One of the many things I love about my job as a PR Consultant & Reputation Manager is the variety of brands I get to work with.
Regardless of the stage their at (starting out, stepping up or scaling), they all have one thing in common: they’re all experts in their field and they’re not afraid of wanting more:
- More impact
- More exposure
- More leads
- More visibility (or greater visibility)
- More opportunities
- More clients
- More money
They already know:
✅ What their vision, mission, ethos and values are.
✅ Who their ideal customers and clients are
✅ What they want to be known for
✅ What their key message is
✅ How their want their ideal customers and clients to behave
The next step for them is getting publicity and elevating their expertise in the media.
They know that media outlets have access to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in their audience who are their ideal customers and clients.
People who have been loyal to those media outlets for years and trust what they’re saying and who they’re featuring.
Their audience is full of people who need YOU, your product and/or your service.
TIME TO ACCELERATE
Securing media coverage is one of the fastest ways of accelerating business growth.
How would you feel if 1.2 million people read an article that featured you and your business?
How would feel if just 1% of those people visited your website, downloaded your freebie and started following you on social media?
How would you feel if those new leads then turned into clients?
What difference would that make to you, your business and your life?
Results like this are available to you – but you have to be in the right place at the right time to achieve results like this
Elevating your expertise isn’t as difficult as you think, you just need to know what process to follow to ensure you don’t f**k it up (if you don’t currently have a process to follow then read until the end….)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Question: Where can you show up so that you’re seen or heard by thousands/millions of your ideal clients?
(Don’t say social media channels! You need to think outside of your social media bubble because it’s not helping your business grow fast enough)
Here’s some food for thought: You can be featured in….
🎙 Print magazines or newspapers
🎙 The radio
🎙 TV
🎙 Online publications
🎙 Someone else’s blog as a guest blogger
🎙 On a podcast
Podcasts have literally exploded in recent years and statistics show that over 7.9 million people in the UK listen to podcasts, spending around 7hrs per week listening to them.
If your ideal clients are actively listening to podcasts and are fully engaged in their content, then you need to be pitching yourself as a guest.
SPEAKING OF IDEAL CLIENTS….
The purpose of PR is to allow brands to communicate to their audience – that could be to educate, inform or entertain them
Being featured in the media is just one communication channel you can tap into to share your message
🎉 Social media is the one that you’re probably focussing on the most, with organic content or ads
🎉 Writing and publishing a regular blog may be another channel that you’re using
🎉 Growing an email list and sending weekly emails is another one
The goal for all of these different channels? To communicate with your ideal clients
But first, you need to know where you’re ideal clients are hanging out, so that you can be seen in those places
If your ideal clients are reading The Daily Mail, then you need to focus on being featured in The Daily Mail
If your ideal clients are reading Forbes, or Brainz, or Entrepreneur then you need to focus on being featured in Forbes, Brainz and Entrepreneur
If your ideal clients are listening to Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, then you need to focus on being featured on BBC Radio 4
If you don’t actually know where you’re ideal clients are hanging out, or what content they’re consuming, this is where working with a PR Consultant will bring a tonne of value to your business.
As an example, I’ve been working in PR for over 20 years, which means that I have a pretty good understanding of media outlets and their audience.
This means that I can match you to the media outlets that are consumed by your ideal clients, saving you the faff of trying to figure it out yourself.
(Also, don’t ever ask your existing audience because they’ll say that they don’t know, which means it’s because they’re paying zero attention to where they’re consuming content outside of social media)
WHY PR?
Tapping into the power and potency of PR is going to accelerate your brand in phenomenal ways
Not only do you get to communicate about your brand to an audience of hundreds and thousands, if not millions of people who are loyal to that media outlets….
….but you also boost your reputation as a Go-To Expert in your industry
Being featured in a media outlet is akin to being recommended or referred as a prefered supplier.
The media outlet is saying ‘we trust X to help you with Y, you should work with them’ – that’s the biggest accolade you can ever achieve (one that cannot be bought, it has to be earned)
Media outlets have some of the biggest audiences on the planet
And while social media platforms have a greater number of users, not all of those users are active or engaged. Plus, you’re working against an algorithm that doesn’t want you to win, unless you feed the beast with ad spend, but even then it’s not going to deliver what PR can in terms of reach.
It’s pretty much an industry standard that only 1-3% of your audience will actually see your content on social media
So, to keep it fair, let’s assume that only 1-3% of a media outlet’s audience will consume your media feature.
If you have 1500 followers on IG, 1% of your audience is 15 people
If you’re featured in The Daily Mail, which has 1 million readers (they actually have more than that but for the sake of this being easy maths) and 1% of those readers consume your media feature, that’s 10,000 people
Are you starting to see the benefits of PR now, in terms of audience reach?
Based on this knowledge, would you rather spend time creating content that 15 people will see, or 10,000?
I know I’m totally biased because I’ve been working in the industry for over two decades…
….but this is why I’m so passionate about brands utilising the power of PR to grow their business
IN SUMMARY
I could wax lyrical about PR all day long, but I won’t!
However, I’m hoping this blog has changed your perspective about the power of PR when it comes to elevating your expertise and positioning you as the Go-To Expert in your industry
(As well as made you think twice about focussing so heavily on social media to grow your business!)
Social Media is an incredible tool, but it’s not the only tool and has it’s place in your comms strategy (learn more in my blog about the PESO Model)
So, if you’ve read this far and you have changed your perspective on PR and want to find out more about how I can support you on your PR journey, then schedule a free Growth Audit with me and I’ll help you see how PR can easily fit into what you’re already doing to promote your business.
