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Public Relations covers a wide range of activities, but in a
promotional sense, it’s about building goodwill for your business by
gaining unpaid media attention. The whole premise of P.R. is that you
“borrow credibility” from the media, rather than looking like an
advertiser who’s simply paid for exposure.
P.R. - it’s free if you do it yourself, and
the impact can be enormous if you get your story covered on a decent TV
show, radio program or newspaper feature.
P.R. has the benefit that it doesn’t have
to
be particularly well-targeted if it gets to one million people in your
city and doesn’t cost you anything! P.R. is excellent, so let’s take a
closer look at this form of promotions.
Good P.R. agencies should have vast experience in assessing whether
your
media release is newsworthy (and if it isn't, they can provide some
suggestions on how to make it newsworthy). If it is newsworthy they can
ensure that it’s written in a concise and effective style that will
attract the attention of an editor or journalist.
The big
advantage of using a P.R. agency is that the P.R. person is in the
industry. The P.R. person regularly talks with editors, journalists,
and
other contacts. The P.R. person has already established a level of
credibility with a circle of journalists.
Think of
it this way. Imagine we take two copies of the same release. One is
sent to the local newspaper by n. n. person. It's n. n. first release.
The other release is sent to the paper by the P.R. person. In a perfect
world, they’d both be read. Because the P.R. person already has
credibility with a press contact at the paper, it’s more likely that
this person’s release will be read first.
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