Your Business Needs PR

Still on the fence about PR? Despite being an essential component of any marketing plan, we understand that not everyone may fully understand the what, how, and why of publicity–so we’ve decided to break it down for you.

What is PR?

Public relations is a marketing communications discipline that–in essence–takes advantage of the reach and reputation of media, influencers, and key opinion leaders to deliver a message. Brands use PR for three things: to create awareness; to generate buzz / conversations, and; to improve their image.

Think of PR as a means to generate word of mouth…but on steroids. Viva voce spoken by either popular or reputable organizations or individuals. Wider reach. Holds weight. Searchable.

Basically with PR, you’re using another person or organization to promote you and your products, and they’re doing it using social media, radio, TV, or their own websites.

The Benefits of PR

PR’s benefits can be broken down into 2–long- and short-term.

Short-term Benefits

These are gains with immediate return to the brand or individual. When you run an influencer campaign on TikTok and Meta platforms to increase awareness about your new product, the results are almost immediate–people will obviously see, hear, and read about it! Same goes for news articles, listicles, and features.

Long-term Benefits

As they say, what’s on the internet, stays on the internet. This is especially true for PR. Having a lot of good materials out there by other people will generally make you look good in the eyes of those who search for you.

Think of it this way–let’s say you get one bad review about you on Reddit that blows up. People who didn’t know about you will start searching for you on Google, YouTube, everywhere. What do you want them to see? Materials about you, by you? Nope. You want them to see a lot of positive word said about you by other people–influencers, key opinion leaders, customers, etc. PR provides a safety net for brands.

And you don’t need a bad review for people to start looking for you. Every day, there are potential customers out there who are researching for the best brand of a certain product they need online. You want them to see, read, and hear about you. When you start talking to investors, you want them to see all the good PR written and said about you.

PR helps you create a positive image for your company. Of course, this is something that can only be accomplished through consistent PR activities over a certain period of time.

Future benefits of PR after PR happens

PR literally creates a ripple effect that goes beyond buzz, or sales, or image building. And the best way to showcase this is through examples.

Did you know that a ballet danseur who grew up poor became an ambassador for a local telco brand thanks to PR? Part of a show’s promotion was to do a series of media engagements with the cast. He wasn’t even the lead. But he had one of the most amazing stories. He was one of ballet school’s scholars–was literally picked up from the street at a very young age.

The telco marketers saw his story in the newspaper and decided to get in touch!

An angel investor who was looking for the next entrepreneur to support saw an Instagram Reel about a young social entrepreneur who was tapping a community of domestic abuse survivors to create unique, hand-woven bags. The bags looked great. Sold cheap. Provided a source of income for the survivors.

PR is all about creating the right narratives and looking for the right people to communicate them. It touches on both the brain and heart using the power of words. That is how powerful PR is. And that is why every business needs it.