Public relations professionals are artists when it comes to storytelling. Ever wondered how a brand who just received major backlash recently easily returns to the good graces of the public? You guessed right. It is as a result of great Public Relations. Public relations professionals are great at spinning stories that tell a brand’s story, makes them appealing to the public, disseminate information about a brand and much more.
You may be familiar with the various functions of PR but do you know what it is?
What is Public Relations?
Public relations has been defined to be many things and is often confused with advertising. While they are similar in concept, Public relations and Advertising are NOT the same.
According to Shopify, “Advertising is a marketing tactic involving paying for space to promote a product, service, or cause. The actual promotional messages are called advertisements, or ads for short. The goal of advertising is to reach people most likely to be willing to pay for a company’s products or services and entice them to buy.”
Some of the popular definitions of public relations include but are not limited to;
Public relations is “the management of communication between an organization and its publics.”
— Grunig and Hunt
Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
— Public Relations Society of America
We define Public relations as the purposeful and strategic approach towards crafting a brands image to the media, the brand’s target audience as well as the general public by leveraging the power of communication.
While PR is a two-way conversation between the brand and the public in order to promote goodwill and draw the public closer to the brand, advertising is more often than not a one-way conversation that is geared towards promoting sales of a brands’ product. PR crafts how the public sees the brand by listening to what is being said about the brand by the public and crafting PR campaigns that will amplify the activities of the brand or mitigate any negative backlash the brand may face.
How Valuable is PR To Your Brand?
Great question. Unlike advertising that can run for only a specific duration, PR is a continuous effort towards keeping your brand in the good graces of the public. The rewards of PR are often not immediate but the effects last a long time. What can public relations do for your brand?
- Boost Traffic to your business’s touchpoints:
With several relevant mentions of your business in the media, more people will get to hear about your brand and visit your website or store to find out if all the buzz is true.
- Amplifies your brands’ presence:
PR helps amplify your brand presence by constantly putting your business in front of people that matter.
- Strengthen’s your brand reputation:
Regular news mentions of your business in the press will create awareness for your brand in your niche, major players in your industries and stakeholders which will, in turn, strengthen your brand’s reputation.
- Educates and Informs your target audience:
PR experts can put your business’s products and promote your services and products through various earned and paid media channels online and offline.
- Endears your brand to the public:
One of the positive sides of doing constant PR for your brand is the familiarity is creates between your brand and the audience. PR experts will ensure your brand is in the news for good reasons like new partnerships, CSRs, creating opportunities for your target audience, great products reviews and more.
- Positions your brand as a thought leader in your niche:
One great PR tactic that will help you achieve this goal partaking in events. Plan for your brand to be an integral part of notable events in your niche. Caritas Communications can help you achieve this goal. We can organize events that will be sponsored by your brand and ensure that your brand takes part in events relevant to your niche. These activities will gradually and surely position your brand in the minds of your audience, media, and the public as a thought leader in your niche.
- Builds trust between your brand and the public:
Regular news mentions in the media will give your brand credibility and help improve sales. If your brand is being talked about positively in the media, people will naturally trust you. People only patronize brands that they trust.
- Manage your brands’ presence and handle any crisis that may arise:
Negative news about your brand is inevitable. PR helps you manage the situation so that it does not reflect negatively on your brand and even if it does, PR will apply some makeup to the story to ensure it does not spill to the media. If it does, PR helps with damage control and ensures the effect of the negative review does not create problems for your brand.
The power and value of Public Relations cannot be overstated. A lot of planning and dedication goes into creating and maintaining a brand’s image. This is why you need to hire a team that is passionate, experienced, has great ties with the media and is dedicated towards building and maintaining brands.
If you are a small business that is just starting out and you are thinking of doing PR in-house for some time, you should check out these tips.