By Dave Reddy
Practice Lead, Media + Influencers
Host, Pressing Matters podcast
In the second part of a series on how B2B tech media landscape changes are impacting how brands shape their editorial strategy, Media + Influencers expert Dave Reddy explores the evolution of paid opportunities and their role in today’s communications plans.
The Issue: To Pay or Not to Pay
We maintain a list called the No Fly Zone – hundreds of titles that provide little or no ROI and charge a lot of money for ‘coverage.’ Their trick, among others, is to go to C-suite executives directly and flatter them with offers of stories about them being ‘one of the best CXOs in (insert market).’ It’s a vanity play that still sometimes works. We’ve become adept at catching these folks, but some still sneak through and waste good marketing dollars.
The Adjustment: Find the RIGHT paid opportunities.
Paid was never all bad – and in a world of shrinking newsrooms, legitimate paid influencers are proliferating and expanding the news hole. If you work with the right influencers, paid is worth every penny.
First, keep in mind that your paid strategy and editorial strategy (what some call earned) is similar if not the same. You want your paid content to read like a good news story, not advertising. “Of course there’s going to be much more of a nod towards the PR aspect in (paid),” says Krigsman, who does both paid and editorial interviews. “But I have enough experience at this to know that if you sell on a podcast, a video or an interview, (then) the audience will click away.”
Second, find the right paid editorial partners. Will they push you to make the story closer to journalism than advertising? The call is ultimately yours, but a paid partner’s willingness to push you on telling a better, more ‘outside-in’ story means they know what they’re doing.
Third, do they have a legitimate audience that fits your business objectives? Most of the scam artists have magazines with fewer than 1,000 readers and miniscule social reach. In reality, the only people reading are the subjects and their families. So check the numbers. (We work with one paid influencer – in B2B tech no less – who has more than 550,000 connections across his social channels.)
Fourth, does it fit your budget? We have worked with some vendors who charge six figures – and for those who can afford it, it was worth paying. But if you’re working with limited resources, there are many who charge far less.
Finally, remember that creating your own content on top of a paid or editorial piece isn’t just a nice idea, it’s – resources notwithstanding – a must. We can cite countless examples where a social post, a blog that goes deeper than the original story or a video that explains the story visually expand your expand exponentially.
