Public Relations (PR) is a key component of the full marketing mix, and as part of your overall communications strategy, it’s instrumental in driving brand awareness, recognition, and consideration – ultimately guiding more leads and conversions, whilst contributing to the overall growth of your business.

How does PR benefit your company?

PR builds a compelling relationship between your brand and your target audience before your audience even enters the buying cycle. This relationship is developed over time, built on trust, and delivered through endorsement from independent, authoritative, sector experts.

PR is the proactive management of everything you say and everything you do, in order to positively impact the way you’re perceived by your target audience. This ‘Third party, high value coverage’ provides awareness, recognition, and accolades in those media channels which you don’t own. These third-party endorsements are from highly respected and influential sources and provide credibility and authority for your brand.

A brand with authority and influence

An effective PR programme should be designed to ensure that you are regularly interviewed by respected editors, achieving recognition in influential third-party media, and being invited to contribute insight to authoritative industry reports.  By becoming an integral and respected part of the fabric of your industry, you influence the shape and direction of discussions, while acquiring authority and influence – which will ultimately attract better-quality prospects into your funnel. This structure, discipline and proactivity is what you pay for when you outsource your PR to experts.

A visible and dynamic force in your industry

Being visible means you are findable and accessible, and that you have a high media profile in the right industry titles, so that your target audience is exposed to you, whether that’s actively or passively. High visibility means regular and diverse formats, i.e. a given story or opinion is ‘sweated’ so that every ounce of potential opportunity is squeezed from it.  ‘Sweating’ your stories means that once it’s appeared in the press, it can then be re-formatted and presented in multiple forms and pushed out through paid and owned channels – ensuring your asset has been fully optimised.  The impact of this is that you command a greater and more influential share of voice – pushing your competitors into the shadows.

Articulating a clear competitive advantage

Being valued means putting your customer at the heart of everything you say and do, in order to engage with them in a way that is both relevant and persuasive.  It’s not possible to be valued if you’re irrelevant to a person’s wants or needs.  To engage and achieve desirability, you need to develop a compelling messaging strategy as part of your communication plan and weave that into everything you create. If you approach your PR in this way, you will have a golden thread of narrative that ensures you are both clearly differentiated from, and superior to, any of your competitors claims.

Many clients operate in unique and complex markets, especially industries such as engineering, science, and technology.   The PR expertise required in these industries is in translating their complex solutions and achievements into interesting and engaging articles and news, so that their target audiences can understand your proposition, align with your brand and applaud your achievements.

Building a pipeline of potential and future customers (opportunities).

How do prospects get to know, like and trust you – it’s through brand building and brand awareness. This is the job of public relations. Getting people into your funnel and keeping them warm, until they are ready to purchase from you. Fill your funnel and proactively manage your reputation, then when they are ready to purchase, they will be more likely to buy from you.

PR contributes to your entire sales funnel

Because PR is concerned with building relationships and creating trust, a comprehensive PR strategy not only creates new leads for your business, but also moves potential customers through your entire sales funnel; engaging and nurturing until they eventually become paying customers.

Your PR will be informed by your communication strategy which will detail the key messages for each stage of your customer’s buying cycle. Your public relations partner will deliver narrative that aligns with, and promotes these key messages in the media, while delivering the added benefit of independent third-party endorsement. This helps your audience to travel through each stage of the buying cycle, gradually moving down your funnel and generating a solid pipeline of future customers for your business.

PR generates brand awareness

PR is well-known for creating awareness for a business and is often simply viewed as a ‘top-of-funnel’ tool, but PR, especially B2B PR, is much more valuable than that. PR builds your brand and shapes the perception of your brand within your industry. A well written and well-placed piece of content, such as some editorial or thought leadership, helps increase awareness of your business amongst your target audience – but there’s a lot of PR work to do before a potential customer is anywhere close to making a purchase from you.

PR engages and persuades

No-one would buy your products or services if they didn’t like you, have trust in you or believe what you say. Research suggests that a typical conversion requires at least 7 – 10 prior interactions with a brand, meaning your leads need to be nurtured in order to become familiar with you. Engaging, nurturing and persuading requires a strategic and holistic (not a scatter gun) public relations approach, allowing you to inform, educate and persuade them. All of which encourages and nudges them down your funnel, leading them closer to a purchase.

PR converts leads into customers

Nothing beats the credibility of a third-party endorsement for your business, and reliable, third party coverage is critical in the decision-making process of your potential customers. Authoritative and insightful PR content, delivered by credible experts, helps build trust and moves your leads further down your funnel, providing a higher likelihood of them converting into a customer.