Promoting your business with PR
Tools & Resources
Key learnings
- Public relations is the process of managing and disseminating information about your business to maintain a positive public image.
- Writing a good press release will increase your chances of getting news about your business into local and national press.
- Regularly measuring how many people you are reaching through PR will help you improve and refine your campaigns for success.
Public relations, commonly known as PR, is a critical part of how a business communicates with its customers, other businesses and wider society. Using PR effectively can help you maintain a favourable public image, market new products and services, and distribute key messages. Here, we talk through the various uses for PR in your business, and how to write a press release for campaign success.
The dictionary definition of public relations (PR) is: “the professional maintenance of a favourable public image by a company or other organisation or a famous person.”
If PR isn’t part of your business, now might be a suitable time to start working it into your strategy.
Some of the benefits of PR include giving you a wider audience, promoting awareness of your brand, allowing you to stay ahead of your competition, boosting your brand reputation and improving your SEO.
Ideally, you want trusted people external to your business (for example, journalists and bloggers) to shine an enthusiastic light on you. These people will be central to your PR journey.
1
Is PR suitable for me and my business?
If you read about other inspiring businesses in magazines or online and these articles resonate with you, then PR is for you.
In fact, if your business is looking for new customers and clients, then no matter what size you are or sector you’re in, PR is essential.
2
How do I publicise my product launch with PR?
If you are serious about using PR to assist with, for example, a product launch, it's worthwhile planning early to ensure that your launch coincides with when customers want to buy your product.
Also, think about the availability of journalists/bloggers that you want to engage to promote your product.
For example, seasonal gifts for Christmas can be timed for early winter, so it may be worth reaching out to journalists in early Autumn.
You can choose other marketing channels too, and incorporate PR as part of your wider marketing activity.
3
How can PR benefit my business?
Drive traffic
You can use PR to drive traffic to your website, which is particularly useful if you have an ecommerce function on your site. Always promote your site as a source for more information. For example, if you are using an influencer or blogger, ask them to mention your website when they are carrying out PR activity for you.
Get reviews
By identifying the public figures on social media that your potential customers are interested in, you can go on to send these people your product, which they will hopefully review and endorse. Their positive endorsement will, in turn, generate customer reviews and spread the good word far and wide. This is trickier if you sell a service rather than a product, however, you can still ask people using your service to write a review on your website or other places such as Google or Yell.
Shout about offers
You can communicate your promotions using influencers, brand ambassadors or bloggers. Consider timing offers in line with seasonal events such as Mother's Day, Easter, or Christmas. The opportunities you can create are endless. Think about McDonald’s Monopoly or the Cadbury’s Inventor Bar Campaign. These heavily publicised campaigns are shouted about on various media channels and can be replicated on a much smaller scale by your business.
4
Press releases
A press release is the best way of sharing important information about your business because it can easily be picked up by other media outlets and distributed to a wider audience.
It is communicated deliberately to journalists or media publishers in anticipation that they might publish the news contained in the release.
The purpose of a press release is usually to promote a product/service or raise awareness about an issue.
It’s important when writing a press release to deliver your message to the public in the clearest way possible as you are trying to entice journalists to report certain information.
Make sure it is engaging and sets out the facts clearly.
Avoid jargon, technical terms and acronyms. While you understand the language used in your business, a reader or even a journalist might not identify with these as well as you.
Relay your message in simple terms while trying to grab the reader's attention. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes, and think, “is this logical to someone who knows nothing about the history of my business?”
Smartsheet offers advice on writing press releases and free downloadable templates. Click here for more information.
5
What PR tools can I use?
There are many PR tools – both free and paid for - that can help you connect with journalists and influencers and share your PR activity.
This PR software provides several services for businesses, including help with press release writing and distribution to journalists, bloggers and broadcasters, media requests and media coaching. You can also build a press room for your business to share your own news, images and resources. Pricing starts from £59 a month.
Provides free British media contacts and PR information and analysis.
This platform allows consumer brands to upload press releases and images for journalists and influencers to access. Offers a 60-day free trial to connect your brand with influencers.
Free to sign up, Google Alerts tells you when anyone mentions your name or brand across the web.
6
How do I know if my PR campaign has been successful?
You can use various methods to measure your success. A larger business may use unique web pages for customers to visit or even dedicated telephone lines to deal with responses. Numbers can be collected via both methods.
Ensure that you ask customers where they first heard about the business, and record this. If they heard about you via your PR campaign, then it is sensible to continue.
Next steps...
- Have a think about what aspects of your business would be the most interesting to a wider audience and plan your PR campaign accordingly.
- GET 60% OFF 'BOOST PR PACKAGE' WITH JOURNOLINK
- Visit JournoLink’s resources to get expert advice on getting the most from your PR.
- Build up a network of local and national journalists who might be willing to publish your press releases using media.info
- Create press releases using the Smartsheet template.
- Keep track of PR coverage online using Google Alerts