Press releases and advertising are primary news-driven marketing strategies, but they’re not the only ways you can leverage the news to help you increase profits for your company. One of the best ways to get attention for your products or services is to read the news, then apply it to your marketing efforts.

One recent campaign I saw was conducted by a financial advisory and investment firm. The upcoming presidential election and economy are permeating the news, so the firm sought to take advantage of these hot topics with a promotional campaign. They printed flyers, newsletters, posters, postcards, and booklets that gave a glimpse of how markets and investments would be affected depending on which candidate were elected. Customers could follow up with a free review of their own portfolios to see how they should prepare.

Since these are highly-visible, public news stories that affect everyone’s lives, potential customers were instantly drawn to the marketing strategy and the campaign was a success.

Your own news-driven marketing doesn’t have to be centered around politics and money. Read what your target customer base reads: current news, business, sports, lifestyle, entertainment, home and garden, and more. Understand what matters to your customers, and you can easily create desire for your products and services with direct marketing.

Scour the news for hot topics that are relevant to your business, consider how the news impacts your customers, then develop a marketing angle that demonstrates how you can benefit your customers. Launch an attention-getting marketing campaign, and you’ll be on the fast track to immediate success.

Step-by-step guide on how to identify marketing opportunities with news

Read the news. Not the news in general, but the news your customers read. Subscribe to trade journals and magazines your target customers base subscribes to. Identify relevant topics. For each major news story, consider how it can tie-in to your business. For example, a story on modern kitchen design trends would be a perfect tie-in for a remodeling business. Market. Ask online news outlets, magazines, and trade journals about upcoming stories, then take out advertising that runs alongside relevant articles. Or, rent the portion of their mailing list that meets your target customer demographic data and launch a direct mail postcard marketing campaign that serves as a spin off of a previously published story. In our kitchen remodeling example, a re-modeler could acquire a mailing list of magazine subscribers and send a targeted postcard to its readers that demonstrates how the company can help them achieve the same modern kitchen look and functionality they saw in the magazine. Add in a time-limited discount coupon, and you’ll be on the fast track to new customer acquisition.

You don’t have to be the one making headlines to profit from the news. Take some time each month to identify opportunities for your company to take advantage of the news, and you’ll increase your brand power, customer base, and profits.