PR (Public Relations) is one segment of marketing, the difference is the end goal.
‘Marketing’ aims to sell a product or service, whereas PR aims to build a beneficial relationship with key audiences and target markets. PR works well with a great website, great design, great branding, video, and inbound lead generation programs.
Public Relations covers a field of strategies and tactics that share a common aim to communicate positive message about your company or yourself with the aim of telling a story and influencing the behaviours of customers, shareholders, prospect customers and others.
What is PR?
According to the Public Relations Institute of Australia,“PR is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”
PR can be between the following audiences:
- A business and a target audience (most common)
- An individual and people they want to influence (personal branding – raising a public or professional profile)
- A Government and its people
- An organisation and its employees (Internal Communications)
The idea behind PR is to build a relationship with your target audience by communicating your key messages, idea, product, position or accomplishments and building your credibility, and reputation.
Chief among PR tactics is to generate media coverage, which appears as independent comment from a publications editors or journalist. The coverage is read as factual news, with a level of credibility that paid advertising does not carry.
In what situation would you need to engage in a public relations initiative?
- People and companies that want to grow their personal or company brand
- People who want to grow their company to sell and create a buzz with the public and key acquirers
- To announce and create a buzz and awareness around a company, product launch or a personal achievement
- To ensure a brand is at the top of their market in communicating with the public, the media, other companies – it builds a huge amount of trust
- People who want more exposure to assist in their reputability and overall success of their brand
- Ensure that moving into a new market is known
- Looking to boost a career, public awareness of your brand
- If you need to influence a person to make a decision via public opinion and share of voice
- You need to re-brand – a company who’s brand is dated and needs re-inventing
The methods a PR professional uses:
- Communications strategies to build on all of the below. A communications strategy defines key messages, market research on the brand, a PR plan for 6-12 months, PR angles, Media publication targets, competitor analysis
- Writing and distributing press releases and/or pitches
- Building relationships with journalists
- Obtaining print and online coverage, product reviews or social mentions
- Social media and brand guidelines e.g. response to negative feedback in a public forum
- Brand Partnerships
- Personal Branding – via PR, speaking engagements, strategic plans, social media, pushing you out to events, personal networking, appearances and sponsorship
- Speaking engagements and speech writing
- Crisis communications e.g. company goes into administration
- Blogs
- Sponsorship
- Newsletters
- Influencer Engagement Programs
- Events – fundraising, networking or product launches, for target audience, influencers or media
- Finding events to go to e.g. personal networking, appearances and sponsoring events.
Public Relations is a core specialty of the Taurus team. With our extensive experience and strong relationship with the media, we are dedicated to delivering smart communications strategies which generate momentum and initiative behind our clients.
Find out more at [email protected] or 02 94154 528