Public relations one of the marketing disciplines within the marketing mix, which includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct response marketing. Public relations has gotten extremely sophisticated, and many experts in this discipline will argue that it is more effective than advertising for building a brand and communicating the value proposition of your organization or your products.
The Dictionary in the American Marketing Association website defines Customer Relationship Management as, “That form of communication management that seeks to make use of publicity and other non-paid forms of promotion and information to influence the feelings, opinions, or beliefs about the company, its products or services, or about the value of the product or service or the activities of the organization to buyers, prospects, or other stakeholders.”
What is interesting about public relations, or PR, is that it makes use of the side of the editorial side of media. This tactic eliminates the specific cost of purchasing media placement, and achieves a much higher level of credibility with the intended audience because your firm is referenced as part of journalistic content. This type of content is believed to be much more credible than paid advertising in the mind of the consumer.
The downside of this type of content is that you cannot control the outcome. You may provide a very positive press release, and be interviewed for a feature article about your firm. Unfortunately, the article which highlights your firm is not available for your review ahead of publication – and you can sometimes be unpleasantly surprised to find that the journalist who interviewed you also interviewed a disgruntled former customer … and their quote was printed in the article.
That’s why effective PR is most often managed by a PR agent or agency who has extensive media relationships. These relationships benefit the journalists who rely on their PR counterparts for article leads, and this relationship often allows the PR contact to be given a preliminary heads-up about the overall direction an article is taken so they can effectively work to make it appear as favorable as possible to their client.
Public relations can be a very powerful tool for establishing your brand and creating credibility in your industry for your expertise. It can be especially important if you are a new company, because you can use article reprints as marketing tools. There’s a great deal of power in being able to send out an article about your industry in which you or your company’s leadership are quoted as experts … or even better an article you authored that was published in a reputable trade magazine. Such an article gives you instant credibility that may not every be achievable from paid advertising alone.
Additionally, such powerful publicity can often be had at a fraction of the cost of general media advertising. One might even argue that building corporate image and branding can be done much more quickly and effectively through a public relations campaign.
A better approach would be to combine a strong PR campaign with more traditional advertising, where you can control the message that is printed, and with targeted, direct marketing that is designed to sell products to your end consumers.
The best marketing approach is one which utilizes each of the disciplines to create a well-rounded marketing plan, of which public relations can be a major part.
You can certainly create the basic public relations content on your own. And, if you’re dealing with primarily local media like your city’s Business Journal, you may be able to effectively cultivate media relationships on your own.
However, if you’re marketing yourself on a geographically-dispersed or national level, hiring a competent public relations agency is a must. And, I would recommend that you consider hiring an agency even if you’re a smaller, local company. Professional agencies are less expensive than you think, and they can be far more effective at getting free media coverage than you ever could on your own.
There are three must-have elements of public relations that every company needs:
- The Press Kit. The Press Kit is an overview of your company that can be delivered to media outlets. They follow a pretty standard format (see our Member Benefits section for a template you can use). Overall, they include a summary of the company’s mission, value proposition, major clients, biographies on the key management, and background on how the company was formed.
This information is needed by any journalist who interviews someone from your company – it gives them some background to review prior to the interview, allows them to tailor their questions to get concrete information, and it saves them time. It also gives them a resource to refer back to when they are writing the article. Additionally, it gives you a chance to communicate about your company in your own terms – and giving that kind of resource to the journalist gives you a better chance that they’ll describe you the same way.
- The Basic Company Press Release. The Press Release is a standard format that allows you to release information to the media about things going on with your company (see our Member Benefits section for a template you can use). The initial Press Release on a new company should be the announcement that the company was formed, who the initial participants are, and a definition of the company’s value proposition and mission.
These announcements are drafted and sent to each targeted media outlet, along with a press kit (if they do not already have one) in hopes that they will carry the announcement somewhere in their publication. Follow-on events that can trigger additional press releases include: announcing newly hired employees, completion of a new project or deployment of a new product, acquisition of a new client, or an update to the company financials (if a publicly held company). It’s a good idea to get as many press releases into the media as can be supported by real activity – as these are your public relations lead generators. In addition to hoping data from the press release gets published, the real goal is to stimulate a journalist to contact you for an article in which your company can be positively featured.
- The Byline Article. The Byline Article is an article authored by you or someone in your company with intent to be published in a trade magazine. In many cases, your Public Relations firm will pre-shop the concept of your Byline Article to several magazines and draft the article to match what the magazines are looking at. These are great marketing tools, because you can request reprints of the published article and send them to your prospects with a cover letter. This type of project establishes you as an expert, a “published” author in your field, and someone who speaks with authority in your industry. You could draft a Byline Article on your own, but it is very difficult to get a magazine or newspaper to publish one without the support of a Public Relations agency.
In many cases, you will want to seek the assistance of a professional public relations expert. This is especially important if you are trying to publish multiple Byline Articles, and to get referenced in the trade publications.
All those other experts who manage to get quoted in all your industry publications are not smarter than you, nor are they better experts … they just have a savvy public relations specialist on their side.
Knowing the media to target for your industry, having existing relationships with contacts at those media, and understanding how to create professional content designed for publication – these are all tools that you should expect from your Public Relations agency. And, having those capabilities working for you is often worth every penny.
Plus, you may be surprised at how little investment is required to gain professional public relations support. PR retainer fees may cost you $10,000 a month for a top-notch PR firm … or less if you work with a lower profile or recently established firm. Just remember, the more established firms have extremely deep media relationships and they know how to get you published.
One hint – you can always negotiate a public relations firm down from their basic rate by requesting a more limited schedule of Press Releases and Byline Articles. When you’re first starting out, you may not have enough events to regularly publish Press Releases – and you might want to focus on just getting one or two Byline Articles published. Or, you might want to work on getting a feature article covered about your company in your local Business Journal. If you limit the number of press releases or request a slimmed-down Public Relations plan, you might find the pricing is more manageable.