Tips for tracking press potentials

 

 
  Keeping up-to-date on your press potentials (opportunities) is an important part of the PR process.   Whether you are working from an Excel spreadsheet, Word Document or a system like MyPressConnection (MPC), you should make sure to record all potentials and track the progress.  We use MyPressConnection to automate this process and to track the stage of the potential.  We work in a dynamic environment, so capturing the correct data each time is paramount to our success.   
 

General information that you should always try to have for each press potential:

1. Name of publication

2. contact’s full name

3. phone number

4. email

5. address

Further information that will help you track press potentials:

1. Name the potential – e.g. Elle Magazine – photo shoot call in – July issue

2. Stage – further explained below

3. Press channel – e.g. consumer press, trade press, blog, stylist, etc

4. Type – existing or new press contact

5. Lead Source – e.g. trade show, approached by publication, your press team,

6. Source defined (define lead source) – e.g. Mode City July 12 or LFW Feb 12 or Pure July 12

7. Probability (likelihood of coverage) – e.g. 20% or 50% or 80%

8. Campaign (were there activities that you undertook) – e.g. press ring arounds or press release

How to track the progress of press potentials:

It is helpful to update the “Stage” of your press potentials.  On our system, we have a standard drop down menu set-up to select which stage we are at for each potential.  Please see an example list below.

 

1. Prospect

2.  Qualification of feature

3. Feature agreed

4. Waiting for photo shoot

5. In photo shoot

6. Waiting for interview

7. Waiting for fashion show

8. Sent high res imagery

9. Waiting for publication to come out

10. Items delivered to celebrity

11. Closed Won

12. Closed Call In

13. Closed Visit

14. Closed Lost

We call this our Press Pipeline.  We work very hard to communicate key messages and show imagery and samples to be considered for editorials, features and photo shoots.  It would be a shame to work so hard to build brand awareness and good relationships with the press to lose out on coverage because of not properly tracking potentials.