4 reasons why PR should be in your marketing plan
Jul 26, 2017As a small business owner, you know you need to be smart with your budget to maximise your return so you can grow your business as well as pay yourself. Nice thought isn’t it!
That’s why PR, or public relations, should be part of your business’ marketing strategy as it’s got a 100% ROI if you do it yourself.
It’s not hard to do it yourself once you know what to do.
Here are the four main benefits of PR.
1. It’s free marketing
Free. Free! Did anyone say free?
Yep we all love free!
If you win a customer through PR at $0 spend, then your profit margin is the maximum it can be!
When the media publish an article about you, or one that mentions you, it’s another way of your message reaching your target market.
You can use PR to achieve your goals such as:
- Creating brand awareness
- Educating the market about a new concept
- Building momentum towards a product launch
- Attracting sales
- Gaining political support
You’ve probably heard the term “any publicity is good publicity”. That’s because getting your name in the press is one of the fastest ways to grow brand awareness.
However, you don’t want to be known for the wrong things, and there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about getting your publicity.
Let’s just say, it’s better keep your brand reputation squeaky clean.
2. It builds trust in your business/brand
If you can get a third party to publish a story about you, it is almost as good as word of mouth recommendations from existing customer in terms of building trust with your target market.
People tend to trust the opinions of others, and credible journalists have the status of being an objective authority on their specialist area so their opinion has huge value.
3. It delivers traffic and leads
The reach of news sites is enormous. They have large numbers of people browsing their site every day so you get exposure to a large audience.
An article about your business delivers organic traffic to your website which is great for your SEO results.
Your inbound leads will also increase (as long as your website lives up to expectations, I’ll cover that in a separate post).
These new leads hold more value than ones gained through your own marketing campaigns because it doesn’t cost you anything to get them to your website and they are already interested in what you have to offer.
Which means that your sales conversions are also higher. Happy days!
4. It generates more PR opportunities
Once you have your name in the press, other media publications and journalists become aware of your story. They either republish it for their own audiences, or even come to you for involvement in related articles they are writing.
The value of the PR is directly linked to the reputation and reach of the publication that writes about you. The bigger they are, with a trusted following, the higher value their story has in terms of transferring that trust and awareness to your brand.
Need any more convincing that PR would be good for your business?
I didn’t think so!
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