You can easily spend a lot of money on your public relations. You can also waste a lot of money trying to get noticed by an increasingly busy world. But with a bit of planning and effort on your behalf you’ll not only spend less but you’ll get a lot more for it. Here are some tips that will help you do this:
1. Work to a Plan
First, identify what you want to achieve with your public relations. Write down your list of goals. Then come up with a way of achieving each goal using communications techniques and not just spending bags of money. Combine these into a plan and work to it. You’ll also need a budget and a calendar of events for at least the next six months.
2. Know Who You Want to Talk To
Define your target audience. Is it all members of a particular industry, or perhaps housewives within a short drive of your premises? Who are they? Where are they? What are they interested in? You have to know who you’re talking to before you can begin preparing publicity pieces that will appeal to them and that will appeal to editors of publications that they read.
3. Create a Consistent Theme
Is your aim just to tell people you’re there or would you really rather communicate your community activities or something about the quality of the ingredients you use? Decide on a theme that’s relevant to your business and use it in every PR piece you produce. Over time it builds up an image in people’s minds and you become associated with something positive.
4. Tell Your Story to Others in Your Industry
Every industry has its “experts”. They’re the ones the media contact for comment when a related story breaks. They’re also the ones that consult to members of an industry when they are looking to expand their businesses. Be sure your story gets to them by sending them what you send to the media.
5. Know how Your Audience Gets its Information
There are literally thousands of magazines, newspapers, television channels and radio stations. And that’s not even including the Internet with all its communications possibilities. But most of these won’t be relevant to your audience and therefore won’t do you any good even if they do carry your message. Just as you target your audience, you also have to target the media you approach.
6. Get Personal with the Media
Don’t think you can do everything from a distance. Use the telephone to contact the key people in each of your selected media companies. It might be a reporter that specializes in covering your field of business, or it could be the editor of the daily newspaper in your area. It’s worth the effort to get their names and introduce yourself, then ask them what sort of information they like to receive and the format they prefer. Try to customize what you send to each outlet.
7. Line Up Your Referrals
Talk with your customers and ask them if they’d be willing to give you a reference that can be used with other firms or the media. Referrals are a strong business-builder and can convince prospective customers that you’ll treat them well if they buy from you.
8. Present Yourself in the Best Possible Way
When somebody asks you to tell them about your business what do you say? It’s not easy to simply tell someone what you do and how you do it. Have a well-designed presentation piece ready for such times that will communicate all there is to know about your business and give them a really positive impression. Be sure it looks good and reads well, and don’t forget to include your referrals.
Good public relations is largely the product of planning and lots of groundwork. The option is to spend a fortune on advertising, and research has shown that PR gets you a lot more value than advertising for the expenditure if you can get your story to appear.
These eight things are only a partial list of what you can do but if you just do these you’ll have an effective and economical PR program underway.
Copyright 2005, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.