In many organisations, PR and marketing all too often sit as separate areas leading to inconsistency and lack of strategic direction. In short, this results in missed opportunities and inefficient and unaligned execution. The best marketing strategies are the ones that use PR as a tool to contribute to achieving a higher goal and not one that relies on it solely as a siloed function.
The best businesses are those that understand the successes that can be achieved through a cohesive marketing and PR strategy, working side-by-side and complementing one another. And it’s not only about supporting a wider marketing strategy, PR teams being a wealth of knowledge in editorial and content as well as being a fresh source of capacity to draw upon. At Build Public Relations, many of our clients lean on us to not only provide a PR strategy, but as an extension of their marketing team across content and social, video and events. From Hikoki Power Tools UK’s social execution combined with expo video production, to Perpetuum’s white paper authoring and ad copy creation, we’re a valuable partner to them, not just a supplier.
There are many obvious ways PR can support marketing, here’s just a few:
* PR can help companies to better reach and engage with their target audience -
There are many reasons for marketing your company but the #1 has, and will always be growth. And growth can come in different forms - financial, market share, territories, customer base - whatever the leading metric is for the success of your business (one company’s KPI can differ greatly from another’s metric). Whatever your objective looks like, a well-defined and executed PR strategy will help you reach and engage with your target customers, allowing your marketing to then do its job.
* PR is not only a brand tool, it’s a ‘human’ tool -
Public relations is best used to create awareness or improve the reputation of a company or brand. There are many different tools to do this (it might be creative campaigns, press and media or you might be using brand influencers), but always remember you’re speaking to human beings, as such, your message needs to come across in a natural way. This is best achieved when a brand or company is featured by a media outlet or a strong social influencer as your message will come across far more credible and honest if it’s via a 3rd party endorsement. Public Relations consultancies, like Build PR, will keep humans in mind when creating PR strategies for this very reason - people are not numbers on a spreadsheet or twitter accounts using a certain hashtag. You’re looking to capture the imaginations of your target audience and sometimes, the best way to do this is to use the support of platforms that already have done this.
* PR can take a different tack on the same objective -
PR is about making connections between brands and people. Marketing teams spend a great deal of time creating brand messages but sometimes these brand messages are better delivered through advertising campaigns then directly to humans (see our point above) as they can be too ‘salesy’ in their message or a bit blunt. Where PR really excels is in taking this brand message and developing it into a headline that has wider appeal with publications, media outlets and influencers. Creating a ‘hook’ that creates interest and is relevant to the ‘now’. Usually some supporting data that proves the point adds even more weight to the message but above all - it’s contextualised to the target audience.
* PR can give you increased resource -
Marketing teams operate under a great deal of pressure. They’re often looked to for ideas when times are tough, or asked for ideas ‘to go even further’ when times are good. Their budgets are tight and under constant scrutiny and ROI can sometimes be down to a single £ spent. Build Public Relations has huge experience in working with marketing teams and often have macro services that fall outside of ‘traditional’ PR (services like social media, video, event planning and not just press office or media relations). By keeping your PRs close, you can benefit from this experience - and capacity - to add weight to your marketing team for far more than just headlines and campaigns and really sweating your PESO content. They’re a trusted partner to confide in, to turn to when things are tough - and always good fun when celebrating the successes! If you’d like to know more about what partnering with Build PR could look like for your business, drop an email to info@buildpr.co.uk and find out.