So you’re on the edge of making the decision to go for a PR campaign to educate audiences about your company, products or services, build and maintain brand awareness, and develop trusted relationships with your audiences. You may need to compile a list of consultancies to pitch for your organisation’s PR. Before starting your research, it is great to have a clear idea of different consultancy services on offer. Here is an outline of the main categories to help you decide which is best suited to your needs.
Business to Business: Business to business (B2B) PR promotes one business to another business, using clear strategies for reaching key prospects and customers. This involves audience segmentation and the creation of differentiated messages aimed at decision-makers. A diversity of PR techniques are used to communicate with audiences including media relations, social media content, email marketing, research and white papers, corporate and product publications and videos, exhibitions, special events and hospitality. Some companies have even been known to create their own online broadcast channel for business customers.
Community Relations: Community relations engages with specific groups of people, generally, in a geographic area. If an organisation does most of its business in a specific area, it can build a strong presence within the community by becoming immersed in local activity (for example, it can support sports team, school or charity, create a community fund for worthwhile projects, run environmental projects) and undertake proactive local media relations. Such activity increases an organisation’s connection with the local community and enables it to share information, gain feedback and implement initiatives that are beneficial to both parties. A ‘community’ can also be defined by characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age, special interest, etc and PR campaigns can be designed around them.
Consumer: As consumers of goods and services used in our everyday lives, consumer PR is aimed at all of us. Consumer PR uses simple, powerful messages to educate consumers, build brand awareness and a relationship with consumers so that we identify with certain brands and purchase – time and again. Consumer PR employs a multitude of techniques to reach and influence consumers including research, traditional and online media relations, social media, events, stunts, promotions, competitions, product sampling, film and sponsorship.
Consumer PR tends to work in tandem with other high profile marketing such as advertising, experiential, online and social media activity which helps the consumer to ‘experience’ the brand and stimulate sales.
Corporate: Corporate communications is used to help organisations deliver strategic messages about their operation to audiences. This includes staff and a wide range of external stakeholders including investors, analysts, customers, suppliers, traditional and social media and the general public. Corporate communications uses a range of techniques (from internal communications tools to annual reports, from media relations to sponsorship) in an integrated way to ensure that consistent messages are to delivered cohesively and credibly to audiences that can influence how the organisation is perceived publicly.
Crisis Management: Crisis management is about effective communication during a major incident with the aim of protecting the reputation of an organisation. Organisations should have a crisis contingency plan which dovetails with operational crisis and business continuity plans. A crisis communications strategy and plan is developed by undertaking a risk analysis of each area of the business and the potential impact on communications. Crisis plans are tested through scenario playing and simulation exercises and weaknesses rectified. Plans are tested regularly to ensure that the crisis team know their role, policies, systems and processes. Such a plan ensures that an organisation is prepared to communicate quickly and effectively with internal, external, national and international audiences as well as the media.
Internal Communications: This is managed two-way communications between employers and staff; and between colleagues themselves. Internal communications involves a wide range of techniques including team and staff meetings, emails, company publications, questionnaires, videos, events, intranets and even apps. Internal communications enables management and staff to engage regularly with each other to learn about issues, challenges and opportunities; deliver business messages; receive feedback and build team spirit within the organisation.
Investor Relations: Investor relations specialists implement communications programmes on behalf of quoted companies. Investor relations is the part of stock market life that sees companies interacting with existing shareholders, potential investors, analysts and journalists. Stakeholders are informed about the company, giving them greater understanding about the business, governance, financial performance and prospects. Investor relations is also about companies listening to the views and feedback from the investment community. Investor relations is also about helping quoted companies gain access to capital and achieve liquidity in, and fair valuation for their shares. [Edited from the London Stock Exchange publication Investor Relations a Practical Guide.]
Public Affairs: Public affairs (or lobbying) is the process of engaging with government officials and committees, presenting complex information in an easy to digest format, on issues of interest to particular groups, be they businesses, charities or specialist interest groups such as unions. The aim is to influence policy decisions and legislation. While the practice of public affairs requires specialist skills, lobbying is not confined to professionals – members of the public also get involved in campaigns that lobby politicians in the hope of influencing government decisions.
And in summary …
You have three choices of agency models from which to choose: (a) generalist consultancies that can handle campaigns in a variety of industry sectors because they employ consultants with a rich diversity of backgrounds and experiences, (b) integrated agencies with divisions devoted to the type of PR you and (c) specialist agencies that focus exclusively on your niche.
No matter what you need, there will be a specialist out there: automotive, technology, consumer tech, beauty, restaurants, food, wine, leisure, property, charity, fashion, luxury goods, healthcare, clean tech, financial – take your pick!
Or you can let someone else manage the agency research – read this blog post which includes links to two PR matching-making services.
Tags: B2B PR, community relations, consumer PR, corporate PR, crisis PR, internal communications, public affairs
