Overview
Inviting a local reporter or blogger into your business for a “Behind the Scenes” Tour allows you the opportunity to share your company’s expertise and what makes you special.
Details
What do you want your community to know about your business? Whatever it is, a “Behind the Scenes” Tour might be a great way to share what makes your business special with your customers.
Contact your local newspaper(s), weekly or monthly magazines, or local bloggers to garner interest in spending time with you at your business. It’s best to come to them with a proposed idea (“Come see how we make the best ice cream in the city!”) as opposed to keeping it as a general visit to your business.
You may want to look at the Press Release template to think through your pitch.
If you run a restaurant or café that sources food or other products from local vendors, you could share information about these partnerships. If you own a retail shop, share the inspiration behind your products, or how you select what products to feature. Or, maybe you focus on the team behind your business, giving your customers an insight into “a day in the life” of a team member at your business.
Keep in mind that this type of tour will allow a member of the media to see the “back of house” for your business (literally and figuratively), so it should be in top notch condition. If you’re working on sorting out issues relating to operations, hiring, sales, or the physical condition of your space, it might be in your best interest to wait until you have resolved those issues before opening your home to the media.
Lastly, this type of tour is typically best utilized when opening a new location, but can also work if you’re looking to build awareness of your existing business.
At Starbucks, this was a great tactic to introduce media to Starbucks when we were opening a new market. We would put together a “Behind the Beans Tour” – we invited local media (print, digital, tv and radio) for a few hour session where we did official coffee tastings with them and through it we were able to tell them about our company, the way we sourced our coffee and all our key messages we wanted to get across.
