Author: Julia Kendrick
The consumer and trade media in the aesthetics, beauty, and wellness industries are very influential and have a powerful role to play in the success of brands, individuals and clinics alike. Businesses need to nurture close relationships with press in order to maximise the chance of securing visibility of their brand and its products and services to their target audiences. Understanding and investing in strong media relationships can help brands build trust, raise awareness, boost sales and much more!
In this article, I explain the importance of media relationships for business success and highlight the key benefits of building your own relations and working effectively with PR companies.
What are Media Relationships?
Also known as Media Relations, Media Relationships refer to:
“Brands or their representative PR agency working with media for the purpose of informing the public of the brand’s mission, policies and practices in a positive, consistent and credible manner.”
By nurturing strong relationships with the media (from print, to digital to social channels), brands can create and grow a strong reputation among target audiences. The specific type of relationship will vary between brands and media, after all we are referring to individual people! For example, one journalist may be given a product or treatment experience free of charge, with the hope that they will write about the brand in the future, whereas another may have known a PR professional for years and is happy to endorse a product as the have built up trust in its credentials over time.
The importance of media relations
The main reason brands seek to build and nurture strong media relationships is to secure quality coverage in key media titles so they can raise awareness amongst target audiences. Getting featured in the media can be a significant win for brands – whether they are new to market or an established key player. When the brand’s message is seen or heard, their audiences can be informed of what they do, why they do it, and why they are better at it than their competition. The ultimate goals are to drive awareness, demand and ACTION (purchase, bookings etc)
Media relations are an essential vehicle for facilitating media coverage for brands, without them coverage will likely go to a competitor brand who is actively investing in nurturing strong media relationships.
The risks of no media relationships
If a brand and a specific media outlet (e.g. The Daily Mail) are not communicating with one another, then it’s likely that the brand’s products will not be featured, endorsed, or promoted within the influential content that their target audiences are accessing. Apply this logic across multiple media outlets such as newspapers, TV, lifestyle websites, blogs, influencers, podcasts etc – and the missed opportunities to reach and engage a brand’s target audiences are huge!
NB. Sending out ad hoc or sporadic Press Releases to journalists with no underpinning relationship-building or authentic engagement does not count as a media relationship, and is unlikely to deliver any consistent coverage for your brand.
9 benefits of media relationships for aesthetics and beauty brands
Strong media relations lead to great media coverage! The greatest benefits that our clients (brands and individuals) at Kendrick PR gain from our media relationships include:
- Brand awareness: each piece of media coverage exposes a brand or personal profile to a wider target audience enabling their voice to be heard on a large scale.
- Credibility: journalist recommendations, third party experiences and case studies are powerful ‘convincers’ and drive trust in a brand or product. It’s similar to a recommendation from a friend but on a much larger scale!
- Good brand reputation: brands can influence what is said about them in the media, which in turn influences what others say and think about them. When brands share positive and informative comms (or even when they effectively manage or respond to a negative impression or comment), it drives engagement, accountability and helps underpin a good reputation.
- Storytelling: the media can present a different or fresh perspective on a brand which target audiences may find more compelling and engaging. For example, sharing your brand values or work culture will appeal to customers with similar values and help you stand out versus the competition.
- Cost-savings: a well-executed and successful PR strategy can help a business save money in the long-term. For example, a brand may later spend less on direct marketing and advertising thanks to increased unpaid/editorial coverage, or reduce its staff costs by effective outsourcing.
- Crisis control: Transparency and timely responses are essential when a crisis occurs. Strong media relations increase a brands’ opportunity to control and manage what messages are being relayed to the market and minimise any potential reputational damage
- Opportunities: Strong media relationships can present a consistent stream of media opportunities. PR professionals with excellent networks are often contacted directly by journalists when they need a source of information on a particular subject, helping to be the ‘first port of call’ and get ahead of the crowd when it comes to providing information and support to press.
- New patients and customers: when the right media outlets are targeted brands can gain visibility and connect with target audiences which can then attract new customers.
- Increased sales and repeat business: consistent exposure in the media is an effective sales and retention driver.
Media relationships are at the core of every successful PR strategy and have the potential to deliver all of above benefits for your brand. Learn more about our Media Relations services and how we can help creating a winning PR strategy for your brand.
How to build good media relationships
Brands typically build media relations and secure media coverage in two ways:
- Via their appointed PR agency who act as an extension to their inhouse PR team or in lieu of one.
- Directly with the media via their inhouse PR team or PR manager.
Often brands will utilise a blend of the above. The approach your brand takes will depend on your inhouse skills and knowledge, PR goals, and budget. Securing the right type of media coverage results requires a strategic PR approach and takes time – it’s not a ‘pick up and drop’ activity and investing in an effective media relations strategy should be a top priority for any brand with ambitions to stand out amongst their competition.
A lot of time and effort is involved in building media relationships with editors, journalists, and influencers – there is an element of delivering the right information or experience at the right time, as well as building trust and reliability, responsive interactions and understanding that often, coverage results can take a long time to appear. This level of commitment and skill is often better outsourced to an accomplished PR agency partner.
The importance of a Media Relations agency
When it comes to securing media coverage, reputation and media relationships are everything – more so in the aesthetics, beauty and wellness industry. An established PR or Media Relations agency who specialise in your sector will have an influential and valuable network of journalists, influencers, celebrities, KOLs and more! Brands can instantly leverage these networks as well the team’s expertise and knowledge to achieve their PR goals.
A PR agency can save you and your team time, money and stress – if you’re finding that securing media coverage for your brand is becoming a time consuming and overwhelming task with disappointing results, now is a good time to book a discovery call with a potential PR partner!
We specialise in winning PR strategies
Our expert team consistently create winning formulas of strategic and tactical support for premium beauty aesthetics, beauty, and wellness brands with clear ambitions for growth. Founded in 2015 by award-winning communications expert Julia Kendrick, Kendrick PR are a passionate and experienced agency who thrive on creating tangible success for every client. Please browse our PR services portfolio or do get in touch to book a complimentary discovery call with us!