Why is Public Relations (PR) Important for Companies?
Public relations efforts create brand visibility, placing your company name, products and expertise in front of your target audience. In most forms, media coverage often validates a company in the eyes of readers, viewers, and listeners, and makes them more familiar with the brand when they see it again, be it from an e-mail blast, an event, sales call, and other marketing efforts.
Public relations can achieve thought leadership designed to impact and influence an audience, and can position a company or individual as an expert within their industry. For companies with very targeted audiences, when impactful news occurs or trends develop, it is important to make your voice heard through a story in the press, or a strategically placed op-ed/byline.
Public relations in support of an event is designed to bring awareness to the purpose of the event, and to help drive attendance, among other objectives.
Public relations produces media results including articles, radio interviews, and op-eds that make for strong marketing materials and touch points. For example, a well-executed media placement can be repurposed and distributed as a physical mailer, e-mail blast, social media post to any audience. Further, that content can be distributed to existing customers or member bases, as well as potential ones, to demonstrate company value.
Public relations drives lead generation for a brand. As your target audience continues to see your company or product in the media, it increases the chance of them making a call, sending an e-mail requesting more information, subscribing to a newsletter, visiting a website, and/or other calls to action.
Public relations efforts can be leveraged across social media to drive more traffic to the article, which will result in better SEO for the page and the links within it, and will continue establishing the brand publishing via social media to increase visibility.
Public relations addresses brand competition by ensuring that your company is presented with the same opportunities to get in front of targeted audiences as others in your industry. It is important to be seen in similar media coverage as your competitors in terms of story ideas, trends, product features, and more.
Public relations efforts are often used by marketing teams and SEO firms to improve online search position. Over the course of time, PR can certainly improve a company’s rankings based on a high volume of high quality media placements.