MOST members of Made in Britain join to use the official, protected Made in Britain mark. It is increasingly recognised as a mark of quality and provenance.
In addition to licensing the mark to members, Made in Britain also offers a whole range of other member benefits, including informative online presentations to help with the sales, marketing, PR and export activities of its members.
PR is probably one of the most challenging areas for manufacturers to get support. How do you get trade magazines and websites to publish your story to their audiences?
First of all, it’s important to know where your customers are getting their information. This will tell you the media brands that you need to be establishing relationships with.
When you’ve identified the readers, or listeners or even viewers, then you need to tell them why they should buy your product. That’s the message.
The sales message doesn’t have to be direct. Your story might be about how your company won a major award, or why you are extending your factory and taking on new staff. This way the success of your business and the quality of your product is implied and editors will be much more inclined to tell your story, especially if it might help others to replicate your success.
How you feel about sharing the secrets of your success with competitors is something you have to consider. The benefit it delivers to those outside your sector might be worth it.
Persuading a journalist to include your website address is the real prize, so always ask if that will be possible. The worst that could happen is they say no.
Members of Made in Britain have been able to post their own news stories to the Made in Britain website for a couple of years now. This offers a huge platform on which you can tell your stories, publish your photos and include links to both your own website and your products in the product directory.
You should put in links to your videos on YouTube and add details of your social media accounts, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Selected news stories are broadcast on our own Made in Britain social media accounts, too.
Every news story published by a member of Made in Britain automatically gets a link added to that member’s profile page on the site, and that’s where you can add more photos, videos and podcasts. Your profile page on the Made in Britain website can be as detailed as your own website, so make the most of its power.
Adding links to your news stories makes them very popular with search engines and linking stories on your own website, or blog, back to the article on the Made in Britain website pushes your activity up the search results rankings.
We all spend too much time ‘in’ our business, making whatever it is we make and keeping our noses to the grindstone. We need to spend more time ‘on’ our business, looking at how it appears to others, and how to make it more appealing and better positioned for growth.
Quick guide to posting news on the Made in Britain website
Posting your own news is very easy. Login to the Members' Area and click on the Public Profile link on the right. The button My News Editor will get you started, then click Post New Article. The rest of the process is fairly self-explanatory. The only thing we ask is that you follow the on-screen guidance about image sizes. Publishing images of different sizes and shapes can result in them being distorted or out of alignment.
Tips for news stories
• Include your company name in the headline
• Use the headline as a hook to draw readers in
• Say a little bit in the story about what your company does
• Include a quote from a company spokesperson in the story
• Include a link to your website at the end of the story
By Made in Britain 2 years ago | By Made in Britain