Surprisingly, there’s a lot of confusion about PR. It’s not uncommon for seasoned businesspeople to ask me to help them understand it. So what is PR? Technically, PR is an abbreviation for Public Relations. And technically PR firms act as a mediator between a company and its many publics. A company’s “publics” are groups broadly categorized as investors, employees, government, community, the media and any other group of people a business might have to interact with.
But like many terms, PR has more than one meaning. Another meaning is, getting positive media coverage. And the importance of this meaning is growing.
It used to be that there were expensive barriers to publishing content. Members of the general public just didn’t have easy ways to publish their opinions. But now, thanks to the Internet, the media has been taken out of the hands of the few and put into the hands of the many. Opportunities abound for individuals and companies to post blogs, articles and other material. Huge numbers of online news sources are hungry for fresh content that will attract and engage their readers. Content makes powerful sales material. It educates consumers in an engaging way. It delivers a marketing message in a format audiences enjoy. This direction is where PR is headed.
PR now has less to do with mediating between publics and more to do with telling your story through content.
And with this change in PR’s definition, there is a change in who arranges it. Surprisingly, it’s not PR firms’ domain anymore. Traditional public relations folks see themselves as mediators, not salespeople. That’s why you will hear public relations professionals referring to themselves as counselors and practitioners. Using media coverage to promote products puts these folks in a sales role they are not comfortable with. That’s not the case with ad agencies. They understand very clearly that their job is to sell, sell, sell. And then sell some more.
That’s one of the reasons we don’t consider ourselves a PR firm, even though we’ve arranged tens of thousands of media stories. We are a hybrid agency that thinks and operates like an ad agency. We just happen to be real good at content.
Our marketing agency has been ahead of the curve in recognizing the power of content and the media. For the past 30 years, we’ve worked hard at arranging media coverage to help clients tell their stories and increase their sales. And we’ve made pricing accessible: We charge per story we arrange, not per hour we work. Nothing outsells a good news story, and we’ve arranged stories for a who’s who list of clients. Our publicist team secures radio, TV, print and online news coverage. And our writers and web designers create written and website material.
We’ve done good business helping companies tell their stories. We don’t mediate between publics. We help companies sell product.
If you’re interested in promoting your product with content, call Vice President of Media Production Heather Champine at 952-697-5269. Heather is our media strategy guru. She’s been teaching clients how to harness the selling power of publicity since 1997. She’ll ask you about your company and tell you how we can use PR to promote it. The selling kind.
