Every company need a good public relations strategy. Yes, even a small business. Small businesses thrive and grow not just because of new customers, but because of customer retention and loyalty.

There are many factors that can create this loyalty, from customer experience to reward schemes to simple convenience. But positive perception is the most powerful winner of trust and affinity from customers, and this will keep them coming back to you even if you aren’t cheapest or most convenient option out there.

Why is public relations important?

Developing positive perception is at the very heart of public relations. That’s why it’s so important for small businesses to invest in PR.

We understand that hiring a PR agency is an expensive undertaking, and that many businesses simply don’t have the budget to spend on something they think of as an intangible, long-term asset when there are bigger problems to solve in the immediate future.

That’s why today, we’re going to help you understand what PR does, and why it’s so critical to your company’s success. What’s more, we hope that by doing so we’ll begin to educate you on how you can take control of your company’s public image and succeed in PR without having to hire in an expensive consultancy.

Ready to be convinced? Here we go!

The Importance Of Public Relations For Your Business

1. PR Generates Better Awareness of Your Business

There’s an old saying – if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer, if you’re interested, is no. “Sound” is a human concept drawn from the interpretation of vibrations in the air by a listening organ. Effectively, “sound” is created by the audience.

What does this have to do with your business? If no one knows about your business, you don’t exist. The most basic advantage to developing a PR strategy is introducing your business to new audiences who don’t already know about you. What’s more, the higher your visibility, the more likely people are to remember your brand and begin to engage with you.

Which leads us to point two.

2. PR Can Make You Credible In The Eyes Of Consumers

We live in an age of spam emails, scam emails, fake news, pyramid schemes and more. In effect, we live in an age of cynicism. It’s tough for a new business just starting out to gain trust with people who have never seen or heard of them before.

By simply ‘putting your head above the parapet’ with basic PR, you overcome this first problem – people are now more likely to have heard of you, even if they haven’t actively engaged.

Now imagine that your business news is distributed on high authority news websites not just in your own locality, but internationally. Imagine that from this distribution, a magazine or paper decides to put out a feature on your business.

In 2017, people don’t really trust businesses themselves, but they are happy to trust people who recommend businesses. Journalists are key influencers in today’s market, and this kind of coverage can provide multiple levels of legitimacy to your fledgling enterprise.

3. PR Forces You To Think Like Your Customers

Once you begin to form a PR strategy, you have to create messaging that will be compelling enough for audiences and journalists to want to visit your site, or buy your product or service. This is an essential step in business that many start-ups and SME’s miss, which can cost them dearly in the long term.

Once you form your messaging from a place of empathy with customers, you begin to better understand how you can solve their problems. You understand what impact and affect your product is having. This can benefit not just your marketing, but the business as a whole. This shift in perspective to customer-focus is essential, and is the core of all public relations marketing strategies. But it isn’t enough on its own.

4. PR Helps You Create A Unique Image

Customers like to think that your brand has humanity, and is engaged with its community of customers. Social media is increasingly essential to maintaining this relationship in the immediate world of mobile technology, but PR is where you can begin to define this image for your business.

Having empathy with your customers is important, and shaping your messaging to their needs will give you a greater chance of increasing sales. But you also need to differentiate.

There are hundreds of businesses out there like yours, probably offering very similar products or services. Because of that, you must understand what makes your business both unique and compelling, and remind people of that story across your messaging.

If you can set out your story like this, PR can have another important benefit…

5. PR Can Help Protect Your Reputation

Your marketing campaign gets misinterpreted. Angry customers feel let down and lash out on social media. You crash and burn on a product launch. All these things can do real damage to your company’s reputation, especially if they’re widely talked about and critiqued.

PR allows you to have a hand in determining where the focus on your business lands. It allows you to better control the story and look proactive in the face of potentially damaging incidents.

What’s more, by engaging in PR long term, you’ll be developing a network of journalists and contacts who know you and your business and think positively about it, and will be inclined to give you the opportunity to smooth things over on their platform in exchange for the scoop.

Of course, the best offense is a good defense, which is why…

6. PR Allows You To Promote Brand Values

If your brand has values, and it should, they should be reflected in your messaging. PR gives you a platform to shout about what matters to your business, why it matters to your business, and what your business is doing to promote those values.

Using PR, you can get a lot of publicity for events, sponsorships, fundraising initiatives and other corporate social responsibility policies your business may get involved in. These ‘feel good’ stories create a positive image. Consumers love businesses that actively contribute to their communities. Show evidence of this, and you’ll boost sales considerably.

This further develops on point 4 of this list – evidencing the humanity of your brand and keeping the community engaged and updated.

7. PR Can Be Cost Effective

PR doesn’t HAVE to be expensive. Yes, consultancies can be, but there are other means. Using PRWire Asia in combination with PRShelf and this very blog, you can find all the resources you need to competently begin putting together a PR strategy and distributing it effectively, getting many of the benefits we’re talking about on this list.

That means you can invest in a CSR initiative mentioned above and get better PR from that investment than hiring an expensive consultancy, provided you know how to tell people about it. You’re here, so you do, and that means you could see real ROI.

8. PR Can Make You An Authority In Your Niche

Niche’s are competitive by nature, but getting media coverage of your CEO talking confidently about that niche can put you on another level entirely. By providing expert insight and being seen as a trusted source by media outlets, your business benefits from a huge boost in perceived authority. This authority breeds trust, which in turn increases sales.

This also opens up a new avenue of commentary in PR – sending out press releases based on briefings, resources or seminars created by our experts can establish your business as having the right people to call upon to discuss media events that may not even include your business.

9. All These Things Help Generate Leads

In case it wasn’t clear by now, all of the above results in more leads being generated for your business. People tend to look at PR as if it’s a nebulous, wishy-washy discipline that talks about ‘feelings’.

That’s because customers are motivated, more than anything else, by those feelings, and taking them into consideration like this can result in concrete financial results. Increased exposure, credibility and authority, enhanced reputation, engagement with the community, and a megaphone for your messaging and values, all from one form of communication? It’s true.

10. PR Is Great Investor Bait

If you’re looking to sell your business or attract investment to help you grow it more effectively, then PR is one of the primary ways you can go about this. Investors check the business news, so being in the business news is a great way for them to discover you.

If Investors see a dynamic company replete with experts in their field, with a great reputation and great values, they will see the company as an opportunity. What’s more, if you follow our PR best practices and support the claims you make in your press releases, investors will know you aren’t blowing smoke, and will be able to calculate your potential.

Examples Of Great PR Benefiting Businesses

Back in 2015, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s independence with a series of events marked “SG50”. This was a great time for celebration, but it was also a huge opportunity for businesses to tie in with current events and get a PR boost.

One of the most charming of these was Lego’s playful event for kids. At the event children re-imagined Singapore as it would be in 2065, to celebrate Lego’s “SG100: Rebuild”. The idea came from LSI-TEC’s world-leading PR stunt coordinator Johnny Ho.

Adults created a Singapore megacity using Lego, then children (who will inherit Singapore as adults in the year 2065) were let loose to ‘redefine’ the city the adults had created.

This stunt goes deep: it explores themes of imagination and creativity, but also of inter-generational responsibility. It also played to Lego’s unique strengths not just to feed imagination, but allow people to dynamically re-create and iterate.

The event was covered all over the world and is considered one of the top marketing and PR stunts of the year.

Lego is already a huge business and Johnny Ho is a huge name in PR, but the kernel of the idea is one that anyone could have come up with.

Tiger Beer decided to host a party where people could vote on what would be included, and transformed their packaging to patriotic red and white colours for a limited edition run. Throughout, they used this opportunity to position their beer, with its proud Singaporean heritage, as the “local beer” of choice.

All you have to do to act like the big businesses is to think like the big businesses. Think about what events are coming up and how you can tie into them, in a way that engages with your community and promotes the unique advantages of your product.

PR Can Drive Your Company In The Right Direction

By now, I hope you can see how having a strong approach to public relations can really benefit your company, without it having to pull valuable resources away from other areas of your business.

PR is about more than just shouting loudly to attract attention. It’s about a governing perspective that informs how you and your audience views your business, and the many benefits that can bring when it comes to growing your business for the future.

What’s more, it’s really easy to do. You can use PRWire Asia’s national and international newswires to get your press release distributed to more than 300 different high authority news sites, which makes it as simple as possible to maximize your exposure.

This blog is full of resources to help you nail the press release itself, and your overall PR strategy, so feel free to peruse our other articles to help you nail your first or hundredth release.