Why You Need PR Even if You Don’t Think You Have Any News

On average, more than 1,000 news articles are published every day in the United States. The New York Times alone accounts for 200 of those pieces of journalism. Those articles reach a lot of readers—and those readers almost certainly contain your brand’s potential customers.

Do you want your brand to be among those headlines? If so, public relations is the way to get there.

Most brand leaders understand the fundamental application of PR as a way to bring company news into the press. For mergers, acquisitions, funding rounds, strategic hires, expansions, product launches, and so on, good PR agency might draft up a sexy press release, distribute it over a wire service, and correspond with reporters and editors to encourage coverage of your company’s news.

But what if your brand doesn’t have any hard news to announce? While the news release is the most widely-known approach to media relations and PR strategy—it’s not the only one.

In this article, we’ll shed some light on why you need PR, even if you don’t (think you) have any news.

PR Builds Your Brand and Generates Awareness

Even a major news announcement won’t make headlines if the brand story isn’t strong enough to grab a reporter’s attention. An effective PR strategy begins much earlier in the brand life cycle than many executives assume. A good strategist can help you to define your brand identity with a strategic messaging framework, branding sessions, FAQ materials, investor relations assets, website copy, and more. These assets will lay the foundation for a strong brand identity upon which to build out a robust integrated marketing framework.

Further, a good PR team can help to build brand awareness beyond hard news. Strategies like contributed articles, podcast bookings, creative events, brand activations, and more can generate media buzz in the absence of news announcements.

PR Boosts Your Credibility With the Public

By earning you placements in your customers’ favorite magazines, news websites, podcasts and more, PR can boost your credibility with the public. It’s a well-known fact in the advertising world that “familiarity breeds liking.” The more often your customers see your name mentioned in their favorite media outlets, the more recognizable and trustworthy your brand will appear.

PR is the single most effective marketing tool for building credibility because, by its nature, it must be earned on merit. Consumers today know tha ads, sponsored content, blogs and social media posts are paid-for assets. Media coverage, however, only happens when an editor or reporter has deemed a brand credible enough to cover and include in the news. PR lends that credibility to your brand, with the third-party endorsement of the press.

PR Earns Your Thought Leadership Status

It’s probably safe to assume that your executive team members want to be perceived as industry leaders, innovators and pioneers in their fields. That’s difficult to achieve if nobody knows who they are.

A robust PR campaign can—and should—include a thought leadership strategy. By leveraging speaking opportunities at key industry conferences, award submissions to showcase executives’ accomplishments, and ongoing contributor positions at respected news publications, a thought leadership program can elevate your professional profile. Even in the absence of hard news about your company, a skilled PR team can achieve meaningful thought leadership results to tout your company’s mission and place your leadership team in the spotlight.

PR Publicizes Your Differentiators

Sometimes, your brand story can be just as significant for the media to cover as an exciting news announcement might be.

Consider this: Do you think a reporter would cover a boring company without an interesting founder story that isn’t doing anything new in their industry, but has a new hire and a new product to announce? Or, would a journalist rather cover an innovative company, with no hard news to share, but with a really compelling founder story and a completely new approach to solving an industry pain point? These stories can be especially compelling when you have user testimonials, human interest stories and/or case studies to share.

By leveraging your company’s innovations and developing meaningful story angles that tie into critical issues in the current news cycle, the best PR teams can open the door to coverage of other aspects of your business, your unique solution, or your executive team’s expertise on breaking news topics.

PR Success Strengthens Future News Announcements

Even if you don’t have news to share today, building strong relationships with key members of the press can set you up for success in your future news announcements.

If reporters at leading news outlets recognize your brand as a reliable, helpful resource for industry insights, compelling commentary, expertise, and data to support their regular cadence of coverage, they’ll be much more inclined to consider covering your future news announcements. That’s why our team often conducts newsjacking or trendjacking, which is just fancy industry jargon for looking for opportunities to insert client’s executives into ongoing topics being covered in the news that are relevant to their company and then offering them up as expert sources of commentary. It’s almost a cliché, but it’s true: PR is all about building a long-term relationship between your brand and the media. And that can’t be done overnight (especially not the night before your big product announcement).

You Might Have News, After All

Are you sure you don’t have any news to share? The best PR agencies can help you to sort through your existing assets and offerings to identify newsworthy items you might overlook as a core member of the internal team. After all, what you do best is to advocate for your customers. What we do best is to advocate for your brand—in the press.

Have you achieved several small growth milestones this quarter? You might benefit from a “momentum release” to demonstrate your strong upward business trajectory. Have you successfully helped an important client overcome a business challenge? You might be ready to enact a PR push to show off your customer case studies.

For a brand leader or head of marketing in the thick of your day-to-day business operations, it can become difficult to perceive what might make for a compelling news angle. A PR agency can provide that expert, external look—and help you make the most of it.

In other words, you don’t have to wait until you have big news to share to reap the benefits of PR—and, in fact, the sooner you start warming up those relationships with journalists, the more likely they will be to cover your big news when it arrives on the horizon.

If you’re interested in learning how a PR campaign could benefit your brand, reach out to us here any time to schedule a consultation.