Marketing Paint – top tips on marketing paint to the media from an interiors PR expert.

We LOVE marketing paint. We really do, it’s one of our most favourite products to PR. Our MD John once drove a car full of paint all the way from Heysham, near Morecambe on the North West coast of England, down to London for a photoshoot.

That’s how much we love marketing paint. We have helped brands go from a standing start with zero media awareness to appearing on a daily basis in topflight media.

Part of the reason we love marketing and PR for paint, is that there is so much room to be creative when you’re working with colour. This means the content we can create is essentially endless.

Which is a good thing, but also a bad, because if you can do anything… well, where do you start?

So that’s why we’ve put together these top tips on marketing paint and securing powerful endorsements and backlinks from influential media.

Focus:

First, and sorry if this is teaching your granny to suck eggs, but to do this well you need to focus on products and audiences. Yes, your ideal customer may like ALL your products when they get to your website – but it’s a single product that’s going to take them there.

Why? Because while the same person might buy an emulsion and a gloss, the messaging around those products is very different. For example, do you sell a white gloss that doesn’t yellow and an emulsion which doesn’t scuff? Which do you focus your campaign on? Are you talking to trade or consumer?

It needs definition, because an audience who wants to know about non-toxic furniture paint for a kids’ room is a very different audience to one who needs to know about wipeable eggshell.

So focus. Decide on the product and the audience. Some will be naturally more PR-able than others. And these are the ones you should build your campaigns around. They are the natural talking points.

The Message:

This is where you take your USP and you craft it into a message your audience is going to love. If you’re marketing an environmental product – your audience is going to care about provenance and sustainability. If you’re marketing to new mums, they are going to need to understand that little Johnny isn’t going to grow another head if they paint his crib or toys with it.

Have this message high up in all your marketing literature: in your product descriptions, your social media profiles. This is going to become your brand story.

Media List:

PR and marketing communications into the media are all about building great relationships. Having a great media list is what makes all the difference.

You can buy media lists from places like PeoplePerHour – but trust us when we say, any real decent media list worth its salt won’t be for sale. You have to build that yourself. Look at the outlets which speak to your audiences – is it the glossy mags? The websites? Are you being found on Pinterest and Insta? Are influencers important for your audience?

Our media list has been built up over the last seven years. We update it every week. Journalists, editors, influencers – they all move around a lot and the only real way to keep track is to check out the magazines and the websites on a regular basis and update accordingly.

Without a decent media list, everything else is pointless. You may as well broadcast into a vacuum.[/fusion_text][fusion_imageframe lightbox=”no” gallery_id=”” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”glow” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”3px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] [/fusion_imageframe][fusion_text]

Photography:

Great photography is expensive. But it will pay for itself many times over. Need more convincing?  Read this blog here on how Farrow & Ball have cleverly used photography to become the most-featured paint brand in the media

Press Releases:

Press releases, media releases, product edits, newsletters. Call them whatever you want. But these are the key tool for any communication with the media. The media love new things. Or topical tie-ins. Work your products into an emerging trend and you will get coverage.

Here are five things you should do a media release about:

• New products – whenever you launch a new colour, a new finish, just anything NEW then you need to be telling your contacts about it.
• Emerging trends – keep an eye on events such as London Fashion Week, or Maison Objet and see what trends are coming out of them. Read Elle Deco every month and see what the new season predictions are. What ideas does this fire-up? If metallics are hot – do you have a metallic range of finishes you could offer up as a product edit or collection?
• Predictions – don’t just rely on other people making the predictions, use your own knowledge and data to make predictions about the next hot trend.
• Collections – Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer – traditional times to release collections. Or buck the trend and do it differently.
• Newsjacking – Is there a something in the news or coming-up? Maybe a cultural or sporting event which speaks to your audience? Then the media will be writing about it and looking for things to feature.

Use a Media Platform:

If you’re marketing to consumers, then you need to be using a media platform such as Press Loft. Here you can host all your photography including swatches and brushstrokes of your entire colour collection and make them available to bonafide interiors writers, editors and influencers 24/7.

This is probably a very good time to mention our Indie Interiors Press Office – please take a look at it. You will not find a better deal anywhere. We promise.

And there you go… Good luck and have great fun.