Everyone knows that good communication is a key component to commercial success – but not all communications are “good”. How can you be sure your PR gets it right?
Julie Fuge, Director at PR Agency Polymedia PR tells us ‘Good communication is effective communication. It’s clear and targeted, delivered with impact – critically designed to meet a set of commercial objectives. A PR strategy should be driven by what you want to achieve as a business or organisation – a response to your business plan’.
So, PR and comms might be important for your business to:
- Sell – generate sales, enquiries, new clients or customers
- Position – establishing your brand firmly in influential arenas
- Engage – brand is all about connection and engagement
- Influence – anything from securing a town planning decision or financial investment to objecting to proposed legislation or non-sustainable practices
- Retain – existing clients or customers – as important as bringing in new ones
- Manage – handling of change, restructuring, merger and relocation require careful communications management
- Mitigate damage crisis and issues planning and management
- Recruit – people make or break a business and attracting and retaining quality applications is key
- Promote – raise awareness of your brand and all it stands
- Include a combination of these or a host of others
Armed with your commercial objectives, a PR agency will consider:
- the audiences that we need to engage with.
- the bespoke messaging for each audience. They will all be different – an investor will need a different approach from an employee and a political stakeholder, different from a customer.
- How to reach these audiences. Through your website, SEO, through influential media, via digital marketing, at events, through partnerships and relationships, or on social media.
Then they will plan the tactics that put these all together – who you want to talk to and with, what you want to say to them, and how those conversations can be instigated. All PR activity can be evaluated to a greater or lesser extent – so the impact on your business is transparent and accountable.
Quality engagement with audiences is massively powerful. It’s key to organisations of all shapes and sizes, from entrepreneurial start-ups, to charities and PLCs – but that engagement has to be authentic and genuine.
Strategic PR consultancy helps you determine and distil exactly who you are, what your brand values are, what your brand stands for and believes in.
How does that relate to the people who are important to you?
In today’s multi-media world the lines between PR, marketing, brand strategy, web development, digital and traditional advertising have all blurred and we have found more of a focus on digital PR. The most important thing to remember is who do you want to talk with, what do you want to say to each and how can you reach them.
The PR tactical toolbox is massive
Depending on the message and the audience, it might include:
- Web development – for most organisations the website is your core piece of collateral. The enquiry generator and conversion tool. It has to be spot on with a design which reflects your brand, well messaged with logical SEO, engaging, responsive, functional and effective.
It’s likely that all other tactics are designed to feed into the website.
- Media relations
- Social media
- Influencer marketing
- Digital marketing
- Content marketing, blogs and re-purposed content
- Thought leadership
- Exhibitions and events
- Design and creative ideas
This whole toolbox has to be seen as part of a bigger picture – planned so the engagement with audiences is strategic, regular, consistent, designed well, high impact, effective – and as pain-free to deliver as possible. PR is all about delivering results through communications – and it’s important to every business.
