Public relations is an important part of any company’s integrated marketing plan. A good PR department cultivates and maintains the public image of your company, and a good reputation is essential in a competitive marketplace. For ongoing success in growing your business, your company has to use PR to build credibility and reliability with consumers.
The main goal of public relations is to make consumers aware of your company and to view your brand as trustworthy. If the public has a good opinion of your company, people are more willing to buy your products or services. The PR team’s job is to monitor and manage a company’s public image using a variety of communication strategies. These strategies connect prospects and customers with your company or brand and help to build relationships.
The PR department mainly works with the marketing department in order to achieve the best results from communication efforts. By creating different types of content such as case studies, white papers, blog posts, articles, and videos, the marketing department provides useful information that the PR team can promote to the target audience.
While the marketing team’s advertising efforts are explicit, your public relations team uses more implicit methods to market a company. They work with the media, organize public events, and devise ways to put your brand in the public spotlight. Using social media platforms is another way to promote content. With tweets, posts on Facebook or graphics on Pinterest, a company’s content captures the attention of consumers while keeping them engaged. Using news releases to promote content and/or make announcements is also effective in getting media and industry attention.
Social media has additional advantages as well. These platforms allow prospects and customers to offer their opinions and feedback on a company. These comments, tweets, and reviews keep the PR team informed about what the public thinks about your company. This leads to another important aspect of public relation work: reputation management. Your public relations team should monitor and respond to these online comments and resolve any issues publicly. This transparency also helps to improve a company’s image.
A public relations team focuses on helping your company to maintain a good public image with consumers. The only way to have repeat buyers is by nurturing long-term relationships with customers. By communicating with your target market through various channels such as blogs, website copy, news stories, and videos, you company stays fresh in the minds of consumers. However, you also want people to remember your company in a positive way, and this is why maintaining a good public image is so important in business.
Public relations tactics cannot work in isolation. As part of your integrated marketing strategy, PR works with all other components of promotion including email, search engine optimization, contests, surveys, and advertising. For more information on devising an effective integrated marketing plan or boosting your public relations efforts, contact us today.
