How PR Can Boost Your Business

Jayme Broudy of Pinnacle Consulting Group used to work with business owners across many industries, helping them develop management systems to better run their businesses. The benefit she delivered was helping her clients move from “owner dependant” firms to building profitable, stand-alone businesses.

Her challenge, however, was that she lacked a clear, focused target market to guide her marketing efforts.

When Jayme Dill Broudy became a client, we challenged her to target a market niche of her best prospects, which turned out to be building contractors - from plumbers, to electricians to roofers - who had a track record of benefiting from her services.

We created a plan to establish her reputation within the contracting industry that centered on publishing articles in contractor trade magazines. We researched dozens of contractor magazines, developed article ideas based on her expertise, and approached editors and introduced Jayme as a potential expert contributor.

In less than 9 months, Jayme went from “niche anonymity” to securing seven major article placements in contractor magazines, including articles in Building Systems Magazine, Lawn Care Professional and a monthly column in Construction Business Owner Magazine.

This trade media coverage helped Jayme become a known and trusted resource to the contracting industry, secure speaking engagements at national contractor conferences, boost her web site traffic, and generate article reprints for a direct mail campaign.

The media shape the opinions of everyone that has a direct impact on your business. How many times have you learned about an important issue, a business you patronize, or a product you buy because you read about in a newspaper or magazine?

Advertisers and marketers agree that the more times someone runs across your name, the more predisposed they are to buy from you — an effect that grows when your name appears in contexts that imply you are competent.

Media Relations, or PR, is first and foremost about obtaining favorable media exposure for your business— but unlike advertising, it’s free. And though usually the result of a lot of work, it’s hard to find a more cost-effective way to reach potential customers or clients. The rewards are very real. Here are the kinds of results you can look for.

Establish Your Business in A Market Niche

PR is one of the most highly effective ways to establish your business in a market niche. Placing articles in trade, business and special interest publications is a relatively easy place to begin your PR efforts.

The key to placing articles is to package your ideas as news rather than sales pieces. It is important to avoid self-serving articles that are thinly veiled advertisements. When done correctly, published articles provide highly credible media exposure that can quickly help your business become a known and trusted entity among your best prospects.

Instant Credibility. In a competitive world with a lot of companies vying for our attention, it’s hard to know who’s the best. Media exposure provides proof of who’s real and who isn’t. Media exposure delivers tremendous credibility—it’s an independent validation of your credentials in an increasingly distracted and distrustful world.

Make Selling Easier. Because of the media's indirect indication of ability, prospects that hear about you through public relations are largely pre-sold. Moreover, reprints of articles you've written or been quoted in, and copies of audios or videos of media appearances, make excellent marketing materials that are less expensive, and more convincing, than anything you create yourself.

Establish & Maintain Your Expertise. As an expert, you undoubtedly possess special knowledge that sets you apart from others. Don’t take your knowledge for granted!

The media are hungry for outside experts to help them write their stories. The media need you inside perspective and your knowledge can be leveraged to gain targeted media exposure.

Editors of trade and business magazines are always on the lookout for experts and will happily give you from one to three pages of prime magazine space if you can address the needs of their readers.

Set Realistic Goals

Like Jayme, you too can enjoy consistent media exposure that will have a direct impact on your business. But you need to set attainable goals. Don’t make the mistake of expecting to make your first media splash in Business Week, Forbes or Fortune.

Instead, consider how your company's interests might be better served by appearances in the trade press -- in articles, not ads. What could be more reassuring to potential customers than to see your name among those of the experts?

Target media that directly influences your clients, customers and prospects. Seek media that provide an ongoing forum for your message, and with whom you can form a relationship over time.

This means adopting a long-term strategy of getting yourself seen as an indispensable part of your industry—so much so that when anyone pursues a topic related to your industry, they are doing themselves a disservice by not talking to you.

Because developing this type of media reputation takes time, businesses should not expect too much too fast, and give up on PR too soon. Like any other marketing strategy, PR is an on-going process. You have to do more than get one article in one magazine to make your name a household word in the households that count.