As a creative communications consultant, I’ve discovered that many entrepreneurs don’t effectively use public relations. They certainly don’t understand its power to brand. PR’s practices and branding power seem to be the “best kept secrets,” of high-profile publicists and corporate marketing gurus.
Imagine you are slaving to service your customers, gain new ones, improve your product and expand your margins. Imagine though your business is small to mid-sized, your goal is to provide the best your category has to offer. Imagine you do have a vision, yet building the “brand” to cult-like status has eluded you. Most of your public
-those you have yet to reach- won’t know any of this about you or even that you exist, unless you deliberately, brand. And while you may have learned everything else about your business through trial and error, unless you know how to successfully build your brand, you will only be imagining you have one.
A successful brand is no accident. Branding is more than producing quick-slick ads and brochures with pretty logos. It is a strategic creative process positioning your company, project or personality in the minds of the masses. Your public, your fans, your customers.
PR works in branding because branding is more about instant understanding of your message and your mission.
When your message is relevant and means something beneficial to its intended audience, it’s memorable. Exposing this using PR builds your brand. This is what places you apart from your competitors as well as your colleagues. This is what enhances your credibility, then increases your sales and ultimately, your income. The right public relations-driven branding strategy can take you from local to national to international growth.
HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Branding is the establishment of mass-market name recognition and more importantly, message recognition. This is when a “mass audience” knows who you are and understands, and relates to, what you offer. When they hear your name or see your logo they immediately know what you’re all about. It makes those masses aware of how much better, or better off, they’d be by connecting with your brand. One by one, PR-based branding attracts and gets those masses to buy. Your sales message has been so well promoted that your company (or product, individual, etc.) name has become the message.
To have this reflexed recognition and response happen takes time. It takes planned effort. It takes word of mouth strategically spread on a mass scale. “Buzz” plays a part but without planning, buzz is a fickle phenomenon usually short-lived. Buzz is widespread when you’re hot – and in that aspect, for a time keeps you hot. But the very nature of being hot is that eventually you cool off.
This is why a PR plan is mandatory. You need a public relations plan that generates and manages media exposure and word of mouth for you, consistently. “All buzz all the time,” I like to say. Branding involves consistent publicity- driven action. This is the secret. And it should and can be achieved in your local market and beyond.
PR-based branding begins through analysis and an extreme understanding of your reason to be; your mission, your target, your competition and your offering. This information is the foundation from which to create ongoing efforts worthy of ongoing stories and “buzz” about you. Executed correctly, PR distributes those stories and thus, exposes and spreads -not only the experience- but the DESIRE for the experience of your brand.
The PR-based branding strategy is the most necessary and ‘doable’ method for success on the small business or independent operator budget. It is the most effective way to establish your unique identity in the minds of your public and convert them into customers.
Once the public recognizes you on a mass level, consumers begin to convert into friends; friends who understand and embrace your vision enough to consistently buy what you have to offer; friends influenced by, and appreciative of, what you’ve created especially for them; friends loyal to your brand.
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