The importance of professional public relations in building a successful brand
Creating, building and maintaining a brand is vital for any successful business or organisation. It is important that existing customers are constantly reminded of the brand - including its products, services and the values it represents - to ensure they continue to interact and spend their money with the company. The brand also needs to retain a high public profile to attract potential new customers and help the company to grow.
This is where a professional public relations expert can be of huge value. They have the knowledge and ability to keep a brand firmly in the spotlight. Good brands also have a good back story and a PR consultant can help a company obtain media coverage and use communications as great ways to share the back story so people can connect with it.
Companies can choose to use a public relations consultant on an ad-hoc basis. However, an effective way to build a brand’s public profile is to use the services of a PR expert on a retainer basis. This might involve the consultant spending a certain number of days each month working on behalf of the company. Alternatively, the retainer agreement might involve the consultant doing a set number of pieces of work over a stated period.
The benefit of using the consultant on a retainer basis is that it encourages both the consultant and the company to be constantly thinking of ways to raise the organisation’s profile and ensures that PR always remains a top priority.
How can a public relations expert help? One powerful way to raise and maintain the public profile of a business is to create positive press releases about it and send them to the relevant media organisations - be they local, regional or national online, broadcast or print publications.
Such releases can be about a variety of topics. It might be the business is expanding and taking on new staff. It might have moved premises, appointed a new senior member of staff or won an industry award.
However, don’t overlook the less obvious stories which might exist. Perhaps a member of staff has a particularly interesting hobby or is taking on a challenge for charity. These stories are also newsworthy and references to the firm they work for within the release can boost the company’s profile in a positive way.
PR experts know what news publications are looking for and have the contacts within those organisations to ensure the release reaches the right person to maximise the chances of it being published.
PR consultants can also help in other ways. They can write copy for advertising features; create content for web pages; and write case studies, for publication on websites or in other promotional material, which show how a company had benefited its customers.
They can also give advice about social media and, in some cases, manage a company’s social media sites. And they can help companies to devise effective communications strategies and deliver media training to managers and staff.
Andrew Thomas has been a journalist for more than 30 years and was Editor of The Westmorland Gazette for ten years. He set up his communications company Andrew Thomas Media in 2020.
