PR is vital in shaping the public’s perception of your business. Great PR helps to boost brand awareness and generate customer loyalty. A public relations disaster, however, can have devastating, long-lasting consequences for your business.
In this month’s edition of Tips from the Experts, we asked 3 PR agencies – Rooster PR, A Marr & Associates and 10 Yetis – for their best public relations advice for businesses. Between them, these agencies cover PR for the travel, lifestyle, technology, corporate and consumer industries.
Rooster PR – James Brooke, Managing Director
If you’ve budget, then engage an agency. PR isn’t a dark art, but it is about messaging and relationships, which both take time to develop effectively. If not, then the following tips should set you on the right path…
1. Honestly, do you understand PR?
It may sound obvious, but before investing your precious time in PR, you need to understand (a) what PR is, (b) what it can realistically achieve, and (c) what are the potential pitfalls and limitations.
Regardless of what you’re told by PR practitioners who are looking to secure your business, PR does not equal sales. And, it should never been seen as a cheap answer to your sales pipeline challenges.
PR is about driving positive media coverage of your business. That coverage may well translate into enquiries and sales, but there’s no guarantee.
2. What are you trying to achieve?
Start by reviewing and analysing your objectives for the business for the year ahead. Then, convert those objectives into a set of key messages comprising no more than 6-10 single sentence bullet points.
It’s crucial to spend time fine-tuning those key messages so they’re concise and clear. If you know exactly who you are and what you’re trying to achieve, then so will any journalist. Put a date at the top and review them on a monthly basis.
3. What’s the story?
It’s vital to think like a journalist and ask ‘what’s the story?’ To you, your business is the centre of your working world but it means nothing to an outsider, let alone a time-poor journalist who’s on deadline.
What’s innovative in your business? Are you planning to launch a new product or service? Have you won any new clients? Is your industry undergoing change and where does your business fit?
4. Monitor the industry and your competitors
If you haven’t used Google Alerts before, then it’s time to start! Find out what your competition and your industry are up to through daily alerts that provide a stream of links to relevant stories based on chosen keywords.
You’ll soon be reading online coverage and be able to spot what the angle of a particular story is and whether or not you can develop something similar or preferably more innovative and interesting for your business.
5. Who are you targeting?
You know best who your target audiences are. So, what media – print, broadcast, online and social – are those audiences consuming? Once you’ve worked that out, you’re on the right path to reaching and connecting with them.
The next step is to absorb that media yourself and note down the names of the journalists who are writing regularly. With a bit of effort, you should be able to source an email address, LinkedIn profile or twitter handle to then reach out, connect and start telling your story.
A Marr & Associates – Frank Marr, Marketing Director
As a business with limited advertising budgets available to you, PR can rapidly increase business while costing nothing more than the owners’ time. Most importantly, a consistent effort can raise visibility, credibility, familiarity and endorsement – all of which ultimately result in sales.
PR can help support any advertising and direct marketing efforts, while increased visibility can make your business seem larger and more established than it may be. It is also excellent for building in-bound links to your website that will assist in boosting your ranking on search engines.
PR is often much more cost effective than advertising and can provide the endorsement that an advert cannot.
1. Are there resources out there that can get you started?
Check with your local small business office and do some research to see if there are any organisations that can help you with PR. Many local authorities hire external PR agencies to assist with PR for businesses.
2. Do you know what is being said about your company?
Track anything that is being said about your company, whether it is in the newspapers or on social media. Ensure you have Google Alerts set up to track keywords.
3. What are your customers reading?
Find out what media your customers are reading and watching and then spend some time researching potential journalists. If time is limited, put your efforts into researching two or three publications and targeting them first.
4. How to reach a journalist?
If you know your story is a good one, make sure your do your research about the journalist you are pitching, read up on articles they have already written, track them down on social media. Twitter is often an excellent medium to have a conversation and introduce yourself and your business.
5. Aim high
If you have a story that you feel is relevant for a national or international newspaper or TV programme, don’t be scared to pitch it to them. We know many micro businesses that have featured in national and international newspapers which has resulted in them trending on social media channels too.
10 Yetis – Shannon Haigh, PR Account Director
1. Enlist the help of an agency
Employing an in-house PR person or trying to carry out a public relations campaign yourself won’t always be an effective use of time. Find a PR agency with plenty of experience in your sector and ensure they have the kind of journalist contacts that will benefit you. Agencies will get you faster and a more varied range of coverage.
2. Don’t be afraid to stand out
Businesses looking to make the headlines need to be willing to do something a little out of the ordinary, so quirky PR stunts, controversial reactive comments or interesting data that’s an industry ‘first’ will all tick this box.
3. Do more than just PR
Old school PR is on its way out. Consider a campaign that has a social media element and activity to help improve search engine optimisation (especially if your company has an online presence). It’s definitely possible to have a PR campaign that will incorporate all of these elements, so look for more of a digital agency that can help with this. The results will be much better when compared to a standard PR campaign.
4. Connect with journalists
Twitter is a great place to start to build relationships with journalists, especially if you don’t have an agency to help. Journalists will often tweet media requests alongside #journorequest and sometimes look for data, an expert comment or something else to contribute towards an article or feature they are working on. Try to muscle in on this whenever you can and you could start seeing the coverage flow!
5. Keep at it
It’s no use sending out one press release about a new business, product or service and then sitting back for a while and doing nothing. Journalists are more likely to write about companies they read about regularly, so sending releases frequently is good to begin with. Stopping activity altogether will make it seem as though you’re a fly by night brand, which aren’t always favoured when it comes to offering media coverage.
Thanks to James, Frank and Shannon who took the time to provide their advice. We hope you’ve found this post a useful resource for your business PR.