Finance Industry Public Relations
A California firm that provides financing to entrepreneurs nationwide engaged our agency over a three-month timeframe to increase awareness about this company. Our public relations work involved developing a couple of case studies that could form the basis for press releases and also fodder for pitching to targeted media. The media targets included CFO, The New York Times, Inc (magazine), Entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal and various trade magazines. A list was developed based on research into specific reporter interests and their past coverage. While creating the story material, we monitored the blogs and Twitter feeds of key reporters representing The New York Times, CFO, various equipment leasing and finance trade media, and other banking and commercial finance outlets identified for this campaign. We introduced a CFO magazine blogger on capital markets with an interest in financing for entrepreneurs to our client. Within a couple of months, the reporter did call our client and interviewed him for a relevant story that was published.
Also, during our engagement, we were able to earn a placement on a trade association’s new microsite designed to reach a broad commercial finance audience. Other placements included a bylined article in a new digital finance publication (circulation of 5,000) and a press release we wrote, based on the case study that was then picked up in all of the major equipment finance trades and in thousands of online news aggregator channels. This resulted in a 20-23 percent increase in our client’s website visits. We researched a trade group and helped our client prepare for one key event with an advance sales letter sent via Constant Contact to the association’s event attendee list. The letter resulted in new business inquiries, the PR work stirred media awareness and the story distribution produced news placement, some of which will remain online indefinitely. The first three stories in the client’s online news area resulted from our work with this client. http://fountainpartners.com/category/news/
The client enjoyed new business development, better search engine placement, targeted media exposure, and new relationships within two industry trade groups and with CFO magazine. For example, the digital article produced 395 unique visits to this client’s website within one month. This was substantial success in a relatively short-term engagement. Most of our client work extends longer — from six months to more than a decade.
