Terry Catchpole, who has been practicing niche PR for more than
17 years, offers some lessons learned about offering specialty
communications, regardless of the industry.
"Stick to the knitting" was an axiom popularized in the
Peters-Waterman management classic, "In Search of Excellence," and
nowhere is this more true than in niche PR. Or, as some new
management guru might want to say: if you've got a niche, scratch
it. Over the years Catchpole has been tempted many times to branch
out beyond our niche. Clients would ask us to do publicity
surrounding their engagements, or to arrange press interviews with
the speakers, and we would have to say "no." And this was not only
because of our overriding interest in remaining singularly focused
on our speaker program management practice, but also because of our
interest in partnering with full-service PR firms in providing
resources for use by their account teams and their clients
directly. Once you have determined your area of focus, establish
the goal at being the best at what you do - and nothing else (for
now).
Full-service PR is comprised of many parts, and most successful
full-service agencies tend to put their major focus on only one of
them: media relations. This leaves several other areas for
niche-focused agencies to develop as a specialty. This should not
be seen as an attempt to compete head-to-head with the full-service
agencies, but to provide superior resources in areas where they may
just not have the bandwidth to develop expertise and will
appreciate having the niche agency support in providing their
clients with improved service. Catchpole does this with speaker
program resources and now award research services. Knowledge
Capital Group does this with industry analyst relations.
TechMarketNews does it with online news retrieval services. And
there are still plenty of niches left.
Source: Terry Catchpole, President, The Catchpole
Corporation
Contacts: Todd Appleman, 323.850.7664, [email protected];
Terry Catchpole, 781.489.6114, [email protected]; Victoria
Morrison, 262.619.2872, [email protected];
Katherine Rothman, 212.213.6444, [email protected];
Dan Soundhelm, 703.299.8390, [email protected]