Why do small businesses need PR?
As a small business owner, you maybe wondering how Public Relations (PR) might work for you and your business. This blog will help you get started with your PR. Here you’ll find pointers on what small business owners need to prepare before you set to work on your PR, the importance of good PR for both product and service businesses and why pictures play a vital role in your PR story.
This blog started out as a conversation with Rebecca Slater from Beck and Call PR on my Instagram Live. You can view the Instagram Live in full here. Rebecca and I have been collaborating for the past year on The Bigger Picture – a one-stop package designed to give your small business a PR and photography kick start.
What is the role of PR in business?
PR is part of your overall marketing mix and sits alongside your:
sales
marketing
social media
PR
On its own, PR isn’t a sales driver. When used together in the marketing mix, a successful PR campaign will help to:
get your name out there
drive traffic to your website
increase footfall
convert leads into sales
What do you need to consider before using PR?
The aim of a good PR campaign is to get results and maximise exposure for you and your business. So, first impressions are vital. Before you start working on your PR, ensure your business is in order. If there are any chinks in your processes or systems, then PR will not help. To start, make sure your website is top-notch. Check everything is up to date and in the best possible condition for when new people land on your website. It’s totally pointless spending time getting lots of great publicity only for visitors to reach your website and find your links don’t work, or your featured product isn’t in stock.
What is PR storytelling?
Storytelling is massively important for you and your business. People buy from people. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is, you’ll always generate more interest if people can relate to you. One way to help you stand out in the noisy online world is by telling stories. If you can connect with your audience on an emotional level, then you’ll be remembered for the way you made your audience FEEL.
Stories may not be immediately obvious – especially if it’s yours. The role of a good PR is to help you recognise and identify your own story. They’ll spend time talking to you about the situations and circumstances in your life in order to identify what can be used for YOUR story. This doesn’t mean your story has to be out of this world or extreme, but it has to belong to YOU.
To help get you started, think about:
What did you do before you set up your business?
Your family set up?
Why did you start your business?
Are there any significant events that have happened in your life?
This process is really important as a way for a PR to unpick stories that you may have over looked or, you might think aren’t relevant to your business story.
What makes a good PR story?
A good PR story is timely. For example, a business birthday is a milestone celebrated by many small business owners. Another year in business is a great achievement, but on its own is this event an interesting news story? Would it make national or regional press? No. Your business birthday is still part of your PR story. It’s something to talk about on your social channels or a blog post. It just isn’t a news story. One way to make your business birthday newsworthy would be to look at the timings of your business birthday. Check your calendar for awareness days and months that might work with your business values as well as your products and services.
Where is your audience?
There’s no reason why a small business can’t be featured in a national newspaper or glossy magazine, but don’t dismiss regional or local media coverage. Think about your objective and who you want to reach. If you’re a product business with a product that sells online, then you can reach people everywhere. If you’ve got a physical shop, then not so much. Think about your objective. Do you want to generate extra brand awareness for your business? Increase footfall? Or get you more customers to your shop?
Sharing a personal story
First and foremost, you need to think carefully about whether you’d be comfortable sharing a personal story. If not, then don’t. Once it’s in the public domain, you won’t be able to take it back. A personal story does work really well but it’s really important to pitch it properly.
If you’re not comfortable sharing a personal story, then a great way around this is to share your customer’s or client’s stories. A client or customer case study is a great way to let your audience know about your service or your product. PR is seen as more trusted if it is endorsed by someone else. So make sure you get your happy customers to talk about how your product or service changed the way they worked, or helped them do something more efficiently.
Why are pictures important to a PR story?
Images can make or break a story and they can really help get your story seen by a journalist. And if your images are not high quality, then you could lose the opportunity of getting your story used.
Here’s five more reasons why you need high quality, professional images to accompany your PR story:
Newspapers and magazines love them because they take up space. They look nice and draw the eye in and get the reader to read the story.
They’re a great way to let people know what your business is about as you can physically see the product.
If you’re a product based business, it’s really important to have cut out images (images on a clean white background) so your products can be ‘cut-out’ and added to a spread in a magazine feature of other images related to a theme or event. These really help to showcase your product and will help generate more sales and interest in your products.
Great to have a bank of high quality images that are print quality so you’re ready to go when pitching your story.
Great images will help you stand out on your website, blogs, social media posts and all your marketing.
To round up
Before working with a PR you need to make sure your business is up to date and in the best possible condition by:
Checking your website/shop/business premises is in order.
Collecting a bank of stories and high quality, professional images about your business – this should be an on-going process.
Working with a PR will help you stay on top of this. Your PR will be able to give you a six-monthly or yearly plan which will include:
building contacts with the press and media
finding out about events and developments in your industry
sourcing opportunities for you to speak about or comment on
finding awareness days that relate to your product or service
If you’re looking for high quality, professional images to use online and in print, AND you want PR support, get in touch with Rebecca at Beck and Call PR to see how The Bigger Picture can help you get things off to a flying start.
For more information, book your 75-minute Discovery Call with Rebecca here.
Once your Discovery Call is booked an invoice will be sent to pay 50% of the total. The remainder will be paid once you (the client) has approved the images and press release copy and media distribution list.
Susan is a brand and product photographer and owns Susan Truseler Studio - She creates product images and styled flat lays for small business makers, designers, online shop owners and helps female coaches and founders get more visible online with personal branding photography.