of what you do, or using creative thinking to fashion an excuse to talk about you.

Want us to look at your offering and have a chat about how we can help you? Just let us know.