You are a small but growing company. Your product or service is ready to be sent out into public, your marketing team is zealous about increasing your audience numbers, everything looks great for your rising company. What could you possibly be missing? What could you possibly be missing?
The greatest mistake any company, organization or influencer could make is not making a Public Relations (PR) plan. Even if a company, whether small or large, has been surviving this far without it, it is ignorant to continue this way. Constantly overlooking the PR plan as a business aspect will result in a problem either in the near or far future.
A PR plan is a strategic scheme that focuses on building relationships with one’s internal and external stakeholders and the public. It affects your branding, your marketing and your adaptability, ensuring that your company’s time runs smoothly. It will also focus on crisis management, content creation, talking to the press, managing social media accounts, interacting with online and offline customers as well as creating partnerships.
One should note that, although PR and marketing are complementary, they are not the same thing. PR, as stated, focuses on building and maintaining relationships while marketing on selling.
Elaborating on the reasons to have a PR plan:
1. The chances of recovering from crisis or errors are higher when you have a PR plan
Nobody believes that they or their company may fall into controversy or a problem, but it happens. Whether upcoming or old, your company’s public image is fragile and can shatter in a matter of seconds, scorching all you’ve worked hard to build. The better your company is at damage control or planning ahead for the worst, the less likely you are to be affected by a problem. It’s not by chance that companies like KPLC, Safaricom or some politicians and celebrities bounce back after a scandal. They had great PR plans.
Willy ‘Willypozze’ Paul, has been dubbed king of controversies among Kenyan musicians. The Gospel artist could be described as an artist who has built his thriving music career through controversy and speculations. However, never has any of this held him back for long. His PR team must work overtime to ensure this, making his PR plan relevant to his career and possible problems.
2. Leveraging media opportunities will be possible with a PR plan
Everybody acknowledges that media exposure is greatly valuable, for both growing and big companies. However, do you know what will be the most effective way to utilize this opportunity? A PR plan will help you stay prepared in the event of this media exposure, so that you can convey the image and culture of your culture appropriately. The PR plan must be regularly revised so that its strategies are inline with the company’s goals during media interactions.
3. It is significant for effective branding
Would you say that your company has a great brand? Is it unique, convincing and well-defined? A good PR plan would make this possible.
Your brand must speak to your audience, your target audience especially. For a company to resonate with their intended audience, they should really know them, and this is where the problem begins. Some companies have a vague idea of who their target audience is or what they like, so they use ineffective methods to connect with them.
That is the importance of a PR team and their plan. They will research on, monitor and analyze your audiences precisely. With this knowledge, your company will be able to create strategic branding material that effectively works.
Joe’s wings Atlanta is a great example that uses their PR team effectively. Even though they are an upcoming fast food chain, the wing restaurant has had a great online and offline presence. Clearly branding themselves as a ‘little piece of Atlanta brought home’, they have been able to effectively resonate with their chicken wings loving audience. Also initiating the use of memes, regular free samples and questionnaires to continue engaging with their mainly youth-oriented audience. This is also effective for feedback
With all this considered, it is clear to see the significance of a PR plan and or department. Having this will enable you to have more freed-up time to focus on running your company, as that takes up a lot of time and energy on its own.
So, start working on your PR plan now, it will be worth it.
Review of: https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/analysis/company-needs-public-relations-plan-today/
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