Bill Gates famously once said ”If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on PR.” Such a positive endorsement can’t be ignored, so maybe it’s time to ask: what is PR and how could it help your business?
Public relations is a broad term, it covers a lot of tactics but the good news is that the concept is a fairly simple one. PR is the process of maintaining good relations between an organisation and those outside of it. The aim is to persuade other people, often your customers, to think, and if possible say, positive things about you.
What can PR do for your business?
- It can help create or increase awareness of your business and drive sales
- It can help rescue or improve your reputation
- It can help to change perceptions about your business
- It can drive traffic to your website
- It can give your brand or business credibility or expert endorsement
- It can help with your search rankings online
PR today
Whilst the concept is simple, how a good public relations campaign is implemented has changed considerably the last few years. The importance now of social media and online search has complicated and increased the ‘job’ of public relations. Nowadays, PR must take in all your communications touch points to ensure they are representing your organisation in the best way and that will include editorial in traditional media as well as social media, your website content strategy and even things like customer events.
Breaking it down
There are now so many ways to get your message out there, it’s quite bewildering, and so it’s a good idea to break it down into three categories. These are: paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is advertising; owned media is content created by you and placed in an environment controlled by you – e.g. your website or your Twitter feed. Earned media is content about you created by a third party – typically editorial.
When you advertise, your customer knows you’ve paid to say something good about yourself. It’s great for awareness but can sometimes lack important credibility.
It’s widely accepted that the most persuasive content in terms of attracting customers is earned media – essentially this is the art of getting other people to say positive things about you.
Owned media – such a blogs, interesting content on your website and social media now also tends to fall under the PR banner, because nowadays there is little point creating earned media like editorial if you are not also doing owned tactics like social media or website content.
Harness PR to help you grow your business
Public relations isn’t optional, it’s actually something you are doing, maybe subconsciously every day to promote your business. It’s not a ‘nice to have’; it’s a vital part of building a successful brand. Developing a PR campaign doesn’t have to mean using an agency and paying a monthly retainer, although that’s certainly one route. Small businesses may prefer to develop the necessary skills to initiate their own campaigns. A little training, the right tools and the time to put them into practice are all you need.
If you’d like to hear more about how PR training could help you implement your own campaigns why not post a question on Integrative Health Education’s Facebook page? Or if you’ve done other courses with us, join our forum and start a discussion there.
