Public Relations is a Discipline of Depth

ost of us prefer to place our trusted business affairs, such as strategic outreach through public and media relations, in the hands of experienced practitioners. Whether with our attorney or IT vendor, our airline pilot or our accountant, we value experience when the job is complex and the outcome critical to our success.

This same principle applies to the selection of a public relations and marketing adviser. Effective public relations does not happen by gravitational pull; rather, it is the outcome of incisive strategy skillfully executed, managed and measured. It can be taught in school – but it is learned only through experience.

Public relations is commonly mistaken as the domain of generalists. At many firms, “paint by number” strategy drives “fill in the blank” planning to create “cookie cutter” campaigns. Although cookie cutters can rapidly create dozens of identical cookies, they rarely leave a distinct impression. They certainly cannot convey a firm’s unique value proposition.

Contrary to popular misconception, public relations with an impact is the discipline of depth. In today’s business world, successful practitioners are those who can step outside the box of traditional agency practice, and embrace the communications trends that are working today. Communication is no longer an arena in which businesses dictate their messages to consumers. Consumers, with multiple communications channels available to them, now have the power and the desire to form their own opinions based on a survey of the information available to them.

Indeed, media consumers now have the power to create their own messaging and counteract corporate messaging that they feel is inaccurate. This is a Web 2.0 world, which is being increasingly and consistently defined by consumers. Businesses who are not agile and able to modify their messaging and tactics to utilize and work with this trend will quickly become irrelevant to their markets and unable to expand their reach by targeting new market sectors available through emerging communications channels.

As such, effective public relations practitioners must be knowledgeable not only of their clients’ business models and areas of expertise, but also in target market behaviors with regards to media consumption. Practitioners must be able to utilize innovative, multi channel strategies to deliver messages to consumers with messages they will understand and through their media of choice.
Public relations professionals must develop the ability to integrate and consolidate all communications channels to reach target audiences, and understand the synergies that exist between all communication media. They must combine traditional marketing and communication experience with new technology and market research to create outreach strategies that are effective, relevant and cutting-edge.

This principle is demonstrably true in specialized, niche industry practices, including technology public relations, financial public relations and mortgage technology public relations, to name a few. Although clients in these industries retain a deep understanding of current technologies as means to solve specific problems, they often do not have the knowledge to utilize technology in a way that produces effective marketing and clear communications with their target audiences. In realms such as these, savvy communications experts who are independent of traditional agency “cookie-cutter” approaches and organizational restrictions can make a significant impact on behalf of their clients.

The Internet is truly the realm of small businesses and innovative solutions. Big box providers depend on their existing brand recognition and market penetration to do their marketing for them, leaving a huge vacuum of potential for smaller business seeking a competitive advantage. Smart public relations practitioners who understand how to utilize the Internet to support an overall integrated communications and marketing strategy will be poised for rapid success by connecting their clients to relevant messages through emerging media channels.

Public relations is a discipline of depth. All a savvy practitioner needs to succeed is an innovative approach and a depth of mind.

For more information on technology public relations, financial public relations and mortgage technology public relations, visit depthpr.com.

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Public Relations – Integral For Business

Public relations is an absolutely integral part of any businesses recipe for success, in fact, a well thought out and properly enacted public relations plan can be the single most important part of a company’s marketing – and aside from a good product and hard working employees, the most important part of running a business. Public relations will determine exactly how your company is viewed or perceived in the public eye.

Current and potential customers like to be ensured that they are, or will be patronizing a company that cares. A public relations department can organize a plan of attack to let the consumer know that your company cares about people and the environment, and about any other burgeoning social issues. A good PR department will also make the public aware that your company has a new product on the horizon and why they have to be first in line to purchase it, or that your company is branching out to offer new services and how that will make you stronger and more capable of handling their needs as consumers.

Yet another great facet and important role of a public relations department is damage control. If something, anything goes wrong and the public is made aware that the problem arose from one of your company’s employee’s actions or due to a particular policy – a good PR department will be the first one on the scene to correct it. Writing releases for apology or correction of error, along with releases stating the fact that new employees and procedures are in place to prevent any future problems can often save a companies reputation in the public eye.

Inside or Out?

Many companies have their very own public relations departments, made up of what could be any number of employees who are responsible for a wide variety of duties including: producing eye catching press kits, writing poignant press releases, organizing charitable events and contributions and some general damage control.

This is usually the best option for large companies with big budgets in place for advertising and payroll. A good full time PR department is great if ever there are cases of an emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately.

Companies that don’t have their own public relations department, but that realize just how important the proper approach to and implementation of public relations can be, will often enlist the help of a third party public relations firm to take care of that end of the business for them.

This second option can work quite well for a company that doesn’t want to keep several full time employees on staff (having to take care of employee salaries, vacation and health benefits), when they can temporarily employee a service to do the job for them. Many reputable and successful public relations firms can bring quite a cost for the service that they provide, but often the results that are yielded from a good public relations campaign can certainly outweigh the cost of enlisting a firm to provide the work.

A third option is for a company to employ regular employees to handle the basic issues of a public relations department – to generate the thoughts and ideas behind the advertisements and new product pushes, but then hire freelance professional to take care of the artistic side of things (the graphics, design and writing).

Regardless of whether a company employs their own full time public relations department, enlists a third party to do the work or uses a combination of in house people and freelancers to get the job done – public relations is an enormous part of whether or not a company will succeed.

Good public relations is the recipe for success while poorly thought out, impr

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