Bukola Bayo-Philip is the Knowledge Management and Communications Manager at the FCDO-PLANE Programme, Nigeria.
Anytime the term ‘Public Relations’ (PR) comes up, it is not unusual for small and medium-scale enterprises to wave it aside, with a conjecture that PR is for big companies with big budgets. This is completely untrue, especially with the tremendous changes in the dynamics of today’s business world.
According to Forbes, one major thing that growing firms need besides funding is a strong Public Relations programme.
What is PR?
According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), PR is defined as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its public.” It comprises a broad range of disciplines, including Corporate and Crisis Communications, Digital Media Management, and government affairs. Overall, it focuses on building trust, reputation and stronger relationships with the public.
If you have a good product, a purpose, and a passion, adding a strong Public Relations programme can help you achieve the following:
1. Create Awareness
Brands may have great services, but that’s not what gets them good coverage. As VentureBeat points out, “Great products fail all the time because they never make their way into the public eye”. The Telegraph also confirms that a PR strategy can be critical to the success of a small business. At the very least, good communications will let people know that a company (and its products or services) exists.
People need to know about your product or service before they can buy it or buy into it. You might have the most mind-blowing product ever, but if you don’t communicate to potential customers they will never know about the existence of the product or what it can do for them.
In PR, there are so many ways to communicate to people, and so many channels through which your brand’s story can be told. What is the interesting angle to your business? What values stand you out from the bulk? How will your line of business affect your market?
2. Attract Customers
Most consumers are always in a dilemma when making decisions about purchasing a product or service. They are beclouded by choices and product descriptions, and most times, for a safe buy, they opt for a third-party view, which can be strategically made available using PR strategy.
While advertising may be good in creating awareness, consumers know you paid for it. However, when a third party like the media validates and recommends your product or service, it creates an atmosphere of trust.
3. Build Strong Reputation
SMEs need PR to scale up, strengthen market presence and develop stakeholder relations to achieve business objectives. PR has a long history of success in aiding and managing reputation both offline and online.
How? PR stories live; they never go away, and search engines will always display names and logos of press organisations who have mentioned a particular firm. They not only give search benefits, even if published years ago, but they positively affect your bottom line.
Building a good reputation and good brand visibility takes a long time, but with PR, a company can tip momentum in its favour.
4. Stand out from the Competition
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), SMEs in Nigeria account for 95 per cent of formal manufacturing activity and 70 per cent of industrial jobs. These figures prove that to stand out from the bulk, a company in this category needs greater exposure through PR. PR helps a business look a lot larger and more solid than its competitors.
As more and more individuals get on the entrepreneurial wagon, there is a need to build and deploy efficient PR tools, and this is the part competitors ignore for lack of resources.
5. Influence the decisions of Investors
PR puts your brand in the face of potential customers and investors. It boosts the morale of current investors and draws new ones. A good PR strategy can attract venture capital if a company has no funding.
When investment decisions are about to be made, investors look out for stories and positive mentions in the press about your business. PR is the best bet for influencing opinions and decisions on a company’s brand through a third party.
6. Strategise for the Future
Forward-thinking SMEs include PR activities in their plans from the get-go because they know reputation and authority grow organically. In the long run, PR helps to build not just publicity, but credibility.
Businesses are becoming more fast-paced and rapid innovation and technology disruptions are beginning to change the way things are done. Start-ups and medium-sized enterprises need to be well-positioned for their big break.
Small and medium-sized industries should not wait till they are big to get in the consciousness of the public and the media. There is no better time than now, to start sharing a brand narrative that will eventually reverberate in the consciousness of people.
Every brand, technology, product, and service provider has a story to tell. Whether it is a business of just three people or a Fortune 500 company. These stories need to be available to those who will grow the brand: investors, the target market and the media. While it is admissible that SMEs might not have enough funds to commit to large-scale PR campaigns, those who completely ignore PR are more disadvantaged.
