Product PR – Does it still work?
By Kewal
Over the last month or two, I’ve had a number of conversations with new clients or prospects who have all asked the question: Does product PR still work? They’ve gone on to talk about how they’ve received advice in the past that journalists don’t really cover product and service stories anymore and that it’s all about the customer. Our response has been simple: Look at the media and you’ll see that these stories are still prevalent. In fact, often it’s these stories that will come up when you search for a product or service online. It’s also these stories that potential customers want to see as they are seen as more credible than a vendor’s marketing spiel.
The truth is, selling in product stories as a tech PR has got harder. Journalists are quite rightly more selective over what they write about and don’t want to be bothered by the same old guff. However, that doesn’t mean we should just give up. It should just make us more focused on making sure we really do have a story that would be of interest to the reader and be prepared to argue our point and defend the story if given the brush off by a cynical hack.
Ultimately it’s all about story telling. If I take the example of the latest cloud service launch by ElasticHosts the key to its success was ensuring that we told a story that didn’t just read like a series of features and benefits. Instead, we placed the next generation cloud servers ElasticHosts was launching in the context of the broader cloud industry and the disruption it would create. I can’t claim that we did anything special here, but by ensuring that we could tell a story rather than simply pitch a product we got some great results across the top tier technology press which you can see below. In fact, Richard Davis the CEO at ElasticHosts highlighted the benefits of storytelling in a recent note to me:
“Thanks for all your help with Elastic Containers. Having a very clear story developed through the messaging, media training and release preparation was a big factor in the success of our launch. It made me realise storytelling really is an art! The articles published directly and indirectly helped us get over a thousand new visitors to the site in the few days around the launch date. Reading around it’s clear that we’ve been positioned as one of the most innovative IaaS providers out there.”
Computer Weekly - UK cloud pioneer scores world first with true utility pricing
V3 - Elastichosts offers usage-based billing for Linux in the cloud
ComputerWorldUK - ElasticHosts: Linux container virtualisation allows us to beat AWS on price
Cloud Pro - ElasticHosts debuts new pricing model
CBR - Is cloud computing about to get cheaper because of Linux?
TechWeek Europe - ElasticHosts To Charge Linux Cloud Customers By Consumption, Not Capacity