The premise of all business is to provide a product or service that people need or want. However, simply creating a quality solution to meet a need or want does not automatically spell success—or sales—for your company. One challenge companies face is that people often don’t know they need your products or services. Or if they do, they don’t know why they should buy your products or services over the competition’s. Your marketing strategy will determine how you deliver that message to potential customers. In today’s competitive marketplace, traditional marketing methods are often not enough to make your brand stand out. As a result, many company leaders are turning to content marketing, and one key component of an effective content marketing strategy is editorial coverage.

Why editorial coverage?

Editorial coverage is content published by a third party, such as magazines, journals, newspapers and other online sources. It is customer-centric and offers important and relevant information to your target audience. Rather than simply promoting your products and services, editorial coverage provides value to get something in return: customers. Being published in third-party media outlets adds to readers’ perceptions of your credibility, whereas they may perceive advertising and paid promotions as self-serving.

Benefits of editorial coverage 

Editorial coverage is a way to attract and educate potential customers in a manner that helps them know, like and trust you enough to buy from you. Editorial coverage that provides value to readers also:

• Builds credibility
• Increases visibility
• Expands your reach
• Boosts brand and name recognition
• Helps you establish and maintain a competitive edge
• Demonstrates thought leadership.

Leverage your editorial coverage

Getting editorial coverage in third-party media outlets is not just about extending your reach and enhancing credibility. It also provides many other opportunities for leveraging that content. Businesses can maximize the reach of editorial coverage by following these guidelines:

• Link to editorial coverage from your website, blogs and other marketing channels
• Send emails to a targeted list announcing the coverage
• Obtain reprints to include in press kits or distribute at trade shows
• Share the coverage via social media
• Repurpose the content into other formats such as case studies, infographics, blogs or webinars.

It’s important to note that copyright restrictions vary depending on the media outlet used. However, most outlets are happy to have authors share published content as long as proper credit is provided.

Create the right content

Getting editorial coverage in third-party media isn’t always an easy task. Editors want high-quality content that’s also timely, engaging, valuable and relevant to their readers’ interests. Additionally, articles should be developed based on an outlet’s planned editorial calendar, which defines the subjects to be covered in each issue. To be accepted by a publication, you need to possess a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs and focus your content on what is important to them, not you. Delve into what keeps your customers or prospects up at night. Determine what industry developments or trends will be of interest to readers of the publications you’re targeting. Focus on a specific problem and provide innovative solutions to solve it.

Unfortunately, the subject-matter experts in your organization who understand your target audiences’ needs and know how to solve their challenges are not always good writers. That’s when it’s advantageous to enlist the help of outside professionals who can take your experts’ knowledge and turn it into high-quality, engaging content that media outlets are more likely to pick up.

Getting editorial coverage can be a time-consuming effort. The experts at Trade Press Services can help you generate the coverage you need from the publications you target. For more information on our media outreach experience and capabilities, please visit our Media Outreach page or contact us.