Do you know why public relations are important in a company? Overall, a PR strategy, when they are executed correctly, they can help build a positive reputation for your brand while reaching your target audience with your key messages. Particularly in new products or services, PR activities are intended to educate the market about the reasons to care about your brand, visit your website or, ultimately, buy your products or services.
Today, public relations are a necessary strategy in any company to succeed.
Five reasons why PR is necessary in organizations:
1. They highlight the value proposition and brand visibility
Some of the benefits of public relations, is that they boost the image of a company, positively influence the perception of audiences and their connection with consumers to create an emotional bond between the company and its clients. A good brand perception is developed based on a combination of corporate social responsibility and excellent customer service, maintaining consistency and continuity in the brands messages of its value proposition.
Your brand must be able to generate a conversation with customers. Not only should the logo or company name be recognizable, but it should also stand out for something else. When comparing Apple smartphones against any other, what is your opinion about these? One has a sophisticated design and a unique operating system; while the others do not focus as much on their design, but they are functional and affordable. Although either option offers the same utility, each one has its differentiators.
2. They create opportunities and strategic alliances
To keep a business growing, efforts must be redoubled, and resources must be used. Associating is a great step for entrepreneurs and is achieved through making and maintaining contact with media, journalists, influencers in your niche, bloggers, etc. Contacts turn into opportunities in the blink of an eye, and they can’t always come from a familiar face.
Having company representatives at in-person or virtual networking events is where partnerships happen too. Partnerships evolve in many ways, but they almost always end up being beneficial to both parties involved.
“Every alliance must be linked to a specific collaboration plan that clarifies any doubts.”
The opportunities also come from the creation and optimization of content, three simple ways to attract media for collaborations, can be: optimizing the public relations content strategy, keep existing content updated and paying special attention to the quality of the content.
By correctly directing your public relations plan, having trending content to keep the brand at the forefront and creating content that argues, supports, and encourages education in the organization’s business, it will provide domain authority to your organization, therefore, you will be able to ensure the prompt emergence of some strategic alliance of interest.
3. Boost reputation and digital identity
Nowadays, when we want more information on a topic, we usually find it through the Internet. If we want a recipe for the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner or the type of wine to pair with a barbecue, it will take a few seconds for various recipes from multiple websites to appear. All this information is at our fingertips with a simple click, but what good is it…if it’s not organized, reliable and not up to date.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the secret behind successful websites. If a brand wants to position itself online, the owners expect their content to appear at the top of SERPs. Another benefit and one of the most effective but apparently hidden tactics of public relations is to ensure that your company’s content is optimized and appears on your information search, with the intention of helping boost brand discovery at the different touchpoints with your current and potential customers.
4. They adapt efforts with traditional and digital media
Although the Internet has revolutionized the way information is shared, traditional public relations methods are still in use and delivering positive results for brands. By integrating the best practices of the traditional and the digital, we obtain what we call: Optimized PR, that is, a modern connection that, through the entire PESO model (owned, earned, shared and paid media), promotes multi-platform content to be found at different touchpoints, by different generations of current and potential customers, in order to discover the brand and generate two-way conversations.
Achieving coverage through an article in a print or online newspaper will still provide visibility and may even reach a targeted audience that relies on media for information.
An effective public relations plan, mixes traditional methods with current and digital trends. Optimized PR creates useful and valuable cross-platform content, and exponentially increases the chances of your brand being “discovered” by your target customers.
5. They take advantage of social networks and online channels
Social media has been around for over a decade, and it’s expanding and changing rapidly. Users can easily follow or search for a company’s social media profile to instantly see its updates and promotions, plus it serves as a two-way conversation, a big part of public relations.
Social networks can be a company’s best friend or its worst enemy. If your company uses social networks, you must do it with full responsibility and dedication. Inactive pages or pages with few updates do not envision a positive image, nor do they create a healthy conversation. Having fresh, interactive content creates buzz marketing that keeps consumers engaged and drives engagement.
Digital PR appears here with content generation and comment monitoring, staying focused on customers, highlighting the benefits of the brand, and creating conversations about it through organic micro-influencers.
So, as we can see public relations involves a bit of everything, it goes beyond just contacting journalists and editors to obtain media coverage. Public relations are about building brand reputation through owned, earned, shared, paid media, marketing, and social listening.
“Audiences want a reason to admire or support a company these days”.
Today’s feeds on instant gratification and technological advances must be used effectively to create a product, or image, that resonates with target audiences. With so many options or substitutes available in the market, making your company stand out is going to make all the difference in standing out from the crowd.
Another important thing to consider: PR must be used in conjunction with other marketing tactics to help your brand be truly successful. Through the PESO model, the value of public relations and its implementation can be an important part of a company’s comprehensive communication strategy, providing multiple benefits for the brand such as: potential channels to drive traffic to your website, acquire new customers, maintain loyalty and increase value and awareness of the brand in the market.