Keeping ASHI Out Front

by Bill Jacques September 1, 2013

In May I went to New York City to raise national awareness about ASHI and cultivate future opportunities by building strong relationships with top-tier, national media. I met with editors and writers of some major consumer magazines like Popular Mechanics (circulation 1,234,691), This Old House (circulation 966,817), HGTV Magazine (circulation 350,000), along with a post-tour interview with Dwell Outdoor (circulation 260,000).

PopularMech.jpg   dwell-magazine-september-2013-cover.jpg   hgt_cvr-lg copy.jpg

During each side interview I walked the magazines’ staff writers through several areas of ASHI’s expertise, including:

• Home repairs after winter weather havoc
• Steps to a safer, stronger deck
• Regular home maintenance
• Home safety
• Inexpensive repairs to later save thousands of dollars

PCI, our national marketing and public relations firm, managed the media tour logistics, coordinating travel schedules and plans and providing me with a briefing book. They even sent an account team member to ensure success of the tour (and get me to every place I needed to be in New York). They created the targeted media list of national magazines based in the New York area. The original pitch PCI reached out to the reporters with centered on timely home safety and overall home maintenance topics to appeal to media. PCI secured all four interview appointments based on this strategy. Over a two-month period, PCI’s media specialists conducted phone and email outreach in order to secure interviews with three major outlets.

One of the direct benefits of this trip is that Popular Mechanics senior editor Roy Berendsohn plans to write an article for their September or October issue about fall home maintenance, focusing on deck inspection. Roy will include quotes from his interview with me related to the importance of attaching decks properly.

We do this trip annually because we want to keep ASHI in their minds as the definitive, professional home inspection resource and the leader in the field. But we also do this because we want to build relationships. Board presidents and officers come and go, but ASHI has been around since 1976 and will be around for many more years. And these media outlets know we are the place to go for informed, correct information on home inspections and the home inspection industry. 

Bill-Jacques.jpg   Bill Jacques


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