Beyond Broadcast: Extending the Reach of Your Media Tour & Maximizing Results

The campaign you’re working on would benefit from broadcast exposure – but where to turn for TV and radio placements? Allocating budget towards a media tour can be a perfect solution. A Satellite Media Tour (SMT) will put your spokesperson in front of national and local media outlets across the country, and with smart planning you can extend the value of your SMT investment and drive results across paid, earned, social and owned media channels.

Creating a Broadcast Buzz

Earned media helps a brand create buzz and generate conversations, often via a credible third-party. An SMT can be an ideal way to secure editorially placed media for your campaign and start building broadcast buzz. Over the course of a single morning, your spokesperson can conduct interviews across the nation, maximizing exposure.

If there are specific cities, states, or regions that are important for your brand, localized information can help secure a booking in that market or Designated Market Area (DMA) media spend.

Go Local

As an example, a national insurance brand is launching a campaign for flood insurance. Having a spokesperson that can share information on an area’s specific flood risk, and how many current flood insurance plans said area has is a great way to relate the story to the viewing audience, increasing potential reach in those markets.

Securing a bilingual spokesperson is another great way to boost the reach of an SMT, opening up the door to a whole other demographic and potentially doubling the number of interviews conducted as part of your media tour.

Complimenting Your Tour with Targeted Placements

While earned media will always be a top priority for clients, there are many new and effective ways to get your message seen and heard. Strategic placements deliver guaranteed metrics and are ideal for delivering a brand message in a “tell me, don’t sell me” style. These clearly-branded, informative segments extend the life of your campaign and boost impressions. Whether your client is looking for coverage during morning shows on local television or adult contemporary stations on local radio, distribution can be highly targeted based on what cities, demographics, and verticals are important to your client. If the campaign is targeting specific local markets and they are not all secured for your SMT, strategic placements will guarantee airings in those markets.

Get Seen & Heard in Specific Markets

Take a company with a canine medicine that wanted to target areas with active outbreaks. Supplementing the brand’s SMT plan with strategic media placement on TV and radio would secure coverage in all target markets.

Taking It Outside

Paid media opportunities aren’t limited to broadcast. Out-of-home campaigns can be hyper-targeted to reach your audience wherever they are – across the US and even abroad. From patients waiting in their doctor’s offices, or families at their local theater for the latest animated movie, out-of-home can help you zero in your preferred audience.

Global Hypertargeting

What if a start-up wanted to promote the launch of its in-flight wifi brand to business travelers? Placing the message in appropriate settings like taxis and airports in domestic and international markets increases the opportunity to reach the start-up’s targeted and receptive prospects.

Engaging Online Communities

Does your client want to target a very specific audience? With 150 million blogs and over 1 billion websites to choose from, taking your message online is another great way to extend the reach of an SMT. With so many niche communities represented online, adding blogs and websites to an SMT will help you pinpoint your message, especially since bloggers are also key influencers that people look to and trust. Blog and website interviews can be easily added to an SMT schedule. Once they are conducted, embed codes are sent to bloggers to post the video interview online, allowing that message to live well past the date of your media tour.

Connecting around Shared Concerns

Let’s say a personal care and health brand has a spokesperson speaking to moms about a new diaper rash treatment. There are many influential mommy bloggers whose voices resonate among other moms. Placing video interviews on key blogs would reach a very specific audience who could greatly benefit from hearing this brand message.

1. Gaille, Brandon. “How Many Blogs are on the Internet”. WPVituoso, http://www.wpvirtuoso.com/how-many-blogs-are-on-the-internet.
2. Woollaston, Victoria. “Number of websites hits a billion...”MailOnline, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2759636/Numberwebsites-hits-BILLION-counting-Tracker-reveals-new-site-registered-SECOND.html

Targeting via Social Media

As the way people are receiving their news has drastically changed over the past few years, social media has become a far bigger part of campaigns than ever before, especially if targeting certain groups. Among millennials, apps rule supreme. Over 75% of those aged 18-34 have Facebook on their smartphones, with Instagram (43.1%) and Snapchat (32.9%) ranking second and third. Millennials aren’t only looking to socialize on social media. 39% say they actively seek news and information out, while 60% report bumping into it as they do other things.

Targeting Millennials

Think of company doing an SMT that has a charitable call to action with a goal of involving millennials in the campaign. One tactic would be to include a dedicated hashtag to increate a buzz on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – perhaps tying posts with the campaign hashtag to a donation to the cause.

[1] Perez, Sarah. “Snapchat Is Now the #3 Social App Among Millennials”. TechCrunch, https://www.techcrunch.com/2014/08/11/snapchat-is-now-the-3-social-app-among-millennials/

Showcasing in Owned Channels – and Internal Communications

During an SMT, the media tour’s producer can capture a standalone interview with a spokesperson, also known as a generic interview. This interview becomes property of the brand and can be used in other ways in the campaign, such as posting it on their owned social media channels, company website or blog. Additionally, if there are specific soundbites that need to be recorded, time can be set aside during the SMT to capture these standalone pieces. Since a spokesperson is already in studio, why not maximize their time? Walking away with some video clips to showcase is the perfect way to highlight the SMT internally.

Straight from the Source

When the spokesperson of the SMT is a leader of the company discussing the launch of an innovative product, posting the generic interview offers the perfect opportunity to showcase this perspective to anyone who visits or follows the company’s owned channels. This video can also be useful to highlight during internal presentations or be featured on the company’s blog or newsletter.

Assessing Results: Measurement & ROI

Conducting a satellite media tour is an effective strategy in getting a message across many channels – but success has to be measured and demonstrated. To measure the return on investment (ROI) of an SMT, you’ll first need to be clear on which metrics are most important.

• By the Numbers: Are you looking to garner the highest amount of impressions possible?
• City by City: Do you only want visibility in very specific markets?
• Any Placement Is a Good Placement: Does your CEO or another executive want to get their name out there and will be pleased with any placement?
• Live and Let Live: Is it important to track that your brand’s message will live on and get engagement well past the date of the media tour?
• Based on Budget: Sometimes the ROI is based solely on budget. If your brand wants to keep budget low, it may be wise to trade off large impression numbers to save some money.

Media Tours: Extending Reach across Channels

It’s important to know that your campaign can find an audience outside of traditional media, and that your message doesn’t stop being heard once the camera stops rolling. A SMT is the perfect vehicle to drive your message across multiple media channels, and thinking comprehensively about ways to extend the value of your SMT will help drive campaign results.

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ABOUT THE EXPERT: STEPHANIE RITTENHOUSE

Stephanie Rittenhouse is the Media Relations Manager at MultiVu a Cision company. A seasoned industry veteran, Stephanie began her career in broadcast public relations as a media relations specialist for News Broadcast Network (NBN). After five and a half years at NBN, Stephanie joined MediaLink as a Broadcast Project Manager, then WestGlen Communications as a Senior Project Manager. Stephanie holds a B.A. in Communications from Fordham University.