You’ve reached a point in your business journey where you’d like to raise brand awareness, and promote your business successes and think that PR might be the best way to help you achieve this. But the prospect of committing to an ongoing PR programme might make you shudder at the thought of the time and energy you need to put into it. To help assure your journey into PR is a treat rather than a trick, here’s our checklist to ensure you reap the benefits of your PR investment:
- Witch or Wizard? Before you embark on any PR campaign, it’s important to understand who your target audience is, the message you want to get across and the best platform upon which to reach them e.g. certain target publications or via social media. Maybe it’s both!
- Ghoulish ghost stories: Gaining exposure in your target media can be hard so it’s important to understand the types of story that are likely to spark the journalist’s interest. Focus on your industry knowledge and the things your target audience can learn from you.
- Keep stirring the cauldron: Marketing teams will understand the benefits of PR however the rest of your organisation may not be as clued up. Lots of PR content such as blogs and articles will need to be bylined to your key spokespeople, and ensuring they are committed and educated about PR and how they can get involved can be essential to generating compelling content and achieving media headlines.
- Knowing your vampires from your werewolves: Your organisation may have a range of potential spokespeople throughout the business, and you need to select those who are media friendly. Willing volunteers need to make themselves available and act as ambassadors for your business.
- Most haunted: You don’t need Yvette Fielding to track down your perfect PR agency, you just need to create a brief that explains your business objectives and how PR can support it. Then do your research – are you looking for B2B or B2C consultancy? Are you looking for a specialist agency that has experience in your particular sector? Whatever, your requirements, you’re sure to find an agency that fits the bill.
As a B2B PR agency we understand that when it comes to investing valuable time and money into external comms can be daunting but it doesn’t need to be as spooky as you might think.
Kat Wilding is a regular contributor to the Skout blog
