About public relations and free publicity
Public relations is any communication between your business and… the public! If you write a letter to apologise to an unhappy customer, that’s public relations. If your business sponsors a local Scout troop to do a litter pick, that’s public relations.
Publicity is one element of public relations, where your communication is done through the media.
You can use free publicity for many things:
- Build brand awareness
- Drive traffic to your website
- Stand out in a crowded marketplace
- Change perceptions about your business
- Educate or influence people (including potential customers)
- Give your business credibility
- Announce something new or exciting about your business
- Make sure lots of people hear your good stories
- Generate word of mouth publicity
- Deal with a crisis
Your goals
Your publicity goals should be closely linked to your business goals.
Publicity is just a tool at your disposal… many businesses forget this and do publicity either for the sake of it, or for vanity reasons.
But it works better (and it’s more fun to do) when you can watch your business benefit from the free publicity.
If your business goal is open a new shop this year, by driving sales from your existing shop up 20%, your publicity should aim to get people into your existing store. If the goal is to increase sales from your website, your publicity shold aim to drive web traffic.
Remember that the media will not publish commercial messages. They won’t write Andy’s Cars are the most reliable taxis in town this New Year’s Eve. But they will write Andy’s Cars are rewarding everyone working in bars this New Year’s Eve, by giving them free rides home.
Who what where when why
Every story in the media should answer these five questions (journalists learn this on day one):
Who: Who is this story about?
What: What have they done or are they going to do?
Where: Where is this going to happen?
When: When is it going to happen?
Why: This is the most important question of all. The others are mostly basic info – but the reason why someone is going to do something IS the story.
Often, you will have to answer How something is being done as well.
