Public Relations is creating and sending the right message to the right audience at the right time in order to establish a reputable brand.
It is the act of crafting and delivering messages that persuade and change people’s perceptions and opinions so that they take action.
Definition of Public Relations (PR)
“Public Relations is defined as a strategic communication process that organizations, individuals, and companies adopt to build a positive and mutual relationship with the rest of the public.”
Simply put, it is the way companies and organizations communicate with the media and the public. In most cases, PR is done with a motive to promote a business or generate publicity.
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Any PR professional seeks to maintain a positive reputation for their business. Additionally, every PR strategy should look forward to ensuring a brand has a positive image that can make it relevant and successful in a highly competitive business environment.
What Is The Role Of Public Relations?
You don’t want to confuse public relations with product promotion and advertising. A public relations agency does not focus on attracting paid promotions or writing stories to news reporters. They simply use editorial content found on print media, TV, blogs, and websites to promote a brand.
1- Helps To Build A Brand Reputation
The first role of public relations is to build a brand and ensure it becomes popular with the target audience. PR is a way of showing off your competitors that your business or brand has made it.
Of course, it will take you some years before you establish a name in your industry, and when it happens, the news should be all over the media.
Public relations helps you to build your brand every day by choosing the most effective communication channels that put your company or business on the limelight of target customers.
2- Customs Your Marketing Message For The Target Audience
Every business is interested in coming up with a brand that can capture the attention of target customers. In most cases, a customer will show interest in a brand if the company in question is providing what they need.
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PR is a way of convincing customers and the general public that your brand is the best they’ve got around. It helps you achieve this by tweaking your messages so that it resonates with individuals and organizations that can influence your target customers.
3- Generates Successful Business Leads
The objective of PR to online business would be to drive more traffic that eventually translates into successful leads. Having the best cover story on the Forbes Magazine or a headline on the most followed blog will definitely position your business to the target audience.
Public relations can help to position your business before the right people and increase your customer base in the shortest time.
4- Acts As A Medium of Communication With The Public
When your business is going through a transition like introducing a new product, IPO, or facing a public scandal, you want the message to reach the public and other stakeholders in a way that will not spoil your brand reputation.
To achieve this, you can use PR to communicate your message to the target audience using an existing PR plan that will put your company on the best media spotlight.
5- Helps To Get Bring In More Investors
How can the public and potential investors know that your business is worth their money? It is all in the media. Media has the power to top up your valuation and put your business in the spotlight.
PR will communicate anything to the public, like mention all the awards you have won, talk about your hardworking staff, and many other issues that most investors will use to make the decision to invest in your business or not.
How Can You Build A Public Relations Plan
By now, you should know that PR can help you build trust and credibility, create brand awareness, and gain the right exposure to your target audience.
To achieve all these, you must have the best PR plan for your business. With the most effective PR plan, you can achieve a marketing ROI and ensure that all your efforts to build a reputable brand do not go in vain.
Here are the steps to follow to build a PR plan for your business:
1- Know Your Target Audience
When building a PR plan, you must first know your target audience. If you have an online business like an ecommerce store, you must first establish where most of your target customers spend their time when online. That is where you want your communication or marketing content to focus on.
To determine the right audience for your PR, you should find out the kind of blogs, publications, media outlets, and social media platforms that they are likely to spend much of their time. Know the kind of publications your audience can trust and the media personalities they follow online.
You can reach out to influential people that your audience trusts to convey valuable information to them. Come up with PR content that you believe will reach your target audience where they are.
2- Create Quality Content For Your Audience
Now that you know everything about your target audience literally, you should focus more on creating some quality content for them. Creating content for PR is different from creating content for marketing your products. You can come up with a quality article with a storyline that you believe will catch your audience’s attention or just an idea of something that most people will be willing to read or watch.
Focus more on delivering quality content to the media you reach out to and the audience that you target with the message. Here are some questions that you should address when coming up with content for your PR:
- Does the content am creating relate to my influencer’s tone or other issues that he or she may be talking about?
- Is the content in line with my company’s goal?
- Does the content create any value for my media contact and the target audience?
You should tick all the above questions before you can use the content you have just created for PR. Remember, the content is not worth putting forward if it does not add any value to your target audience.
3- Work Closely With Influencers
When sending a pitch email to journalist pr publication editors, you must craft them in a way that will capture their attention. They receive many emails every day, and that means they can only read your pitch email if it is relevant, respectful, and clear.
Related: How To Find Influencers In Your Industry
Capture your recipient’s attention right from the email subject line to the call-to-action. If you cannot convince your contacts on the email subject line, then you should try your level best to explain yourself in the email body.
Let the contacts or target influencers know who you are and why they should read or listen to what you have to say in the email.
4- Earn The Press To Achieve PR cycle
Once you earn a media or contact, you should push your marketing team to use it. Share the news on social media platforms and add it to your company’s press page. Add the content to your email signature to improve your credibility and visibility to the target audience.
Once you manage to amplify your press and reach out to a larger audience, you achieve a PR cycle, which eventually leads to your brand growth.
PR, when done right, can have a lasting impact on your brand reputation and help you position your business before a potential customer base.
Tools To Upgrade Your PR
In this part of the article, I highlight some of the most effective PR tools that you can use for your public relations work.
Here are some of the best tools to use to boost your PR strategy:
1- Stories
At least 92% of customers prefer to read ads that come in the form of stories. A newsworthy story can improve your online visibility overnight as long as you position it to the right audience at the right time.
Storytelling is one of the best tools you can use to drive more people to your business.
It gives you the platform to establish that emotional connection with your customers. Everyone can get wrapped in a good story.
When coming up with stories for your PR, you must ensure it is engaging, informative, and relevant to your target audience.
Always strive to include a human element in your story. For instance, you can talk about your company CEO on the “About Us’ page.
Share a lot of customer experience and testimonials so that your target audience can establish a personal connection to your brand.
That is a great way of driving engagement and enticing customers to go ahead and buy your products.
2- Content Plan
To continue building your online reputation, you must have a content plan. With a content plan, you can determine the right time to post content.
It helps you ensure consistency in content creation so that your target audience can always have something to discuss on your brand.
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By having a content plan to guide you, you can research for the right topic, create the best pieces, and pitch them to the right audience. It also helps you stick to a deadline.
3- Press Releases
What I like about press releases is that it is straightforward. It is a simple way of announcing something new to your target audience.
A press release should be captivating and full of a newsworthy story for your target audience to read.
For example, if you are sending a press release to a journalist, it should be able to capture his or her attention right from the subject line.
Of course, the journalist may be receiving up to 100 emails in a day, and for them to read your press release, it must be outstanding for the rest of the content in their inbox.
The different sections of a press release, such as boilerplate, eye-catching headline, and quotes, make it the best tool you can use for public relations. With a press release, you get the chance to write anything positive about your business and, most importantly, the products and service your offer.
As long as the subject line of your press release is on point, you can easily engage your audience and even share your business location and contacts so that they can reach you.
When you forward a high-quality press release to a journalist, they can easily paste it on their magazines, blogs, and newspapers, which give you the chance to connect with a larger audience.
4- Press Conference
If you have a lot to announce about your business, other tools like storytelling and press releases may not be that effective. You can call a press conference with one of the leading media houses in your locality to make such announcements.
With a press conference, you have the time to say it all. Also, the media will get the time to ask your questions, film the event, and even take photographs.
When the video is aired on television, or your photos get published on various blogs and print media, you expose your brand to the public. If you have a company spokesperson, the press conference gives them the opportunity to interact with media personalities and build a relationship with the public.
To ensure your press conference goes well, you must be good at writing a compelling press release for the day.
5- Newsletters
Newsletters are still one of the most useful tools that you can use for your PR. Customers are always looking for the right information online. Once you come up with regular newsletters that you can send to them through emails, you get the opportunity to showcase your brand and communicate with your customers on a personal level.
Segment your audience and curate the company news to ensure your customers only receive content that they are more than willing to read.
When you come up with quality and relevant content on your regular newsletters, customers will be more willing to subscribe to your email program. This way, you build a lasting trust with customers and a loyal audience for other PR content you create.
6- Speech Writing
Speech writing is another tool that you can use for your PR. You can use it for launching new products to the market, announcing new partnerships, and announcing any latest development in your company like the planned expansion of your facility.
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With speech writing, you also get the platform to include a marketing message in the script as long as you make it lively and interactive.
During a crisis, like say when your company is almost facing bankruptcy, you can use speech writing to convince the public and other stakeholders in the business that everything is okay.
When you use the right tone and sentiments in your scripts, you can easily show your human side in response to a major crisis in your company.
Effective Public Relations Strategies
The ultimate goal of public relations is to build a positive and mutual relationship between a business and its customers.
Some of the most effective PR strategies that you should apply to build a positive brand reputation are:
1- Employ An Email Strategy
At least 80% of marketing experts testify that email marketing has helped them to improve their customer acquisition and retention rates. You can also use emails in your public relations strategy.
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While most companies would replace emails with social media chatbots, the truth is that email marketing helps you to create brand awareness to your target customers fast. It, therefore, remains to be one of the most powerful tools that you can use for your PR.
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Here are some emailing tips you should enforce to ensure you succeed in your PR:
- Use personalized elements to create a personal relationship with your contacts.
- Write eye-catching subject lines.
- Address your audience with their names to capture their attention.
- Include a clear call to action that moves your audience to act accordingly.
2- Establish A Personal Brand
In modern times, it is needless to hide behind your company or brand. Customers are more sensitive and rational with their choices. They want to know whoever is behind every brand or company before they can start buying.
Therefore, as a business founder, you must ensure you build a personal brand out there that can market your business. Likewise, your high-profile employees and CEO must also focus on building a reputation with the public.
Most customers will go to social media if they want to find out more about your brand and employees. That is where you should begin building your personal brand. Start by updating your online profile on social media platforms.
Give it a professional look so that your contacts can engage with you. Also, you must ensure you go online to interact with your audience. Ask them questions and reply to their comments to get some feedback that you can use to improve your brand.
Post some useful content on social media to get people talking and discussing your brand. You can also guest post to enlarge your audience and drive more leads to your business.
3- Enhance Your PR With Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fast-growing technologies that you can always adapt to improve your PR. Some companies are already applying it, and the impact it has on increasing brand awareness and customer engagement is promising.
You can use chatbots on your website to make it more interactive. Chatbots mimic human behavior and are useful tools for answering questions from your audience, especially on social media platforms.
Also, you can use email automation to send follow-up emails and ensure you don’t miss out on potential leads.
4- Don’t Forget Data Analytics
The only way you can make the right PR decisions for your business is by having some data and metrics in place to base your conclusions. Data and analytics help you to take some calculated steps in every PR strategy that you employ.
There are several analytics tools that you can use to find out more details about your target audience. You can know their shopping behavior, where they spend their time when online, and what time you are likely to reach them.
If your sales and marketing team have the right data and metrics, you can easily adopt the best PR campaign for your brand.
5- Leverage Video Content and Live Streaming
Every marketing expert will tell you that there is power in video content. In fact, most customers prefer watching videos or live stream content for reading web pages.
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Video facilitates authentic interaction with your audience. By using live stream video, you are likely to receive 10x more comments and feedback from your audience.
You can begin by streaming discussions, live events, and interviews on social media. Use Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to post videos that will drive customers to your business.
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Facebook Live gives you the platform to interact with your audience through live streaming videos.
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Public Relations takes time. You have to try different tools and strategies that can help to position your brand before the target audience. In every PR strategy that you employ, you must always ensure you are consistent if you intend to achieve some positive results.
Final Thoughts
Public Relations is a dynamic tool that every business can use to create brand awareness and establish a positive relationship with the target customers. In this article, I have highlighted some tools and tips that you can use to make your PR successful.
Don’t spend much of your time finding the right definition for PR. Focus more on understanding the difference between PR and other forms of marketing so that you choose the right PR strategy that can help you grow your brand.
Employ the tips I have shared here and see your brand attain an excellent reputation that can help you realize your marketing ROI.
