Public relations (PR) campaigns take time and effort to plan and roll out effectively. You need to know what to expect from a PR campaign and how it will help your business before investing time and a valuable part of your marketing budget.
PR campaigns are not for every project, but they are often a great addition to your marketing efforts. In the article, we will dive deep into the benefits you can expect from a well-structured PR campaign.
The top benefits of running a pr campaign include building brand awareness, getting better ROI on marketing spend, attracting talent, keeping the investors happy, increasing sales, better search engine rankings, and many more, as you’ll discover by reading further.
We will now explore the thirteen benefits of a PR campaign. We will focus on the benefits and reasons for these benefits. Keep reading to understand these benefits better.
The differences, advantages, and disadvantages compared to other marketing strategies will also be highlighted. PR campaigns can not be analyzed in a vacuum but should be compared to your other marketing options. PR campaigns are competing with other marketing efforts for both time and budget, and comparing all your options is essential.
1. Building Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is often a neglected part of marketing as we are continually looking for instant results. Many businesses track clicks and sales and just focus their marketing on improving these. In practice, it means direct marketing campaigns that result in quick sales are prioritized.
Long-term brand-building strategies might not result in sales today but will increase brand awareness in the medium to long term. A great public relations strategy will be perfect for increasing brand awareness. Forbes rightly states that “To Convert More Customers, (you need to) Focus On Brand Awareness.”
Not just optimizing for short-term gains but also keeping long-term brand awareness in mind will give you the edge in an age where a lot of companies focus on short-term goals. The truth is that doing what everybody else is doing places you in a very competitive environment. Doing things differently and making sure your business is set up for the long haul is a great marketing strategy.
2. Better ROI on Marketing Spend
Long-term ROI from PR campaigns is a lot higher than other marketing campaigns. The result is clear when you understand that PR campaigns cost less than paid advertising campaigns and keep working for many years. Need to know more about tracking the ROI of a press release? According to this experienced press release company, it is far more common to encounter promises than actual measurable outcomes when talking to different marketers. The truth should be the exact opposite: you need numbers and trackable data.
3. Attracting Talent
Businesses that are recognized in their industries find it easier to attract top-tier talent. More candidates will apply if they recognize and trust the company name. Top candidates will also do their research before applying, and your PR efforts often are what pops up in the searches they conduct.
In a connected world where people can work remotely, it is even more important to have good PR campaigns. Remote workers can pick and choose from job opportunities from practically anywhere in the world. Having a potential candidate recognize your brand and trust your brand will put your business one step ahead in a race to recruit great talent.
A business struggling to attract the best candidates when they need a position filled will be hard-pressed to compete in the marketplace. Don’t leave your candidate list up to chance, but rather start now with a campaign to boost your company’s public image in the news and media.
4. Keeping Investors Happy
Happy investors are good for business. Thanks to PR campaigns, both current and potential future investors will appreciate your efforts if they see the business mentioned across different platforms.
One of the first things potential investors will do is search for your business name online. Online media coverage is what they will see. Positive articles in online media that you have gained through targeted PR campaigns are key in obtaining new investment.
Think back to a time when you had coffee with a friend, and they told you about a great business and or investment opportunity. What was the first thing you did when you left that conversation? My guess is you Googled the name of the company. The same is happening all over the world. Don’t leave what they will see up to chance. Control the conversation through running PR campaigns.
5. Increasing Sales
Even though short-term direct marketing efforts will result in sales, your long-term brand loyalty depends on, among other things, your public relations. Great PR campaigns will help build a lasting brand that will give you more sales in the long term.
Having a brand that includes your company name and logo that is recognized easily in your industry is worth gold. In industries with online sales or that generate leads online, we see that recognized brands will get more inquiries or sales because people don’t trust brands and companies they don’t know.
The days of walking into a store and talking to the owner to see if he is trustworthy are unfortunately almost gone. People are now forced to do their research online to try and determine if a company is trustworthy before they spend their hard-earned money with that company. What the media says (or lack thereof) will influence the perception of the public.
Whether you are looking for a customer to buy something online or provide you with contact details: you need them to trust you. People are worried when inputting the credit card details online as well as providing their personal contact information like addresses. Public relations campaigns will help you build a positive image in the media. When people deal with your company, they would be more likely to part with sensitive or personal information.
6. Long-Lasting Exposure
PR campaigns will give you long-lasting exposure. Compare the PR results with running paid ads, and the benefit is clear. Paid ads, as an example, will stop performing the moment you stop paying. A PR campaign that you run for one week can give you benefits for many years as people search for related information online.
Marketing campaigns that focus solely on driving short-term sales can often come across as pushy, and some potential customers would see it as a negative. Focusing on long-term exposure and getting your brand and what you do in front of customers over and over as they browse other media sources strengthens the positive image of your brand.
7. Better Search Engine Rankings
Even in 2021, Google still heavily depends on backlinks to decide how to rank a website. Quality backlinks relevant to your industry will help with your SEO efforts. Running a good PR campaign should result in your business name and website being mentioned on credible websites in your industry and or area.
Many SEO experts will focus on improving your website to get better search engine rankings. On-site SEO is a valid approach, but combining technical SEO with a PR campaign will have much better results. When other credible sites, including news and media sites, are mentioning your business positively, the search engines will pick up the buzz. Combine the positive social signals with improvements to your website, and you will see the benefits without a doubt.
In short, SEO and PR campaigns are a match made in heaven.
8. Raising Issues in Your Community
Your business is making a difference in the world. You are helping people, supporting a community, providing solutions and employment. You are part of a society based on a shared passion or location. Now the question is, do people (outside of your company) know? Tell them with a PR campaign.
There are many benefits that a company has for clients, the location it is based, employees, and the community. There are many potential stories about your company, employees, product, or service that the public doesn’t know about. Don’t just rely on word of mouth, but make sure that people get to hear about the incredible work your company does.
Don’t forget about the work your company does as part of social responsibility projects. Not only are these projects great to show that your company is a responsible member of the community, but often the projects need to be talked about in the broader community.
An example could be a project where your business is helping a local school with stationary. It is great that you are helping, but a PR campaign can also raise awareness that the local school is experiencing difficulties, and more companies may decide to get involved. Make sure the public focuses on important issues by combining PR campaigns with social responsibility projects.
9. Building Trust
Reader’s Digest lists the top trusted brands in 2020 in the US. Trusted brands are also well-known brands. If one needs a multivitamin, and Centrum comes to mind. Looking for a dependable passenger car and Toyota is the brand most people trust. These are just examples where PR and brand building over many years have translated to trust.
Trust is something that builds up over time. Having your brand name or product name be seen more often by potential customers will slowly build brand trust and recognition over time. Your campaign is one of the best ways to start building trust.
10. Finding Partners
Often being featured in the media will result in other companies and potential partners contacting you. Other businesses and potential partners might be unaware of what you are doing. What is featured on websites where they could potentially discover you will get them to notice your business and what you are doing.
Aligning yourself with other companies with similar goals and target markets will open up ways for you to contact new customers and access other companies’ user bases. Multiple companies working together towards the same goal will be much more efficient than a single company trying to gain traction in a specific market.
11. Building a Positive Public Image of Your Business
Public relations campaigns are set up to improve the public image of your business. Without any PR campaigns, you are leaving your business’s image to the media and individuals that might not know the full story. By running PR campaigns, you will take control of your business image in the media. Having a positive media image for your company is key to building trust with potential clients.
12. Driving Traffic to Your Website
Even ignoring the SEO benefit already mentioned, you’ll get more traffic on your website. When people come across articles in online media, they can follow links in the article, taking them to your website.
Traffic from these links on other websites like online media websites is referred to as referral traffic. A PR campaign will give you a boost in referral traffic even months or years after the article was published. Gaining a similar boost in traffic through paid advertising will be a lot more expensive than gaining that same boost through a public relations campaign.
13. Combating Negative Press
Hopefully, this is one benefit your business won’t need, but there are times you need to combat negative press. There are various reasons why a business might attract bad press, and sometimes it could even be unwarranted and one-sided.
In cases where a business attracted negative press, a PR campaign is a great way to respond. The old saying that any press is good press is not always true. When potential clients or investors perform an online search for your business name or product name, you don’t want the only articles to appear in the results to be negative press.
By running a positive PR campaign, you can move these negative articles down the search results list and make sure that the first impression that a client or investor gets is a positive impression of your business.
In conclusion, there are many benefits to running PR campaigns. Making sure the public hears about your company will have long-term benefits that far outweigh the initial costs. Also, a PR campaign should be seen as part of your overall marketing strategy and not be viewed in isolation.
