Many building product manufacturers slashed their marketing, advertising and PR budgets in 2009. In hindsight, that was a huge mistake. At least from where I sit.

As editor of BUILDERnews and someone who relies on good PR people to help me get the information I need, I can’t stress how important it is to keep your name and brand in front of builders via good public relations – even during the down times. Why? When [not if, but when] the economy heals, those that stayed in the game will be much further ahead in said game.

That’s the basic big picture view.

The small picture view is more specific. There are numerous ways a good PR firm or having a PR pro in-house can help your business: including having a solid strategy, competitive positioning and good ol’ thought leadership in the building industry.

Unfortunately, the basic block and tackle stuff that any good PR pro should know is jaw-droppingly not happening with many of the companies we’re writing about. Following are five simple tips that can help us want to write about you and keep coming back and writing more about you and your product. And before you scoff that these are too 101, apparently Fred in accounting or the receptionist that’s been tasked with “doing the marketing and PR” do not know. And if your current PR firm doesn’t do these it’s time to start looking for a new one.

1.    Have a file of low and high res product shot photos on hand that can easily be sent out to reporters on tight deadlines. Hire a professional photographer to shoot your product. And for the love of Pete, don’t use a digital camera with a date stamp when shooting a picture of your product. That has amateur written all over it. And it says you really don’t care.
2.    Return phone calls or emails from writers and reporters. Most are on tight deadline.
3.    Write a clean press release with the news in the first paragraph. Don’t linger too long with fuzzy details and stretch the release out to more than a couple of pages. Like the old saying goes, just the facts.
4.    Attach your press release in the body of the email. Don’t send attachments. And absolutely don’t send your press release as a PDF. Sending photos is cool – as long as they’re low-res. If a publication needs high-res shots, they’ll let you know. And since you have all your product shots neatly filed and labeled this shouldn’t be a problem to quickly grab.
5.    Know your target audience before distributing that press release. We’re a residential and multi-family building magazine. Why do we keep getting press releases about cat shows and some new hot night club opening?

If you have a lousy PR/marketing firm, fire them and get a new one. But for the best interest of your brand recognition and awareness of your product in the building space, don’t fire them because it’s not in the budget. They’re more valuable than ever before to you, to publications [both print pubs and blogs] and to the industry.