All to often I get contacted by Inventors that are paying a Public Relations firm, Media Specialist or Invention Submission company to try and generate buzz about their product to get it noticed. The problem is a number of these companies use the same outlets no matter what your product is. If you have a fishing product you don’t need to pay them to send out your flyer to a baby magazine.
One method these companies do is the shotgun approach where you throw eveything you have in all directions and hope something sticks. They send out flyers to companies that are not addressed to a specific person in the company, just to the companies mail dump. Your chances of it getting to the right person is rare. Most just end up in the trash. But, the company you hired can say they sent it to company X and they are not lying. They just didin’t do the next step of getting you a contact within that company. They tell you it will be presented at this years trade show, which it is. They put your pamphlet at their booth so anyone walking by can see it. They don’t normally walk up to every potential companies booth and hand them your pamphlet. But, they can honestly say you were represented at the Trade show. Hey, what do you expect for your $2,000?

Now, lets look at what you can do for FREE and get results. You can get good free press by contacting your local newspaper, T.V. News station, and online blogs. They are all looking for stories to fill space. National Public Radio is a great place for interviews and they rerun them often to fill empty slots. I did a spot interview on NPR and they ran it for 7 months at different times of the day and week. If possible when doing interviews don’t mention dates unless you really have to. When you have no dates mentioned it is easier for them to rerun the spot because no one knows you did it months earlier.

I did an interview with about.com http://toys.about.com/od/hotnewtoyreleases/a/to... five years ago and am still getting emails from people who just saw it this week. Send samples of your product to various online Try It Before You Buy It type of venues. I sent my Pizza Scissors to an online kitchen product tester and got a great testimonal out of it for free http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9649K7_SNJA

All the things I mentioned above are free. Most PR firms I have talked to start at about $2,000 and go up from there. Try the free things first. Who knows you may have a knack for PR and do it yourself and save a lot of money.