The Cost of NOT Doing it Right
How do you promote your business?
With a growing choice of online tips, self-help templates and other resources, many businesses are taking the matter into their own hands.
However, as much as I appreciate that businesses, especially sole traders, have limited budgets, the cost of winging it or doing it ‘on the cheap’ may be higher than you think.
Public relations is about relationships – relationships which we go to great lengths to build and nurture over a number of years. When it comes to getting a business into the press and media, pinging out a hastily scripted press release to the generic news email of a bunch of newspapers and magazines simply won’t cut it.
Any PR worth his or her salt will seek to identify the best journalists and writers for your story. PRs with a journalistic background possess that extra strength …the ability to spot a story, pitch it and tell it in the right place at the right time, whether that’s the business pages, as a lifestyle feature, on a radio programme or national TV news. They can also advise on giving it the edge through photography, video, appropriate timing and so on. A DIY press release (and remember newsrooms receive hundreds each day) is highly unlikely to be picked up – a waste of your time, energy and hopes!
The same goes for content marketing. I’ve lost track of the number of businesses I’ve dismissed because their social media posts, blogs and website copy are littered with typos. If their image is unprofessional, why would I trust them? – they’ve lost me.
They say that the average attention span has dropped to just eight seconds, less than the nine-second span of your average goldfish. Make the wrong impression and you’ve lost that potential sale, inquiry or ‘like’. Do it well and you’ve hooked their interest, driving online traffic and prompting the email, call or sale you were after.
It’s also about planning. Going back to the importance of relationships, we work with clients for the long-term. Yes, we jump into action when we need to but there’s a bigger plan dictating our activities, based around the client’s priorities and objectives.
So, before you fill in the gaps in a template press release, accompanied by a quick car selfie or mobile snap of your team with a dodgy background, ask yourself this. Doesn’t your business deserve more?
Put simply, a legitimate PR consultant will bring value to your business through experience, trust and integrity, maximizing opportunities and ensuring you reach audiences in the right way, at the right time. You owe it to your business to get it right.
For an informal chat, drop me an email – claire@graingerpr.co.uk or call 07912 324 264.