How to Turn PR into cold hard cash sales (advice for consumer businesses)

Many people fundamentally mis-understand the power of Public Relations.

A few weeks ago I touched on the notion that a press release is not always for the press; that sometimes it is more useful as an SEO tool.

But public relations is not really about press releases at all. It is about relationships and stories.

I don’t know how many times I have had arguments with new entrepreneneurs about the foolishness of hiring a dedicated PR person internally. Oh I understand the motivation: the person will work full-time on the company’s account, they will reall get to know the product, it’s alot cheaper etc. etc.

But this mi-understands why we hire PR people in the first place: it is to gain access to their access. By having multiple accounts they have multiple reasons to engage their circle of journalists. The journalists themselves won’t necessarily know why they’re calling because it may be from a current customer or a new one. But it permits the PR person to remain fresh and to keep the relationships fresh. Equally, they can gain access for a new, small company on the back of their prior relationships with older more established clients.

But equally, they have other key advantages. If you choose the right one, you are not merely getting someone who delivers your latest story to a select group of journalists, they may bring much much more to the table. The greatest PR folk of all time invented great stories. They created the conditions, events, moments, or confrontations that were inherently newsworthy. It is an all too rare talent and most people cannot do it effectively.

Great PR people are also very commercial and understand that, in some publications, the opportunity exists to create direct selling opportunities. In fact one of the best practitioners of the art will be joining me this Friday afternoon at the British Library to come up on stage and talk about how she has repeatedly been able to get consumer products, especially kid’s products, including web-sites where no product was involved; full pages and even magazine covers dedicated to selling her clients’ products.

She and her team are one of the top consumer facing teams in the country and, as part of my effort to expand entrepreneurs thinking about how PR can be strategic and far more creative, she is going to tell all at my advanced seminar on marketing. It starts at 1PM at the British Library (here’s the link: http://s4sfastgrowthmarketing.eventbrite.com) and it has some other kick-ass guests and our first ever live web broadcast at the end (but more about that later.)

So if you are interested in PR, if you want to understand how you can use it to get page space for no money, if you want to hear from the best consumer PR artist in the UK, come Friday.

Doug

Tags: Articles, marketing, marketing for entrepreneurs, pr, public relations, startup marketing