Publishing ‘success’ stories & measuring growth

DOCUMENTING a company’s growth is certainly a challenge for most organisations. This is mainly because business entities need a strong public relations unit that knows and understands how to effectively market a success story to achieve communication objectives.

Growth agencies can help to fill this void by providing PR services to companies that need their growth story publicised. We have so far seen that while local companies have marketing officers and corporate affairs managers, the majority of them lack the requisite skill to communicate effectively to their target audience.

Manic Creatives has expanded its team to encompass this critical component by including public relations as part of its service offering for clients that need to generate publicity. 

The company aims to leverage local news media to publish clients’ success stories as a means to measure and document their growth story. 

And experience has shown that insightful news content can be generated and published to highlight all or part of a company’s product or service offering on their brand without necessarily paying for advertising. The key is finding strong and unique news angles that are not blatantly marketing or advertising a product or service, but report on interesting findings that are in public interest.

Additionally, media companies and publishers should know that publishing and/or broadcasting impactful and market-relevant news leads to higher advertising revenue, as companies will always follow content that audiences are attracted to.

Even President Hakainde Hichilema counselled Zambia’s news media during his acceptance speech at his residence in Lusaka’s New Kasama area dubbed, “Community House”, where he said advertising revenues are directly related or linked to strong news content.

“…If you don’t cover news, you will not generate revenue, you may not pay salaries and you may shut down. You wouldn’t blame us, isn’t it? If the consumers of your news shun your news, it means you can’t get commercial adverts, then you shut down. We don’t want you to shut down, we want to support you,” said President Hichilema.

As the Zambia Statistics Agency (ZSA) ‘twister’ says, “we measure what we treasure” and “we treasure what we measure.” Evidently, companies need to measure their growth to document their progress and determine whether the marketing strategies being employed are effective to realise their corporate objectives. 

And the most effective way to achieve this is to engage growth agencies that can employ an effective PR strategy to communicate with consumers and highlight their success stories.