During my career in PR and communications, I have experienced working with a whole range of businesses at different stages of their development, each with their own unique goals and levels of communications experience. One trend that I have noticed, whether companies are big or small, unique and innovative or tried and tested, is that PR usually tends to be employed too late.
PR is the afterthought in the marketing mix, treated as a means of amplifying success or responding to failure. I believe that it suffers in comparison to its cousins, marketing, advertising and sales, because the value of its results is so hard to define. It’s very difficult to prove that a well-placed article has directly caused a spike in sales, or that as a result ‘reputation’, ‘brand recognition’ and countless other immeasurable properties have improved.
It’s because of this that PR often ends up coming after the fact – working in the industry, the most common requests you hear from prospective clients seem to be either “we’ve won an award/had record sales, can you help us promote that?” or “our new product hasn’t sold as much as we expected/our customers are angry with us, can you do some PR to make it better?”.
That’s not to say that PR can’t help in these situations – when done well, it can help present you as a credible and informed brand. To deliver a really successful communications campaign though, takes work. You may have been briefed on the current situation, but if you don’t know how the company has got to where it is, then you won’t be fully prepared to answer questions, and those are the sort of doubts that journalists will pick up on.
This is why a good PR professional frequently acts as the facilitator of communication, rather than the communicator. We know how to take our clients’ messages and shape them into something more concrete, we can identify the best spaces in the media to reach a targeted audience, and we can advise on how to set the agenda for maximum gain from an interview, editorial or opinion piece. But the strongest way to ensure that your audience identifies with your brand will be if you deliver your message in your own terms. Nobody knows what you want to achieve better than you.
By focusing our attention on how good communication and good PR can help reactively, we tend to neglect them as proactive marketing tools. New businesses often miss a terrific opportunity to make a big impression while their idea is still something fresh and exciting, simply by virtue of not being prepared. PR is all about telling stories, and there are few more compelling than the inspiration, graft and dedication that comes with creating a new business.
It doesn’t have to consume all of your time – by getting into a few good habits, you can ensure that you leverage the best possible result from any opportunity that comes your way. Identify a spokesperson – a senior staff member who knows the business inside out, is passionate about their work and can communicate that passion. They don’t need to have sales or marketing experience, but they do need to be the kind of person who loves to tell others about their job. Enthusiasm goes a long way towards defining an exciting narrative.
There are two main ways that you can look to become a part of the conversation around your industry. The first is to keep close tabs on the news agenda. What are the really important issues facing your business, and others like it, right now? What insight do you have on these issues that others don’t? Can you bring an interesting perspective, or a way of reframing the debate?
The second approach requires more investment of your time, but can pay big dividends. Conducting (or commissioning) your own research into a relevant field, and presenting your findings, will help your business to drive the conversation. In last month’s article, we looked at how market research can help you to make decisions and build your business, but it’s also a great tool for telling a story about human nature and what factors are creating a need for your product.
One Research are a communications company that specialises in recruiting patients to participate in clinical research. Last year, the support team at the Sussex Innovation Centre carried out an extensive research project on their behalf, interviewing a number of highly respected professionals involved in patient recruitment.
The findings were published in a white paper, Improving Standards of Patient Recruitment and Retention in Clinical Trials, which was made available on the company’s website and given to industry-leading publication Pharma Times as an exclusive story. As well as giving One Research a reputational boost, this approach has been instrumental in helping to start conversations with potential partners and clients.
“By commissioning the white paper, we’ve managed to establish our credibility with several key figures in the industry,” says Alistair Crombie, MD of One Research. “Not only does it give you a reason to call and have a chat with these potential stakeholders to share your vision, demonstrating that you have invested in a quite rigorous piece of research helps to position you as a voice of authority, and creates further opportunities to share your message through other people’s publications. It builds more of an ongoing conversation, rather than a short burst of promotional activity; three months after the paper was published it’s still helping to open up new doors for us.”
Keep hold of your collateral, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. Photographs, video and infographic media lend your narrative a visual element that makes it more engaging and understandable for an audience. Whatever subject or angle crops up when you speak to the press, you want to be able to say “I have something you can use to show your readers what I mean.”
Last but not least, make the most of every available opportunity to network. The best media representation comes from building real relationships and trust with journalists. Making a first-time approach only when you have a story to promote shows a lack of respect for what their work involves. Put yourself in the position of receiving what are effectively sales calls all day long, and it’s easy to see why some journalists will switch off when it feels like they’re being used.
Instead, try interacting with them as you would a potential client. Read their articles and comment. Get to know what they want to write about. Follow them on Twitter and join in the conversation when you feel that you can provide value. Ask them what they’re working on and whether you can help. Over time, they’ll get to know you and your expertise – they might even come to you for comment. What’s for sure is that they will be far more receptive to your call when you’re looking for something from them.
Joseph Bradfield is a communications specialist at the Sussex Innovation Centre, an incubator for high-growth businesses based at the University of Sussex, where he works with growing businesses to help share their innovative ideas with the world. He writes a monthly column for entrepreneurs and start-up companies, drawing on the experience of the Centre’s dedicated business support team to provide step-by-step advice and insight, helping readers to navigate some of the challenges involved in launching a new enterprise.