Why Every Business Needs a Public Relation Strategy

Your PR strategy is crucial to your business. Without a great PR strategy, you won’t be able to grow your business in the ways you want to. Here is why you absolutely need a PR strategy, no matter what industry you are in:

Lead Gen

Public relations can present your company in a great way to the public at large. From this, you will find that it turns into a lead generation machine. The more positive news you receive, the more people know, like, and trust your company. It increases the inbound leads you get on a daily basis. After all, social proof is one of the most powerful ways to convince consumers to go with your brand over others.

Talent Acquisition

The talent you are able to hire is the lifeblood of your company. Without quality new recruits, you won’t be able to compete at the highest levels in your industry. The right employees can supercharge your results, whether they work in marketing, customer service, accounting, or anything in between.

And new talent doesn’t just look at salaries when considering which companies to work for. You are competing for them based on your reputation and PR that you have in the marketplace as well. If you are known as being a company that doesn’t do good in the world, it will be hard to bring new people on board. However, if you are known to have a great company culture then you can add value without having to spend extra money on compensation packages and other salary perks.

Just as you need great PR to get new people into your company, you need for the employees you already have. No one wants to work at the company that is being demonized in the media, because they feel the personal backlash at home. So if you want to give them a reason to stick around, make sure you are investing in your PR correctly.

Save Money

Modern day advertising and marketing is expensive. Anyone in the world can open an account with any social media or ad platform and start bidding against. This drives the costs up, and many companies cannot afford to market the way they want to.

You can use PR as leverage in your marketing and advertising. You can get free press. This can be rolled into your other avenues of lead generation, such as emails, landing pages, and special offers. The more traffic you can send to these assets from PR, the more conversions you will get. So not only will you be saving money on paid advertising while your competitors struggle to stay afloat, you’ll be getting even more customers.

Clear Messaging

Your public relation strategy lets you control the conversation around your brand. It lets you be clear with your intentions and mission statement. This avoids confusion which can happen when so much information is shared like it is today online.

Attract Acquisitions

There might come a time in your business when you want to put it up for sale. If this is the case, then you need to have a great image. PR lets you present your best face to potential buyers so you can achieve the kind of exit you always dreamed of.

Running a business is expensive. If you don’t have enough capital, you will run it into the ground before long. With payroll, overhead expenses, refunds, and surprises, you need to make sure you have enough in the bank to weather any storm.

One great way to have enough in the bank is to get investors to fund your expansion. However, investors want to see a company with a positive PR image. Otherwise, they will be too timid about the prospect of your business succeeding to shell out any cash.

Rapid Pace of Social Media

Social media has made it to where everyone with a smartphone can read virtually any news in an instant. It means that you need a proactive PR approach. If you don’t, a rumor could be spread and assumed to be true before you have a chance to shut it down. Use PR to respond to crises right in the moment. That way, no matter who is seeing it, they will get your view on what happened. This is especially true when it involves some kind of scandal.

In business, you cannot win by simply focusing on the present. If you did that, you would never be able to anticipate the storms ahead. You would end up crashing your business in no time. Instead, you need to be able to plan and think ahead.

In order to position your business in the right categories in the customer’s mind, you have to implement PR techniques based on the trends you are seeing. This allows you to get ahead of the rest and cement your new spot as the technology and innovation in your industry changes at a rapid pace. The end result is complete confidence that your public image is in good condition.

SEO Falling Out of Favor

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the marketing strategy of using organic search results to be found online. Essentially, you use keywords on your site and then Google will direct users to your site when they are searching. However, SEO is getting harder and harder to compete in. The old tricks to the trade have been eliminated, and now you need another strategy if you are a small or medium sized business and want to stand out. You need PR that has a unique twist and puts you above the rest.

A great public relation strategy is not just offense, it is great defense. It keeps you on the positive side of the news cycle. Every business needs to have a solid PR strategy so they can position themselves for success in the marketplace and prevent missing out on major opportunities to grow.

Ronn Torossian is the Founder & CEO of 5W Public Relations