Why is a PR Strategy Important for My Business?

You might be a small business owner, the sole marketer at your organization, or the executive at Fortune 500 company and still have the same question: 

Why is a PR strategy important for my business?

We all ask this question because we want to know what benefits we’re getting from our effort. If we put our precious and limited resources towards an effective PR strategy, what will we get in return?

You can measure the number of media placements you land, look up how many impressions the publication gets, track where your website traffic is coming from, and still it’s hard to pin all that down into a precise ROI. 

Without a specific dollar amount, you can still make the argument to yourself or your team that PR is an important communication strategy worth your time and investment. Here are three reasons why.

1. PR is Inexpensive

PR basically saves you money. If you compare the cost of a PR strategy to the cost of a paid advertising campaign, you’ll quickly see how little time and money is even needed to be effective. 

At its core, you only need to send emails to get media placements. You already have email, so you’re just investing your time. 

But with a paid advertising campaign, you have to invest, test, and invest some more before you see results. Even worse, once you stop investing in the ad, it goes away. With PR, your media placement will live on the publication’s website indefinitely. 

The PR industry has plenty of opportunities for you to invest more. You can buy specialized software, get access to databases of media contacts, or just pay a monthly retainer to a PR firm. Those options are there if you want them, but you don’t need them to run an effective PR strategy.

(And if you want, I can teach you how to keep costs low and results high.)

2. You will reach new audiences

This is a given: with more media placements comes more brand exposure. 

Every time your brand is featured in a new publication, a new audience gets closer to your company. 

Over the last ten years of experience as a publicist, I’ve seen a super interesting trend toward more niche publications. These days, there are more publications living on the web than ever before and they all target incredibly specific audiences. 

This gives you so many opportunities to find and connect customers who fit your “ideal client” profile and even test out new target markets.

If brand exposure is something you want, PR is the way to get there. 

3. Your brand will gain a major credibility boost

PR is unique from other forms of communication because it builds trust with consumers. 

Once a media outlet has chosen to publish something about your brand, it’s like they’re vouching for you and their audience will trust what they say. 

This third-party credibility boost can only be gained if someone from outside your company is talking about you. Whereas with an ad, the audience knows your biased opinion (sorry, but true) is behind every word.

You can also think of it this way: everyone wants to hit “Skip ad” to get to the content. 

PR makes your brand part of the content. People want to read/watch/listen to the content and are ready to hear the message. With an effective PR strategy, you can get your brand in front of audiences that want to learn more about you. 

And getting your brand in this kind of spotlight is priceless.