Links

Donate:

Why donate? I want to spend my time directly helping people, like you, by creating and maintaining this website. I do this because it’s a passion of mine – with that said, it’s not cheap running a website these days.

So, if you found this website useful, help me keep this site going and free by donating a small sum to help pay for the hosting and bandwidth bill. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you’d like to donate, every bit helps.

To to make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check please click the button below:

Thank you for your support and encouragement!

Understanding Public Relations

When we speak about promoting a product or service, we are discussing a small aspect of a very large public relations campaign. 

Public relations, which also include media relations, are a way of reaching out not just to prospective customers but also to existing ones, to investors and to the public at large. Promoting your product means saying the right things about your product, in the right places to the right sets of people.

The very first step in conducting a successful public relations campaign is to ask questions as you would in any marketing campaign, like these:

• What is the target audience you are trying to reach?
  
  
• Why are they important to you, what do you hope to gain once you have their attention and what you plan to say so that they are convinced?

Regardless of whether you are trying to sell a new product or service to prospective customers or improve loyalty amongst existing customers, you should have a clear, positive message in all your public relations campaign.

Identify the key message you are trying to get through, get this message on top and then follow up with your supporting messages.

Here are a few tips that you can use to have a successful public relations campaign.

• Once you know who your target audience is and what you are going to convey to them, you need to reach out to them through various media. For example, you may need to know what they read – do they read only the local newspaper or do they also read the major daily newspapers? What about industry-specific publications? Do your customers attend trade shows or are they members of any organization? What radio shows do they listen to? Do they use the Internet for looking up information or for entertainment purposes? Once you know what media they use frequently, you can make a clear list of all the possible sources in that media and then insert your campaign in them.
• While an advertisement in a newspaper, magazine or even an online advertisement can create some buzz around your product and your home-based business, you will gain even more credibility if you are touted as an expert by a reputed publication, one that most of your prospective customers refer to.
   
• Simple networking is a great way of reaching out to people who matter. For example, you could contact journalists who specialize in the area related to your business and pitch your message to them. Remember, journalists probably receive story ideas from hundreds of small businesses like yours. You should therefore have a very clear idea of why your story matters more and how it will sell to the people who read the publication. You could also contact editors of the publications that matter to your business and offer well-researched, informative articles for their publication in return for a mention of your product. If nothing else, write up an opinion piece or a letter to the editor and get the name of your business in print.
  
  
• You could join organizations frequented the most by your prospective customers and attend various networking events. Make contact with them, exchange business cards and slowly share your message with them.
  
  
• You could also look for other community events that your target audience will attend. Speak to the organizers and see if you could give a lecture or a talk on a topic that would be related to the event but would also lie in your area of expertise.

Building a good public relations image takes time, some creativity, lots of effort and a fairly good knowledge of the audience you want to reach.

You also need to have settled on a very clear, positive message that you want to send out to people. As more and more people keep hearing the name of your business and start associating it with a positive image, yours will be one of the first names they will think of when it comes to buying a product in your area. 

Here are some things you should be careful about, so that they do not affect your public image:

• You have to carry out a carefully focused public relations campaign; cold calling people will only cause them to boycott your product.
  
  
• Since you will always have some competition to face, make sure you take the initiative by being bold and using punchy lines – safe but boring is not the way to go.
  
  
• Never attend any social networking event or local community event without being completely prepared. Even the most seasoned marketing professionals make sure that they plan and practice ever minute of their speech and have notes on everyone they are hopeful of meeting in the event. This will help you make the most of your time and gain more positive exposure for you.