How does a small business get in the FT?

My client was ticked pink with this coverage…

The first thing to say, for people who don’t work in PR, is earning coverage in the Financial Times is extremely difficult and not a realistic goal to set. 

But a few weeks ago a client of mine, a property management firm called Ashdown Phillips, made the cut. 

For context, as well as the basics of making commercial property (retail, business parks, industrial, office blocks) ready to let, and running those properties (maintenance, rent collection etc) Ashdown Phillips also create co-working spaces.

So how to raise awareness of this fact and stand out in the market? 

And what might prompt journalists to write about it?

🦄  Coworking is a market WeWork has dominated.  And as the unicorn has fallen, the media are paying attention. If what you have to say can be linked to something topical, and impactful, that the media are already interested in, they are more likely to listen. 

⚔️  Ashdown Phillips’ offer is in a different coworking sub-category to WeWork. Rather than handing all control to a co-working firm, the landlord goes direct-to-occupier, via a property management firm. Being different adds tension to the story.

💡  The company has a point of view, and can offer its customers insights into what option (coworking franchise vs direct-to-occupier). And they can do this in a way that's that’s authentic and non-salesey. 

So I helped Nikki Gibson, the company’s director for flexible working, to write a blog for their website, which was shared on social media. 

Thing is, I didn’t pitch the article directly to the FT. 

But FT reporters found the article through search, contacted the firm, which led to Nikki briefing the journalist and being quoted in this news feature.

Great PR or just lucky? Bit of both. 

Their website does not have amazing SEO or domain authority, relative to its peers. 

It just happened to have the right content, at the right time, presented in the right way. 

Sending an oped to the newsdesk, or writing multiple social posts about the product’s features, might not have delivered the same outcome.

Dumb luck?

I also got similarly ‘lucky’ with another client about a year ago - where an opinion-led interview on a hot topic (retail media) in a lower-tier business title (no offence CityAM, but everyone is lower-tier than the FT), also got seen by an FT reporter. 

This also led to my client featuring heavily in a Big Read feature on the topic.  

What does all this mean for your PR and marketing?

🔥  It confirms the value of high-quality content marketing. No Chat GPT.  We just anticipated that WeWork would soon be hot news ahead of the event and wrote an article about it. Ditto, with that retail media feature a year ago. If you have a point of view - put it down SOMEWHERE and if it's interesting and topical it may be found.

🕰️  PR can take time to yield results. It may be years before a customer, searching for information on a topic, sees the FT article, or those that prompted the coverage. It may be that in doing due diligence on a company or person quoted, someone finds an FT reference on page one of Google, which swings a sale. That’s partly why PR measurement, or brand valuations, are so hard. 

🧠  Finally, it underlines why it’s important to think beyond a media title’s immediate presumed audience. Producing content first for your own platforms, then for ‘lower tier’ media titles builds your reputation and overall visibility. 

Think about your own media consumption when you’re researching stuff; do you only turn to premium media brands, or do you sometimes use Google? What about your customers?

Few small firms will earn the attention of premium media titles such as the FT, Wired, The Guardian, TechCrunch - or even top trade titles like The Grocer, Marketing Week, Property Week etc - from the get go. 

But building a digital footprint from the ground up increases the chances of them finding you when the time is right - provided you’ve got something interesting to say.