When you dreamed of creating a successful brand and wrote your business strategy, chances are PR didn’t figure in it. That’s not unusual; most people think about PR purely in terms of publicity.
Yet, when you prepared your business plan, you will have committed to a vision, mission, values and goals for the brand (a specific identity presented to audiences consistently). From that will have emerged your ‘brand promise’ – what you promise to give your customers.
A vital element of success is delivering on the brand promise. That involves developing and maintaining a good reputation based on your values. So, by my definition, PR is not only about media exposure, it’s about the behaviour of the brand at all levels of the business and at all times. If your brand behaves in line with its promise, you will enjoy positive public relations and sales. If you act against your brand promise, you will feel the pinch, both to your reputation and your bottom line.
Imagine a leisure club with a value based on ‘customer care’ that does not follow up with a customer who fell in its gym and had hospital treatment that prevented them using the gym for several months. The club contacts the customer only at membership renewal time – you can imagine the response! This particular gym could not have aligned its business strategy and goals with PR – unless they were purposely trying to lose customers! One has to draw the conclusion, that the gym’s membership retention, customer care and sales teams did not have adequate systems supporting the ‘customer care’ value and thus created a poor PR image. It takes only one customer to box clever and put many people (if not hundreds via review sites and social media) off your brand.
So, how do you ensure that your business and PR strategies are aligned?
It starts with quality communications inside the business – this must be right before embarking on external PR activity. Understanding of the mission, vision, values and messages must be widely and deeply embedded across your business, and this must come from the boss. All staff must understand the values and what part they play in meeting customer expectation. They also need to know in advance how to respond proactively if products or services fall short of customer expectation – regardless of whether the company or the customer is at fault.
Systems and processes must function seamlessly to ensure that customers get what your brand promises – whether that’s the fastest, cutting-edge, best service, contemporary design, whatever. If you promise it to customers, that’s what they’ll expect. If you haven’t thought about PR as integral to every part of your business, try reviewing the business – from board to operations – to see if each function lives up to your original values? And ask yourself if all your staff are committed to those values, and present an image that builds positive PR with customers and the wider public.
With the business functions and PR discipline aligned, you are ready for the craft of attracting publicity to your business. You can start building PR campaigns to reinforce the brand identity (be if for a company, product, service or individual) based on news and initiatives, to the outside world – always with a distinct PR objective, clear messages and short to long-range plan.
Generating coverage in targeted news, online and social media is the cornerstone of good external public relations. But it doesn’t end there – PR extends to communicating with customers at the point-of-sale, through experiential events, literature, audio-visual material, sponsorship and third party associations with celebrities and experts. PR utopia is getting people to ‘talk-up’ your brand through word-of-mouth endorsements, which is especially valuable in this age of online customer reviews and social media chatter. What others say about your brand is worth so much more than what you say about yourself.
If you want to avoid customer ‘one-night stands,’ aim for repeat business that leads to long-term customer relationships. You will generate customer loyalty by living up to your brand promise and communicating brilliantly with your customers.
Tags: PR planning, PR stratey
