Thursday, May 25, 2017

3 reasons PR is essential for small- and medium-sized businesses

For the uninitiated, the world of public relations is a foreign land rarely encountered, poorly explained and sorely misunderstood. Awkward conversations about PR abound in both social and professional settings – including (but not exclusive to):“Aren’t PR and marketing the same thing?”, “PR is out of mycompany’s budget”, and my personal favourite, “Really, what is PR good for?”.

Tough conversations are part and parcel of PR professionals’ lives. However, one interesting observation that many PR practitioners can attest to is that more often than not, the non-believers of PR tend to skew towards small medium businesses (SMBs).

To successfully sway the critics, one must first start by understanding them. SMBs are a unique bunch and are understandably different from their MNC counterparts – the big-ticket differentiator being their budget which shapes their beliefs and values about how a business should be run, and by extension, how big a role PR should play.

However, there is still light at the end of the tunnel – in true PR spirit, it is all about understanding the target audience, crafting the most convincing message and creating a strong (and hopefully lasting) relationship between SMBs and PR. In the same vein, we need to understand SMBs’ pain points before we can accurately target the source of their PR misconceptions and nip the source in the bud.

With that said, here are some common misconceptions SMBs have about public relations and how PR professionals can dig deep into the shoes of SMBs in order to tweak their perspectives in favour of PR:

1. PR can boost your offerings.

A common misconception is that the proof of the pudding is solely in the eating. This line of thinking is highly relevant to SMBs, especially since they usually emphasize local market strengths and connections with the community, which explains their upfront methods of gaining traction. It is therefore important to reassure SMBs that while good quality give their product a strong voice, PR serves to amplify and authenticate this voice, drawing more people to experience their product.

2. PR affects a business’ bottom line.

Without a direct correlation between PR and revenue, SMBs have a hard time understanding how a public relations strategy can play a significant role in their business. It does not help that advertising and marketing – PR’s more ostentatious cousins – have a better reputation of driving revenue. This results in SMBs emphasizing the supposed money-makers and neglecting PR. Hence, as PR professionals to our SMB clients, we need to emphasize the fact that PR is not about short term revenue, but about promising the long-lasting relationships which goes a long way in increasing visibility, credibility and trust of both current clients and prospective clients. This strong relationship, in turn, will open the business to a larger audience in which revenue naturally follows.

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3. An organization’s digital presence is paramount to success.

In this day and age, if any company still thinks that a well-maintained online presence is not important, they might just need to re-evaluate their business strategies. According to Enterprise Innovation, 86% of respondents look to the Internet first when searching forinformation or recommendations. Yet, 59% of small businesses worldwide still do not have a website. While it may seem to SMBs that efforts outside of simply creating a company website are unnecessary resources, it is important for PR professionals to highlight the fact that with the rise of the trust economy and increasing reliance on the Internet, it is now a necessity to always be visible online to draw eyeballs to their product – which, dependent on the target audience, also includes social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

It is natural to fear what we fail to understand. Hopefully, by bridging the gap between the perception and realities of public relations that SMBs have, PR professionals can now guide them with slow and steady steps to new-found belief, instead of persuading them to take the leap of faith. Perhaps in the near future, the world of public relations would not be so foreign for SMBs after all.

Tammiann How is a PR pro at The Hoffman Agency Singapore.

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