Increasing sales and generating interest from investors is the definition of business success. Most entrepreneurs and business owners spend every second of every day trying to achieve these specific business goals, yet many overlook a critical way to do it.
When approached correctly, public relations (PR) can help startups and other businesses attract funding, garner new customers, spur sales growth and scale up. However, since media relations is a less direct method of growing an enterprise than other marketing strategies like advertising, it can frequently be misunderstood.
Here’s how to leverage the earned media coverage that PR creates for investor relations and to drive sales.
The role of PR and media relations in sales growth
PR campaigns are a less direct method of communicating with target audiences, whether potential customers or investors. But that doesn’t mean they’re less effective.
With advertising and marketing, teams carefully craft messages and images that align with your brand and pay outlets — digital publications, radio spots, billboards or television commercials — to carry them, but this approach is expensive. According to corporate video production company Vidico, a 30-second ad on local TV can cost between $10,000 and $50,000 or more; national TV can cost over $100,000.
Meanwhile, consumers have become increasingly dismissive of ads. According to the latest survey results from YouGov, 53 percent of Americans say ads are a waste of time, and 52 percent say they don’t trust them.
Conversely, effective PR doesn’t pay outlets to carry the message. Instead, it finds ways to make editors, journalists and other key members of the media want to talk about the business for free. This approach also means the target audience encounters the brand in the context of a news article, rather than an ad they will navigate away from as soon as possible. In the industry, this is called obtaining “earned media.”
How PR leverages current events
Getting earned media often means finding ways to connect the business to events currently taking place in the news. It can also mean giving the business leader opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership in their industry or related subjects, leading to visibility in trade and specialty publications. For instance, many business publications love to get established entrepreneurs’ advice about how to unleash business growth.
Toward this end, PR professionals reach out to their contacts in the media and explain why their clients have something valuable to offer readers, listeners or viewers, given the state of current public discourses or niche communities. To be successful, these efforts must be extremely time sensitive and personalized to particular editors or writers. The mark of great PR people is their ability to help clients find pathways to earned media, regardless of trending news cycles.
The best PR helps build brand awareness and relationships with target audiences
Business leaders must surrender a degree of control to implement effective PR strategies since they don’t decide whether they have something valuable to say — reporters and editors do. The brand’s spokesperson cannot afford to parrot the marketing team’s messages because editors and journalists will dismiss this as self-promotion. They don’t like ads any more than anyone else, and it’s not their job to let you run ads for free.
The trick is finding ways to offer the outlet’s audience value. A great spokesperson embraces the audience-centered nature of PR and enthusiastically offers their time and expertise to benefit the public or other members of their industry.
The decision to relinquish control and move away from curated marketing messages can be the hardest part for high-powered entrepreneurs, who are accustomed to directing every aspect of their companies, to understand. However, only by accepting these realities can the value of PR be unleashed. And that value is substantial.
PR and sales: PR campaigns influence purchase decisions and increase sales
Research shows that PR can influence sales and benefit companies more than direct-control strategies like advertising and marketing. One study from Nielsen found that when company spokespeople offered their expert analysis through PR, audience members were 88 percent more likely to feel familiar with the business than its own branded marketing materials.
Similarly, according to a classic meta-analysis in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, PR outperformed ads, especially when the audience lacked prior knowledge about the company. Researchers found that people who encountered the business through PR rather than advertising were more likely to form a positive impression of the company’s credibility.
The reason for these findings is rooted in human nature. When someone says they’re the best, most people will doubt them until presented with evidence. When a trusted third party says someone else has something valuable to offer and they behave in an ethical way that focuses on your own best interests, most people will tend to let their guard down. This is how successful PR builds trust while simultaneously helping to boost brand visibility.
Similarly, when a prospective investor sees a business’s leadership demonstrating their knowledge and expertise to help others, they develop a positive notion of that person’s competence and integrity. In this way, incorporating PR activities can build relationships, cultivate public trust and yield valuable opportunities to grow your business.
PR success builds credibility and brand awareness
PR helps create and maintain a positive reputation for a company that encourages people to think highly of it. This helps foster that ever-important connection between the brand and the target audience that has such a large impact on sales.
While this method might be indirect, it influences customers to lean in the company’s direction when it comes time to buy, helping businesses steer people into their sales funnels and meet their sales goals. In this way, PR supports sales teams and drives business growth.
Moreover, strategic PR also creates the sense of solidity, competence and trustworthiness that investors require. Using PR increases credibility and trust, which impacts sales, propels business development and spurs brand growth.
For these reasons, businesses of all kinds — especially those that need to build brand awareness or attract funding — should not neglect the power of PR.
