Why You Need a PR Strategy (No Matter the Size of Your Business)

This is something that you've probably heard a lot, which is that one of the biggest impacts on your sales is your ability to build trust and credibility with your customers. The know like and trust factor that, that is PR that is what it is all about.

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Entrepreneur School, I'm really pumped for this conversation today about why you need a PR strategy no matter what size your business is. And it's really funny to me, because I was looking back through some of the topics that we've discussed here on the show. And PR is not something I talk about very often, which is weird, because I have a PR degree, it's literally my entire background, my entire career path has been PR and I want to share with you about how I apply that to small businesses, because you might be thinking, you know, PR, it's just publicity. And it's about media, or it's like crisis communications, which definitely it is, or you think is just for large corporations. And that's really not true. And you're missing out if you don't have PR on your mind or a PR lens to look through when you're thinking about what you want to do to grow your business. So today we're going to talk about what PR is, and also what it isn't the difference between PR and marketing, and five key elements of a PR strategy so that you can build that out for yourself. So in my career, I've worked in all kinds of different areas, corporate in government, I've worked at a big corporation during a very, very, very big, infamous crisis, you know, the kind that they make movies about. And I have, then I decided when I started my business that I wanted to work with small businesses, and I wanted to be able to apply the strategies that we learned in the concepts of what PR is, and bring that big corporate experience to that entrepreneurial setting.

Now for me, I've used a variety of titles, actually, over the years. And this is why, you know, PR is not something that I I hope aside my name necessarily anymore, because I've I've called myself a marketing strategist, a brand strategist, and now a visibility coach. And truth is, I've just not the typical version of any of these things. Because having a background in PR means that I really zoom out and look at the bigger picture strategy for your business, identifying your goals, clarifying your messaging, and then determining the most effective communication channels that you can use to reach those goals. So that might involve creating campaigns or starting movements, or really just thinking about how to get attention for a cause and associating yourself with a cause so that you can be connected to that. And really all of this involves diving deep into what your brand is all about. So that you also know what it's all about. And you can really make those connections.

So PR essentially is about enhancing your reputation. So you can become a well known brand in your space. It's about building that reputation, creating positive associations with your business, having a favorable view of your company in the public eye. And really what that all comes down to is building positive relationships between your business and relevant stakeholders. So if you haven't heard the term stakeholder before, or it sounds like very corporate speak, it kind of is but essentially it just encompasses anybody who might be a client or a customer. Also your employees, suppliers, partners, competitors, even media, government or other advocacy groups that you might associate with and collab write with. And that's really what's so exciting. And what I love about PR, it's so broad. And it means that I get to work with all kinds of amazing people in a variety of industries to craft those customized PR strategies. So here's what I want to talk about the difference between PR, and marketing. The main difference is the objective of each of these types of communication methods. PR is really all about shaping the public perception, and fostering a positive reputation for your business. Whereas marketing is really about promoting products and services and making sales. So you actually can't do one without the other, you in order to make sales, you actually have to build that reputation, and create awareness of your brand in the first place. And this is something that you've probably heard a lot, which is that one of the biggest impacts on your sales is your ability to build trust and credibility with your customers. The know like and trust factor that that is PR, that is what it is all about. So here's where most business owners go wrong. They start by trying to implement tactics, right? We look at email marketing, or social media, or advertising or any of those kinds of things without really having that strategy in place that has the clearly defined objectives, audience and messaging that really guides what you should actually be doing. I spend a lot of time actually talking about the difference between tactics and strategies and tactics are the things that you're going to do. But the strategy is why it's going to make sense. Having thought through all of those bigger pieces allows you to like go out on a path and then choose the tactical steps on the route.

So your PR strategy should include these five elements. The first one is smart objectives that support your business goals through communication. So if you haven't heard that acronym before, smart means Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and time bound. So we want to get clear about what we're trying to do, we want to make sure that we set a target so that we can measure it, we have to be able to production it and it has to be realistic for you based on your capacity based on the resources that you have. And then we put a time line on it. Because we want to have something to you know, you can say that you want to get a certain amount of media coverage. But if you just say, if you don't put a timeline on it and be like, well, in the next five years, the next five months, what is it? So we have to look at all those pieces.

The second piece of your strategy is your target audience identification. So a lot of the time we talk about understanding who your ideal client is creating a customer avatar, that type of thing. But this is beyond just your clients, it's who else who else that could be a stakeholder do we need to make sure that we're communicating with and that we're building relationships with and why. So this allows you to like spread out that web or broaden that web to other stakeholders that are going to support you in achieving your goals. So target audience identification, all of the different audiences, not just the end goal client, because sometimes, I actually will list media as a target audience as a conduit to helping you reach a broader portion of your public of your potential clients. Right. So we have to think about those different audiences and the different ways that we can communicate with them. Which brings you to the next step, which is messaging, right?

So what are you going to say? And how are you going to say it? This part is very challenging, honing your messaging is something that you will likely spend a lot of time and a lot of years on going doing. It's something that will evolve. You'll learn what resonates and what doesn't resonate, then you want to be able to create some key messages for your business. So if you were to say my business is all about x, what is that? What Who do you help? How do you explain what you do? How do you talk about the bigger picture cars that you support? Like, what is the why behind the business? Right? These are the kinds of key messages that you need to have on lock so that you can have really great commerce Asians will people, when you go to networking events that you have some website copy to put on your website that when people come across to you in those various ways, they can learn more about you. And it's consistent across the different platforms and across the different channels that you might be using.

The fourth part of your strategy is your tactics. So this is when you choose how you are going to reach the audience that you want to reach with the message that you have. So some examples here might include media relations. So this is your attempt at pitching yourself as a spokesperson or a thought leader, on the issue that you talk about something related to your industry. Like, for example, if you're a stylist, this is a really great place for you to be in media, like putting yourself out there as like the go to person on what to wear for this particular season for a particular festival that's coming up, or anything like that, that you can connect in with and make really timely, and I will do another episode on media, PR specifically coming up really soon as well, because I'm going to be talking about it and an upcoming conference in Nashville, which I'm so excited about, in case you didn't know. So Media Relations is one way that you can reach your audience events is another way. So this is both like you hosting events, or you launching something this could be an in person event, if you have brick and mortar presence or physical presence in your community. It can be an online event, if you're a digital business owner, it could be attending someone else's event that you want to make connections with the audience who's there or, or the event host, or any of those kinds of things. Social media is a tactic. As well, a lot of the time, this gets positioned as a strategy in and of itself. Knowing how to use social media should really be tied into that bigger PR strategy that you have, so that we know which social media channels to use that are going to help us reach the specific audience that we're trying to reach with the message that we want to share. Which platforms are appropriate to help us with our message if we are a more like corporate type organization, very business to business, maybe a little bit less. On the personality side, we might be looking at something like LinkedIn, versus Instagram, where people are doing really casual kind of behind the scenes videos. And those kinds of things are tick tock, right. So choosing your social media platform and choosing that cadence. And all of that comes from having this bigger picture PR strategy. Understood.

Another tactic you might use is digital marketing. So this is where we're thinking about other digital tools such as email marketing, and the various strategies that are specifically about collecting email addresses and collecting leads, generating leads, and making online sales and doing those kinds of things. And how does that fit into your bigger picture, PR strategy, it is an element of it. And it shouldn't be a standalone piece. And then another option is partnerships. So I talk a lot about collaborations. This is really what the essence of PR is all about it's about is about making connections with people who are going to support you in reaching your audience. So even when you're thinking about doing things like speaking at events, or being on podcasts, it's really all about the relationship that you can build with the person who's hosting the event or whose podcast that it is, and the relationship that they have built already with the audience that they have. So partnerships can look like that. And partnerships can look like you know, affiliate partnerships, or sponsors. So maybe you are sponsoring an event in your community, or within a community of potential clients. I'm doing that actually this weekend as well. I'm sponsoring an event in order to be able to speak at it. And the podcast is sponsoring it. So there'll be recognition for the podcast. It's an opportunity for the show to be discovered by a group of women who are specifically my target audience for the show. And I'll have an opportunity to ask them to follow the show and to become part of our community so that we can build ongoing relationships with each other. So those are kinds of opportunities within that partnership and sponsorship umbrella. And you know, those are kind of the big buckets of what you might do and it's, it's really a matter of mixing up, what you have the resources for what you have the energy for, I think it's when I talk about visibility, and the visibility strategies, which essentially fall under these categories. It's about aligning it with your strength, so that you're doing things that feel really good for you that they feel maybe, you know, easier, and you're excited about them, because then your energy is really in the right place.

So we always customize the PR strategy and the tactics that you're going to use to you, as a business owner. So you don't have to worry that if you came to work with me, and we talked about PR, and you were like, I just don't ever want to be on TV, I don't ever want to be, you know, in front of the camera, like, what are the other ways that we can do this? And do I really have to be on social media all the time, we can build something custom to you, that supports your goals, knowing that you do have to take some action, you do have to put yourself out there in some way, shape, or form. And so sometimes people are really, really good at building relationships. And you can do, you can build an entire business on referral partners. And, and having those one on one relationships rather than being like a big public figure. So there's a lot of options as to where you go. And that's all defined within the objectives section of your plan, right. And then the last piece of your plan is the timeline. So when are you actually going to do all of these things over the next 369 12 months. So I like to break them out into quarters, because realistically, things don't really happen much faster than that. And to be able to track and assess the results from any of the efforts that you're making. You need a little bit of time to really commit to them and really make an effort. And then you have to look at it realistically over the course of the year on do you think you can actually achieve all of this? Right? So back to the beginning, where we talked about smart objective, what's realistic to achieve in that timeframe. I often have a day like today where my to do list itself on what I said I'm going to do today looks very unrealistic, but we're going to make an effort anyways. But that's the kind of filter that you need to put through all of your big vision plan. So it's always really exciting to create a strategy to look out at what the next year might look like for you, and to get really excited about the potential that you're going to create. And then we have to say, Can we do this? And if we can't do this alone, what resources or support might we need in order to make this happen? So the last piece I want to mention about the PR strategy, of course, is that you need to track your results, so that you can understand what's working best for your unique business. Did you do a bunch of media pitches and get coverage? And if you got coverage? What did that equate to, we can actually do an ad by like value, essentially, because media can be measured in terms of how much it would have cost you to put an ad of that size and to reach that audience from that publication. And it's really, really impressive, actually, when you look at things that way. How is your social media engagement going? Are you actually being seen on social media? Or is it not worth your time to do that, or if you went to one event, did that result in multiple leads or multiple clients. And so you wanted to make sure that you're maintaining the relationship with that event host or finding other similar events like that, that you can go to so that we're sort of doubling down on the strategies that work.

So to recap, PR is all about enhancing your reputation, and building credibility for your brand through various communication tactics that are customized to your specific business and the audience that you want to reach. And every business no matter what size should create an activate a PR strategy if you want to become well known in your industry. And I shared the five core elements of a PR strategy to help you get started in mapping this out. And this is something that I would of course love to support you with further. So if you're interested in exploring, working together to craft your PR strategy, then I would love to hear from you. So please go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram. Or you can skip right into my calendar and book a coffee chat with me. The link is in the show notes below for that. And I would love to have this conversation we'll just talk about how PR can really support you and how I can support you in creating that strategy for your business and helping you to implement it over the next couple of months.

So I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to focus on growing in your business, and for listening to another episode of entrepreneur school, now go out and take messy action so that you can build momentum for your business. I'll see you next week.

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