Media exposure serves another purpose besides just spotlighting your company, product or service features. It demonstrates and even defends the benefits your product or service provides and often does so by eliciting a level of emotion advertising cannot create.

In other words many consumers may not yet know they want or need your product until the mainstream news media tells them they should. And by reporting on and extolling the benefits your firm offers can actually expand your market size, reduce the time prospects take in making a purchase decision, create urgency for your product and all while giving the perception you are better qualified than you competition.

Unleashing this phenomenon is not the intent of the media, they are here to report news, not promote your business. The result however is very real and can have impact on your firm for years to come.

What kind of impact?

Some years ago my family owned a company that installed removable mesh fences to prevent toddlers from drowning in the family pool.

Although the threat of accidental drowning is real and the product performance was stellar, direct mail and print advertising generated only a modest response despite the lack of competition. While the number of homes with pools and young children in our market was sufficient to sustain the business, it was difficult to fully convey the severity of the problem and explain the features and benefits in the limited space traditional advertising allowed.