PR can often go under the radar. You read the papers, watch the news or pick up a magazine without realising what’s going on behind the content you’re reading, watching or skimming through.
Whether it’s commentary from a business leader, a nice charity event or even a news item, chances are you’re seeing a message that’s been worked on by a PR team, and the fact you’re seeing it shows that it’s a strategy that’s working.
What is PR in marketing?
So you might know that marketing should probably form part of your business plan because you want sales or conversions, but marketing isn’t just about advertising.
Sitting in between advertising and customer services, and keeping an eye on the rest of the marketing mix, is public relations (PR). Generally, we’re more concerned with reputation management and profile building but we tend to get involved in everything.
We help people to get to know a brand, to build a relationship with it and get it understood and respected. We like to make a brand feel reputable and authentic, we give it character and energy, and we defend it if things ever go sour.
While advertising is focused on the media that you pay for, we cover all the bases; we look at your owned media like your website and social media, your marketing emails and your internal comms, but we also look at the media that you have to earn.
By that, we mean any media that you get in by merit, primarily we’re talking news media, magazines and blogs as well as third party social media, TV shows and podcasts.
You won’t know it, but there’s a great deal of hard work that behind each spokesperson you’ll see being interviewed on BBC News or quoted in The Times.
Behind that 30 second interview or 30 word comment, a PR team was involved in refining the message, training the spokesperson, pitching the story, persuading a journalist, arranging an interview and getting everyone ready for it.
Naturally, the big wins tend to be smaller and harder to get, so there’s a big ‘whoop!’ moment when your client comes across well in media that will reach their target audience, because it’s all worth the effort.
What is a PR team?
Because that’s such a broad remit to PR, we tend to have a lot of skills.
We are writers, graphic designers, videographers, photographers, journalists and salespeople. We’re also experts in web copy and search engine optimisation so that you stand out at the top of every Google search.
We all contribute to your business’ public image with our unique skillsets. Utilising a strong, diverse PR team allows you to focus on the important elements of your day-to-day business, while we reflect the best parts of your business to the wider world.
If you hire a PR agency, we’ll work with the rest of your marketing team like colleagues. We complement your work and help to shape it, filling every skills gap that will help you get noticed and look good.
Typically, we report to either the company leader or the head of marketing, and we take the effort to get to know you and your business so we’re the ones who are finding out the interesting angles that you didn’t realise existed.
What is a PR campaign?
The foundations of PR are finding and curating a message, and giving you a voice. It’s easy to overlook the importance of sharing your message because you live it every day. You might not even realise you have a message. That’s where PR agencies or in-house PR teams come in. You, along with your team, can work together to realise that core message and then hone and craft that voice and message to build your own or your business, charity or organisation’s reputation. By telling your stories in the right areas, you build trust among the population.
This is also where effective campaigning can be an efficient tool for PR, devising innovative ways to promote a brand, a product or a service while maintaining the core ethos and messaging you want to uphold. A PR campaign can be a series of press releases, advertorials, product launches or brand awareness profiles that aim to elevate your key messages in unique and exciting ways.
PR is the contacts, the relationships, and fleshing out the story to find the heart of it and tell it to the world. It exposes your company – not in a negative way, but in a way that shows your target audience what your company can offer and do for them. Whether it’s your latest hire, a new product, some positive charity work… the options are limitless.
PR protects your brand
Ironically, PR has a pretty confusing – often bad – reputation thanks to depictions in film and television. We’ve debunked some of the biggest myths in PR in a previous blog post, and even spoken to PRmoment about how PR can re-brand itself. Because in the current climate, it has never been more important to be authentic and transparent. That goes for Carrington as a PR agency or your business. Honesty is the best policy, after all. Even in a crisis!
In fact, even if you’re not sure that PR is useful for your business day-to-day (pro tip: it is), then war time is surely the time when you’ll need PR it most, so you can share your side of the story before someone tells it for you, and control the narrative to the best of your ability. Scandal can hit at any moment, and no matter what hit TV shows may tell you, a trustworthy and professional PR team would never encourage a client to cover up a crisis. Instead, creating a crisis comms plan in peace time means you’re prepared for any eventuality – no matter how big or small. Take a look at our 5 top tips here.
In summary
As you can probably tell, PR has a lot of functions and arms to it. How it can benefit your business and personal brand is unique to you and goals, but ultimately, PR is about communicating your message effectively and to the right audience.
PR is about being reactive to current affairs and dynamic when things go wrong, as well as being proactive in the eventuality of a crisis. Also, it projects and protects your reputation so you can sit back and focus on the day job, while your PR team handles the rest.
If you’re looking to boost your business’ PR or even starting from scratch, get in touch to find out how our team of PR and SEO experts can help.
