PERSONAL BRAND VS BRAND PR
As a Founder or key decision maker, hiring the right PR Agency or PR Partner can be challenging in more ways than one.
Not only do you need them to understand your brand, your vision, your mission and your values, but you also want them to understand the growth goals of the business and the role you want PR to play in contributing to that growth.
Then of course there’s my all-time-favourite topic to consider (note the sarcasm here btw!) – Personal Branding!!
Without taking you down a rabbit hole and waxing lyrical about my own personal opinions of personal branding (which has become over-hyped and taken out of context by many), it does play a key role in your likeability and the speed in which your brand will grow.
However, it’s important to strike the right balance between securing founder-focussed media coverage and coverage that’s going to raise the profile of the brand and drive sales of your product or service.
PUTTING THE ‘PERSONAL’ INTO PERSONAL BRANDING
When I work with founders I always speak about Sir Richard Branson to illustrate how powerful personal branding can be.
We all know that he’s very successful, we all know that he was the man behind the Virgin Brand; Virgin Records, Virgin Airlines, Virgin TV and broadband, but it was him who people were interested in.
It’s his success story that we’re all interested in. We want to know about the highs and lows. We want to hear the pearls of wisdom and hear about the challenges he faced and how he overcame them.
It’s not usually the success story that we’re interested in, it’s the messy bit in the middle. We want to hear about the challenges faced and overcome, the difficult decisions he had to make and the conversations he had to have.
PERFECTION CAN P*SS OFF!!
People aren’t interested in perfection. Perfection isn’t real. But the messy bits in the middle?
That’s what gives people hope.
That’s what helps you learn to embrace failure, to understand that success isn’t linear and that things aren’t going to happen in accordance to your timeline.
When you put the emphasis on ‘person’ and ‘personal’ in the phrase ‘personal branding’ you start to realise why it’s so powerful at speeding up the growth of your business and the trust it helps you build along the way (not just from customers and clients, but from suppliers too.)
Giving people a sneak peek behind the scenes is what endears you to them.
It helps them feel connected to you and that connection builds trust. When someone (or a company) trusts you, they’re more likely to buy from you.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE JOURNEY
Your audience, community, potential customers and clients are certainly interested in your journey, but their journey matters too.
If you’ve focussed on the customer journey and how you and your brand interacts with customers and clients, they’re more likely to remain loyal to you and then recommend you to friends and family who then become customers or clients, as they trust the recommendations given by friends and family.
All of a sudden, you’ve created a word-of-mouth eco-system that organically drives buyers into your sales cycle and retains them for as long as possible.
BRINGING IN YOUR BRAND
Not every founder wants to focus solely on their own journey. Yes, you’re the face of your brand, but it’s not all about you. It’s about the products, services and experiences you’re creating.
I often challenge founders who try to hide behind their brand, for the reasons highlighted above, so it’s about working with your PR Partner to strike the right balance between the two.
THE FOUR PILLARS OF PR
Back in 2021 I created The Four Pillars of PR because you’re probably used to creating content pillars for social media, but very few people focus on the key pillars of PR, so I created a framework to help you figure out what you want to focus on.
The Four Pillars of PR include:
- Personal Story
- Profile Interviews
- Positioning
- Product Reviews
These pillars can be used to help your PR Partner drive PR activities in the right direction, based on the outcomes you want to achieve.
PERSONAL STORY
If you’re a pre-seed or post-seed start-up founder, sharing your Personal Story, or focusing on Profile Interviews will help you build trust with your potential customers and clients and also give you the edge when pitching to investors.
Plus, it’s a great way of teasing info about your product or service without it being the main focus of attention, which you may not yet be ready for.
In a competitive market, it’s easier for you to stand out as the founder than it is to drive traffic to a product or service that no-one knows about.
By raising your profile you’re naturally creating intrigue in what you’re offering and will be organically driving traffic to your website and into your sales funnel.
It’s a slower burn, but it’s more cost-effective than investing thousands in ads in the hope it brings the right customers and clients in.
PROFILE INTERVIEWS
These are great to share at any stage of business growth, as they give you the chance to peel back the layers and invite people to learn more about your back story, your journey so far and the vision and mission of your business.
Profile interviews can be done with B2B industry mags, consumer-facing publications, TV, Radio and Podcasts.
If you’re new to PR, podcasts often feel more comfortable as it’s an intimate conversation with the podcast host who wants to portray you in the best possible light, as opposed to TV and Radio journalists who may throw in a few cheeky questions to catch you off guard.
POSITIONING
If you’re looking to share thought leadership content to convey your expertise, then this is a key pillar for you.
As with profile interviews, you can be positioned in a wide variety of media outlets and extend your reach in terms of attracting the attention of your potential customers and clients.
When it comes to positioning, the focus is less on you but more on how you can help people, leaning into the different topics that feed into the goals of your business.
For example, if you’ve created a new fertility app you can talk about all the different topics related to fertility to demonstrate your expertise and be seen as a credible source of knowledge and information.
PRODUCT REVIEWS
There are so many ways that products (and services) can be positioned in the press; from tried and tested reviews, through to shopping pages, new releases and ‘what’s hot’ features.
These work extremely well in the consumer press, but business and entrepreneurial titles are also looking to review new and unique books and podcasts that will help their audience.
PR IN PRACTICE
Depending on your budget will depend on how many of the Four Pillars of PR you focus on. If you’re a founder, solopreneur or small business owner, you may focus on Personal Story and Profile Interviews as a short PR Project until you’re ready to invest in the other pillars.
If you’re an established SME, it may be that you have more budget to invest in PR, giving your PR Partner the chance to utilise all four of the pillars.
An example of how that might look:
You’ve opened a boutique spa and hotel facility in the Scottish Highlands. As you’re new, you want to make as much noise as possible to increase bookings and fire up that word-of-mouth marketing machine.
Personal Story: Your PR Partner can secure opportunities with you that allow you to share your personal story. It may be that you’re serving a very niche audience because you couldn’t find what you needed from a spa and hotel, so you decided to create it yourself.
Profile Interviews: These can be secured in relevant B2B trade titles, podcasts, local radio station, local TV programmes.
Positioning: The possibilities here are endless! You may want to share your expertise with building and renovation publications, discussing different elements of designing and building a spa and hotel, or renovating a grade II listed building.
You may want to share your expertise of the niche you’ve chosen to serve. It could be that you’re focussing on menopause and therefore can talk about the importance of mindfulness, sleep, nutrition and exercise.
It may be that you share your expertise on what it takes to start a business from scratch, sharing your tips on how to pitch to investors or raise money to get started.
Products: This could be inviting journalists to the spa and hotel to review the services or a specific treatment. It could be that you’ve developed your own range of spa products and want journalists to write about them, or include them on their shopping pages.
PR ON PURPOSE
However many of the Four Pillars of PR you choose to focus on, remember that the success of your PR tactics and the outcomes they deliver will depend on the blend of personal brand vs brand stories.
PR is so much more than securing coverage in media outlets, it’s about firing up an earned attention eco-system that’s sustainable yet scalable.
I’m a huge advocate of creating PR on purpose. Securing a few pieces of coverage in random media outlets is ok if you’re chasing short-term clout, but if you actually want to reach the right audience then you need to be more strategic when it comes to the messages you’re sharing, the news hooks you’re using and the media outlets you’re tapping into.
There’s no point chasing the clout of being featured in Forbes if your audience doesn’t read Forbes! It might give you an ego boost but it won’t deliver any of the outcomes you desire.
SCALABLE PR STRATEGY
Once you’ve chosen the right PR Partner for your business, it’s about creating a strategy that aligns with the growth goals of the business.
It’s about connecting with the right audience on the right platforms with the right message.
Most of all, it’s about building trust, creating relationships and seamlessly building an Earned Attention Eco-System that does so much more of the hard work for you, so that you don’t have to keep working hard for it.
About the Author:
Laura Perkes is a PR Strategist, Communications Consultant and the Founder of PR with Perkes. She has a degree in Public Relations & Media Studies, has worked in the industry since 2004 and is the author of the Amazon-bestselling book ‘How To Get PR.’
Laura works with values-driven, innovative, creative and diverse business owners.
To discuss how she can support your brand, you can schedule a PR Consultation call here: https://tidycal.com/prwithperkes/pr-consultation
For more info on the services she offers, visit www.prwithperkes.com
