The complete guide to PR strategy. Learn the top public relations strategies and tips with PR examples from well-known brands.
Powerful public relations strategies increase brand awareness, build user trust, and help you beat your competition.
Almost 90% of the startups fail across all industries. The most common reasons for startup failure are misaligned product-market fit and ineffective use of PR marketing and sales strategies.
How can a brand convert potential customers who are unaware of its existence into paying clients?
A well-written PR is one of the most powerful strategies for building brand perception and reputation.
PR is 90% more effective than advertising at influencing people’s opinions. It supports achieving product-market fit by raising awareness and credibility around your product.
Skillfully developed public relations strategies help startups, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs establish trust among their key customer base.
PR tools and tactics like press releases and sponsored posts drive media coverage and influence public perception. It also positions your business as an industry expert, opening doors to partnerships, customer growth, and investor interest.
This article will help you learn:
- What are PR tactics?
- Why are PR tactics important?
- How to create a PR strategy?
- Examples of PR tactics
- What is a Public Relations Strategy?
- Importance of Choosing The Right-Fit PR Tactics
- 12 Powerful Public Relations Strategies [Best Examples]
- Gain Organic Media Coverage
- Leverage Virtual Events With Interactive Features
- Use Newsjacking to Acquire Big Links
- Outsource Your Campaigns To Top PR Agencies
- Utilize Guerilla PR Tactics
- Cooperate With Competitors for Joint Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR)
- Incorporate AR Technology in Press Kits
- Employ CEO Interviews to Enhance Your Brand Narrative
- Collaborate With Celebrities or Influencers
- Make Users the Brand Ambassadors of Your Company
- Turn Negative Comments Into Good PR
- Drive Engagement by Sharing Visual Stories
- Finest Public Relations Strategies For Startup Growth
- PR Tactics For Crisis Management
- Winning PR Strategies for B2B Companies
What is a Public Relations Strategy?
PR tactics refer to a company’s actions to mold its brand perception and create a dedicated alliance with its target customers.
Thoughtfully planned PR campaigns shape consumer sentiment, drive purchasing decisions, and position your brand in a positive light.
It enhances your marketing message, strengthens credibility, and builds long-lasting connections with your target audience.
The easiest way to distinguish PR from other marketing channels is that it helps you earn journalists and media attention. In PR, you create newsworthy stories, build relationships with journalists, and partner with media outlets to secure extensive media coverage.
For instance, Slack built a SaaS empire by teaching users why their product is better leveraging PR and social media. In 2024, they have over 65 million users, which is expected to reach 79 million in 2025.
They were able to achieve great publicity by reaching wider audiences via media mentions on sites like TechCrunch, Forbes, and other prominent tech sites.
Importance of Choosing The Right-Fit PR Tactics
Choosing the right PR tactics is a must, as 55% of journalists get at least a quarter of the stories they publish from pitches.
A successful PR plan increases the chances of media coverage and forges relationships with journalists and the media over time.
Digital storytelling is considered the best PR strategy by 88% of the top PR professionals.
Well-crafted PR strategies and key messages help to grow your business recognition and reputation. Here are the top benefits of having effective public relations:
- Maximize reach and impact: Effective PR strategy ensures your message reaches key demographics and core stakeholders. The global PR market is projected to exceed $133 billion by 2027. By adopting the best PR outreach programs, you can create a positive public image and increase customer engagement.
- Adapt to changing trends: The PR environment is perpetually shifting with the rise of AI tools, predictive analytics, data-driven PR, and visual content software. Meeting your PR goals with the latest trends in public relations helps you upgrade your public relations skills and PR campaign outcomes. Maintaining credibility is the latest trend faced by media professionals in an increasingly saturated media landscape.
- Achieve campaign-specific goals: Public image is your brand’s strongest advantage. 81% of consumers only buy from brands they trust. A high-impact public relations strategy lets you achieve campaign-specific goals like boosting brand awareness, driving sales, or handling crises. It also allows you to control and enhance your organization’s reputation through a methodical, evidence-based approach.
- Maintain a favorable social media reputation: More than half (58%) of consumers find it more captivating to connect with a brand or company on social media than to visit a storefront. PR activities assist in reputation management on social media. It monitors your brand performance and builds trust with your audience. Also, it addresses any negative events or issues by collaborating with experts, influencers, or reputable organizations to help you earn company respect.
- Handle Crisis management: More than 90% of businesses agree that they need to upgrade their crisis management plans. You face a PR crisis when there is a spike in brand mentions but a drop in consumer sentiments. A well-managed public relations crisis plan lets you react swiftly. A response team with key decision-makers and communication experts lets you proactively resolve crises that can harm your organization’s reputation.
12 Powerful Public Relations Strategies [Best Examples]
Effective public relations strategies build positive relations and support business goals. From paid media and earned media to robust media monitoring, a positively planned PR strategy can help you reach your campaign goals. Here are the top 12 types of advanced public relations tactics to drive recognition for your organization:
Gain Organic Media Coverage
Launch communication campaigns on different platforms where your audience hangs out.
Apart from social media outlets, get your brand story published on leading PR and earned media publications.
The goal is to achieve maximum reach, engagement, and influence.
For instance, Coinscribble lets you choose from pre-selected media packages to secure hyper-growth.
Coinscribble offers guaranteed media placement on reputed publications like TechCrunch, Inc., MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, and others.
With on-demand media publications and same-day distributions available, you can gain impressive organic media coverage to outsmart your competitors.
Leverage Virtual Events With Interactive Features
Virtual events like live streams, networking events, and trade shows actively engage primary audiences. Interactive features like live Q&A sessions, polls, and gamified activities are excellent to reach and involve your focus group.
Events let you collect data and provide a better view of your target audience. Organizing micro-events is also cost-effective.
Salesforce’s World Tour Sydney is an excellent example of a PR event that captured massive audience reach. By showcasing the transformative potential of AI in customer experiences, the event combined product demonstrations, success stories, and hands-on learning, attracting a wide range of participants. Its virtual format, streamed via Salesforce+, allowed for broader accessibility, engaging both industry newcomers and experts.
Use Newsjacking to Acquire Big Links
Newsjacking is a creative PR tactic to wield current news events to market your brand or message but with some innovative angle.
Baseline metrics that follower growth ranged from 0.09% to 18.9% across the five positive NewsJacking cases.
Hacking the news might sound quite familiar, but this goes one step ahead.
Instead of just placing your brand in the middle of trending news topics, this takes it up by adding an innovative twist that makes your message different.
Newsjacking includes the following steps:
- Identify relevant news
- Craft a unique angle
- Create engaging content
- Distribute strategically
For instance, MailChimp utilizes news and trending topics to its advantage, placing its brand in conversation.
The company produces content or campaigns that tie its services into big events, like the Super Bowl or major tech announcements. This way, the platform could plug into that much-needed buzz and converse with a greater audience.
Newsjacking is the perfect way for MailChimp to outshine the competition in the crowded market, and it has simultaneously proved to be great media publicity, boosting its PR effect.
Outsource Your Campaigns To Top PR Agencies
Assigning your PR campaign to best-rated PR companies allows your business to draw upon their specialized experience.
More than 60% of companies outsource digital PR to trusted PR firms.
The expert knowledge of startup PR agencies enhances the quality and effectiveness of your media outreach initiatives.
With outsourcing comes scalability and flexibility.
An external PR firm can scale up or down, as the campaign may call upon, against changing circumstances.
This flexibility is important for when last-minute challenges emerge or new opportunities pop up to ensure that the campaign is kept relevant and effective throughout its entire duration.
Utilize Guerilla PR Tactics
Non-traditional and disruptive PR tactics use unconventional means to attain buzz and attract an awesomely broad public segment using limited budgets.
An important feature of Guerrilla PR is its stress of being creative or original. 70% of people agree that Guerrilla marketing tactics are more customized than traditional marketing.
Also, guerilla advertising helps to reduce the cost of marketing by a whopping 90%.
Often, PR stunts, creative events, or viral activities look to surprise the public at every available opportunity. Interactive and memorable events deepen the touch between the brand and its audience.
Companies can create a strong emotional bond with their consumers by leveraging surprise engagement strategies.
Cooperate With Competitors for Joint Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR)
The corporate world has become increasingly competitive today.
Companies have started to seek ways to work with their competitors on matters concerning CSR.
This new PR strategy involves working in collaboration with one’s competitors on a pressing social or environmental issue.
Such collaborations strengthen public perception.
According to Alfac’s study, 77% of respondents are open to buying from a company that has determined itself for the betterment of the world.
People love companies that are forward-looking, socially conscious, and willing to put societal needs over their rivals.
Also, the media is more likely to focus on these types of collaborations.
Hence, CSR is a solid strategy that provides a brand with more positive press.
Long-term, this equates to consumer goodwill, increased brand loyalty, and even attracts socially-conscious investors and partners.
For instance, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce came together for joint CSR. Their decarbonization pledge generated lots of media publicity. Almost all the major news channels and online media houses covered this news.
Incorporate AR Technology in Press Kits
Augmented Reality (AR) press kits are a forward-thinking PR strategy.
Approximately 1.4 billion people are active users of AR devices.
It successfully integrates digital innovation with traditional media, proposing both immersive experiences and interactive ones.
By integrating AR technology into press kits, brands are able to make available a dynamic means for both journalists and influencers to interact with their content.
It is expected that advertising revenue will yield $6.72 billion in 2027 through AR hardware.
AR technology creates a more engaging experience. As a result, the impact of the PR efforts is enhanced.
For instance, Adobe has used AR technology in various ways in their press kits.
Adobe included AR experiences in the press materials associated with the launch of Adobe Aero, an AR authoring tool.
Through integrated AR experiences, Adobe lets journalists and other members of the media experience what the product would be like.
The experience by journalists created much more interactive and engaging press materials.
AR technology in press kits serves to illustrate features better, highlighting products in 3D and opening special storytelling opportunities.
Employ CEO Interviews to Enhance Your Brand Narrative
Interviews are an incredibly powerful PR tool.
61% of customers purchase from your company if your leader has communicated clearly on social media.
Communication allows your organization to transfer messages, values, and knowledge directly to audiences.
Interviews conducted by top journalists, industry analysts, or social media influencers help to get your project the right public image.
You can talk about their value proposition during interviews and answer various questions put forward by the media.
The strategic use of interviews can build a public perception of an organization.
It can also help you acquire positive media coverage and boost your brand identity.
One of the best public relations strategies examples is led by Apple. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, participated in interviews just before the product launch with major media outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, to support Apple’s strategic marketing objectives.
TV or YouTube interviews always happen together with the release of high-profile products, financial announcements, or strategic statements.
Such interviews are planned in detail to develop talking points that enhance Apple’s message.
It is how Apple tells its brand story, proving it innovates to excel.
Collaborate With Celebrities or Influencers
80% of marketers rate influencer marketing as effective in raising brand awareness or engagement.
Collaboration with celebrities or influencers has evolved to become one of the most powerful public relations strategies for a brand to employ.
| A Scoop Survey tells us that: – 94% GenZ- 44% Gen X- 71% Baby Boomers, and – 70% of Millennials trust the products or services promoted by influencers. |
You can partner with content creators and celebrities to pitch your brand to their followers and expand your audience reach.
Companies can easily reach their target audience with the help of influencers related to their niche.
Co-branding and product collaborations provide a personal touch that is usually not accessible with traditional advertising.
The partnership’s success must be tracked by engagement metrics, conversion rates, and general sentiment.
The company gets an idea of how well or poorly the collaboration worked so that future partnerships are even more successful.
Make Users the Brand Ambassadors of Your Company
Instead of relying on the traditional approaches, convert your users into your brand ambassadors. It will help to increase the loyalty and advocacy of your current customers.
By turning customers into ambassadors, the endorsement becomes natural and even more credible.
Encourage users to create more content, including reviews, social media posts, or blog entries. It will help you publish lots of relevant User-Generated Content (UGC) for positive publicity.
UGCs not only serve as promotion but also build a community around your brand.
For instance, Dropbox has successfully executed brand ambassadors and referral marketing as a growth strategy.
Instead of advertising, Dropbox made the users ambassadors of the company.
They offered further storage in return for users referring friends to the service.
It became a powerful word-of-mouth marketing strategy.
The referral program greatly assisted in achieving fast growth for Dropbox during the early years.
All product-loving users became natural brand ambassadors, spreading the word about the product to others and incentivizing them to earn free storage.
The company did wonders, particularly because it was aligned with Dropbox’s core offering, cloud storage.
Turn Negative Comments Into Good PR
The tactic of turning criticism into positive publicity is very transparent. It shows just how serious your company is about addressing and resolving customer issues.
When a company receives negative feedback, the initial reaction might be to ignore or deflect it.
Rather than ignoring or deleting the negative comment, the business should respond with empathy through the provision of solutions.
The step of coming forward turns the angry customer into a loyal customer.
Also, showing others that the brand is responsive and accountable creates trust with a larger community.
A goodwill can be created this way as the brand shows a will to change in order to provide improvements.
Drive Engagement by Sharing Visual Stories
Visual storytelling is the creation of interesting and emotionally touching stories through different visual elements.
The human brain processes images 60,000 faster, and 50% of your brain is active in visual processing.
These illustrative components include images, videos, infographics, and graphics. You can integrate these into strategic PR campaigns to capture the audience’s attention more effectively.
Storytelling helps communicate messages and motivates people to act.
The approach of narration considers the fact that visuals are digested much faster than words, and also, humans retain much more visual content compared to writing.
The inclusion of visuals within press releases, social media posts, and multimedia pitches will definitely get your message across through a cluttered marketplace.
Finest Public Relations Strategies For Startup Growth
Most startups’ biggest problem is lack of credibility. Effective PR bridges this gap by securing endorsements from reputed media outlets, thought leaders, and influencers.
The five best PR strategies that startups should follow are:
Craft Press Releases
Press releases and news articles are a solid PR strategy to help build brand awareness.
74% of journalists find press releases to be the most useful source of new ideas compared to any other source.
News reporters refer to press releases as they provide a ready story that needs only very little editing.
This is good news for any small business because this means that journalists are on an active lookout for your story.
By distributing press releases through well-established channels and reaching out to journalists and media outlets, startups can generate buzz.
This can potentially lead to more feature stories or interviews.
As a result, startups can reach a wider audience and build credibility in their industry.
Arrange Interviews and Appearances for Company Executives
Startup CEOs or key executives should speak publicly to boost company credibility by leaps and bounds.
48% of your brand’s reputation is held by the CEO.
The audience gets to see real people behind the brand. This adds a human touch to it and induces trust.
When executives participate in interviews or give speeches, they receive media attention well beyond the topic they are addressing.
News reporters, bloggers, and influencers might cover your interview and share their personal opinions in their articles, blog postings, and social media mentions.
Generate Media Interest Through Television Programs and News
Participating in television programs allows startups to share their brand mission and value proposition with a potentially big audience.
When a startup is covered in a news segment or on some form of television, it is often perceived as a third-party endorsement.
Once any renowned media house has covered a startup, many journalists and other media houses are likely to take its story.
The story of the startup is carried and shared across several media outlets, further amplifying the message and reach.
Plan and Execute Outreach Events for Media and the Public
Of all the PR tactics possible for startups, events are the most effective.
Gatherings create excitement and credibility in addition to directly engaging target audiences.
It brings about deeper emotional connections with the brand since it is an engagement that is usually direct.
These emotional connections translate into positive word-of-mouth.
Besides, it offers more convincing media coverage than conventional marketing activities.
Events could be successful differentiators for a startup in a noisy marketplace, provided they are well conceptualized, offering experiences, content, and interactive demonstrations.
Promote Your Startup or Product Through Social Media
77% of businesses use social media to reach and connect with their customers.
Effective social media engagement gives your new business a direct, inexpensive way to scale the number of people reached.
The top six social media platforms that marketers use to build communities are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Well-planned social media promotion greatly helps start-ups reach out to customers, investors, and influencers.
By harnessing social media, startups are able to create brand awareness, drive engagement, and build relationships with their target audiences.
67% of new-age marketers work with micro-influencers with 10K to 100K followers.
PR Tactics For Crisis Management
The public relations tactics in crisis management form the backbone of reputation protection, enabling your organization to survive in adverse conditions.
Here are the top PR tactics to follow at the time of crisis:
Remain Proactive
Business leaders experienced a crisis over the course of five years in 69% of cases, but most said their companies experienced an average of three crises.
Preparing and planning to navigate the potential threats is necessary in PR crisis management.
The public relations plan should work alongside minimizing further damage to an organization’s reputation.
Being prepared means formulating a comprehensive crisis management plan before the onset of any crisis.
Such a plan outlines procedures and identification of key stakeholders.
It assigns specific roles and responsibilities to the team members and develops press release templates to boost your public relations efforts.
A communication channel and a monitoring system are also set up to enable early detection of emerging problems.
By being proactive, your organization is never caught off guard.
You are able to ensure that responses remain controlled and coordinated.
In turn, it safeguards your organization from reputation damage and retains the trust of the public at large.
Respond Rapidly
Rapid response forms a core part of PR crisis management. It consists of immediate, calculated attempts at communication to address the developing issue at hand.
The aim is to contain further potential damage through such control and shaping of public perception.
In PR crisis management, rapid response should include monitoring media channels, social platforms, and public sentiments.
Rapid response helps in controlling misinformation and counters negative information.
It assures those who have a stake in an organization, such as customers, employees, and investors, that the situation is in control.
Also, it prepares the groundwork for long-term recovery and rebuilding of the lost confidence with the public.
Leverage Social Media for Real-Time Updates
Today’s fast-moving digital world uses social media for real-time updates.
Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can be used to share news, updates, and announcements.
Businesses can rapidly correct misinformation, respond to feedback, and address issues through their official social media channels.
Two-way communication can be developed by responding to comments or sharing live content.
This way, the brand becomes more relatable to its audience, a very strong tactic nowadays.
After all, people want responses right now and want authenticity in interactions.
This, in turn, makes social media an indispensable tool for PR management.
Observe Public Opinions
In public relations, sentiment analysis is a popular method for assessing brand awareness through word-of-mouth over a period of time.
Monitoring public opinion makes PR professionals aware of how campaigns work.
Using artificial intelligence, Organizations can identify emerging trends and know if there is negative feedback that should be immediately addressed. You can examine the context and tone behind expressed opinions and label them as positive, negative, or neutral.
For instance, this anonymized 30-day sentiment timeline for “Buzz Cola” highlights trends in positive, negative, and neutral feedback to analyze brand sentiments at scale:
This helps brands get ahead of any issue. It allows them to construct messages in a way that the targeted audience can easily relate to.
Over time, it leads to a good business reputation.
Conduct a Post Crisis Assessment
A post-crisis assessment is conducted to understand how the breakdown handling was done. It assesses both strengths and weaknesses.
The steps followed in the handling process help an organization know what was done right.
Thus, the points where errors occurred are noted.
A review, therefore, trims future crisis management plans.
The evaluation processes also review internal and external factors contributing to the reaction to a disaster.
The first step in conducting a post-crisis evaluation is to supervise a baseline analysis.
Further, you need to honestly assess accountability, drive a constructive analysis, and make the evaluation actionable.
Winning PR Strategies for B2B Companies
PR works as a strong tool for lead generation in B2B companies, wherein thought leadership pieces, case studies, and positive media coverage drive interest from potential clients.
PR positions the company as a solution provider for common industry challenges. It helps secure leads for active searches for a product or service in that specific space.
Here are the top PR tactics for B2B firms:
Establish Thought Leadership
B2B businesses can develop thought leadership by publishing whitepapers, research reports, blog posts, and articles providing insight and solutions to customer issues.
Besides that, the companies should participate in industry conferences, webinars, and panel discussions.
These opportunities allow the key executives to share expertise directly with a wider audience.
Audience engagement further enhances the company’s thought leadership position.
Manage Your Reputation Effectively
For B2B companies, relationships and trust form the basis of business success.
About 95% of people go through online reviews before making a purchase.
Reputation management gives much importance to credibility and reliability and entails several steps done proactively.
First is the monitoring of online mentions.
Others include responding to feedback and taking immediate action on adverse publicity.
A well-planned crisis communication strategy minimizes harm and helps regain lost trust.
Further, the emergence of concerns should be addressed transparently.
It helps reinstate the firm’s credibility by showing its due concern for resolving issues.
Companies can showcase negative situations as paths to improve their brand reputation by handling PR crises efficiently.
Craft Attention-Grabbing PR Messages
Precise messaging means clear, direct, relevant, and real content.
A strong message should highlight what makes the brand unique, stay authentic, and prompt the audience to take action.
72% of PR marketers feel that storytelling is the most important public relations skill.
Your PR messaging should strike a chord with the target audience. You should communicate the USP of your B2B offerings in a manner that describes the impact on business operations.
Equally, messaging should mention how the product or service relates to bottom-line results.
This helps position the company with much more credibility.
It also increases the levels of engagement with real decision-makers, who are mostly interested in solutions that answer their businesses’ needs.
You should not shy away from adding a comic touch to your PR headlines. For example, ModCloth used the headline “ModCloth Breaks Up With Black Friday” to announce its exit from Black Friday deals. The balance between news and comedy is essential to gain a journalist’s attention.
Tell a Story
Stories can enhance product perception by up to 2,706%.
Cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner says that people are 22 times more likely to remember a fact when it’s presented as a story. Stories make ideas more memorable and easier to grasp.
A survey published in LeapMesh reveals:
- More than 50% of people will consider buying from a brand based on their stories.
- Close to 25% will follow the brand on social media, while more than 15% will buy from the brand immediately.
For B2B companies, storytelling means creating narratives about how products or services are used in the real world. You can also share news about your new partnership or a new milestone.
Your stories should outline how your B2B solutions resolve a very important problem or create meaningful change for its clients. Fundraising news or stories about new product milestones can also help to attract journalist’s attention.
This can be done through customer success stories, going behind the scenes of innovation processes, or case studies showing and proving the transformational value created by your products.
Informational stories can be distributed via many channels like blogs, social media, webinars, and other industry publications. You should create content and select press release distribution channels based on your B2B buyer persona.
Maximize Reach Through Strategic Influencer Collaborations
85% of B2B marketers agree that partnering with social media influencers helps their brand succeed.
A survey published on Kapwing suggests:
- B2B companies raised their sales from 52% to 61% by investing in influencer promotion.
- Brand reputation was also improved from 48% to 58%.
- Brand accuracy was raised from 37% to 47%.
- Customer retention was increased from 41% to 47%.
B2B companies can use influencers to build brand authority and establish a sense of trust in the industry.
Working with industry thought leaders opens B2B companies up to larger and highly targeted audiences that respect the words of valued voices.
The most important thing in working with influencers in the B2B space is choosing those whose experience falls within the core services provided by your company.
For example, SAP invites influencers to their events to discuss topics like AI, ML, and IoT. In a recent event in Germany, the influencers generated 50% of all social media mentions.
Such a comprehensive PR strategy ensures that the followers of such an influencer are already interested in subjects touching on what the company provides.
Therefore, this approach will presuppose more meaningful engagement and conversion.
