Public Relations
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Your PR strategy is essential to raising people's awareness of your product or service, and more specifically, of your business as the main provider rather than your competitors. Your approach to public relations will, and should, change depending on the nature, scale, and stage of your venture: you should address the evolution of your PR approach at every annual review. However, there are certain facts about PR that will always be relevant and useful to keep in mind.
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Three key facts about PR
1. Journalist respond to people they know and trust
Journalists are inundated with press releases every day. One of the hardest PR challenges is getting journalists to read your press release and persuading them why it should be published over the other numerous ones they receive.
The reality is many journalists are so busy they are unable to respond to all press releases or phone calls so they favour PR agents and companies who:
- they know
- they trust to provide them with accurate information
- provide a good interesting ‘publishable’ story
- provide a well written press release that they can easily extract information from and they can easily adapt to writer their own version.
2. Follow up press release with a phone call
And be available if journalists return your call: Sending a press release in is only half the game, after you send a press release you must follow up with a phone call to see if journalist has got all the information they need and to sell them the story . A lot of Pr companies say they do this but in reality they don’t phone 50 journalists after a press release to sell them the story.
If you follow up journalists in probability the majority will not be available so they will have to return your call ,so make sure that if they do return your call you are available and not unavailable in meetings , as journalist are very busy and generally they will not return your phone call more than once.
3. Six times before the name sticks
It has been shown that it takes an average six times for someone to read your name in magazine or newspaper before they remember your name. PR is not about one press release; it should be a continuous strategy sustained over months and years.
PR Essentials
- Be very clear why you are doing PR. Is it to gain customers, educate the market or build a corporate reputation? Once you know this you can develop a strategy to achieve your goals.
- Know what makes a good ‘publishable’ story, what is genuinely interesting for people to read
- Write a good press release that is relevant to specific magazines and newspapers.
- Keep an up-to-date list of all the contacts in key relevant publications.
- Earn the respect of the key journalists and build a relationship with them. If they know you and respect you then they are much more likely to take your calls and read your press releases.
- Don’t tell lies. If a journalist prints something that turns out to be untrue, it will be difficult to rebuild trust.
PR Agent
When deciding whether to hire a PR Agent or to handle PR yourself, the most important questions you have to ask are:
- Do you have the skill and time to write the press releases?
- Do you have time and up-to-date details on all the journalists?
- Do you have time to contact all the journalists after you have sent a press release out. Good PR agents will quite often make between 30-60 phone calls to different journalists for every press release they send out to make sure the journalist has seen the press release and find out if they want more information. Do you have time to do this and will you be available to speak to the journalists when they eventually return your call.
We-entrepreneurs suggestion:
- Employ a good PR agent (see section below on employing a good PR agent)
- Also develop your own relationship with key journalists; your PR agent should help you do this by setting up initial meetings and developing the relationship with them.
Hiring a PR Agent
When looking into hiring a PR agent, the most important thing to remember is that you'll need to be able to trust your PR agent. There are too many PR companies who spend time spinning you a line as to why they did not get an article published and not enough time actually doing the work.
If possible, the best way to ensure you employ the right PR agent is to ask a journalist in your target sector who they would recommend. Only the journalists know who writes good press releases and who they trust and respect. If possible find a friendly journalist who will give you this information.
Things to do when hiring a PR agent:
- Different PR companies have different contacts in different sectors, make sure your PR agent has contacts in your sector. Ask them in a face to face meeting who their contacts are in the magazines and newspapers you are targeting and how well they know them. They should know them well.
- Sign up for a maximum three month retainer and review this every three months.
- Ask to see what results they have achieved for other clients.
- Ask them to give you names of three to five existing clients you could speak to.
- Put in a condition of contract that you require written confirmation of who and how (i.e. phone or email) they have approached with a press release. All PR agents will have a CRM system that can easily show this.
