To PR or not to PR, that is the question.  Well, maybe that’s not “the” question, but it certainly is aquestion.  How do you know if public relations is the ultimate marketing direction for your business?  To start, you need to write out your priorities.  What do you need your marketing to accomplish?  Do youneed to drive sales? find new clients? build your brand?  reach a new target market?  PR and media relations can achieve a number of goals, but before launching a campaign, you need to define exactly what your specific goals are.  Once you have your marketing objective list, your next step is to review your marketing budget.  How much can you realistically spend to achieve your marketing goals?  Your budget is going to help define your approach.  If you have thousands that you can dedicate to marketing each month you have different options than if you have a couple of hundred or less to put towards your marketing efforts.

If you have a finite marketing budget, your first focus should be on establishing an online presence, by building an easy to read, informational website that speaks to your clients’ needs.  The Internet offers you a way to position yourself and your company online without breaking the bank, but simply having a presence on the Internet does not mean anyone is going to see it.  You need to drive visitors to your site.  This is when a social media outreach program, article marketing program and a blog can help.

But back to the PR question, although your budget will dictate how you’re going to implement your marketing campaign, your budget, or lack of it, does not need to stop you from utilizing media relations.  I’m a firm believer that every company should implement an effective PR Campaign.  And the fact is that every company can.  From my perspective, the question isn’t if you should launch a PR campaign for your company, but how you should launch it.  If youhave a limited budget you can still decide to launch a PR campaign, but in this case you will be implementing a good deal of the campaign yourself.  As opposed to hiring a public relations firm to launch a PR campaign for you, you might choose to hire a consultant for a few hours and have him or her draw up a PR gameplan or blueprint which you will then work on your own.

But whether you hire a PR company, PR consultant or buy a good PR book that will take you through the necessary steps to launch a campaign, it’s important that you launch some type of PR outreach.  One well placed article or TV segment can turn your business around, take you to the next level and drive customers and clients to your site.  Media begets media, so, if you do it correctly, the more media you get – the more media you’ll continue to land.  Ifyou have the ability to hire a PR company do so, they know terrain and it’s their job to launch and implement an effective media campaign for you.  If youcan’t, you can certainly start out on your own to get the ball rolling; but a word of caution, don’t start contacting the media before learning how the process works.  You can do your company more harm than good if you don’t do your homework.  Hire a PR consultant for a few hours.  Learn the basics.  Draw up a campaign blueprint.  Then move forward.  Don’t waste valuable marketing time trying to figure out if you should launch a PR campaign, focus onhow.  It is the one form of marketing that reaches your target market, offers you validation and credibility and establishes you as an expert in your field.  So, should you launch a PR campaign, yes and now!

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2010