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3 Amazing Things Public Relations Can do For Your Company
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There are a few things public relations can do for your company, and some people may disagree. Overall, there ought to be a consensus on the benefits and roles of PR in a company, but it may be up to you as the PR professional or PR team to convey those benefits. With PR being seen as a secondary option to advertising, you need to advocate the use of PR, and you need to show some measurable proof.

To start, try sharing some of the conceptual benefits of public relations; there are many, but below are are some of the best. Public relations is the start of a relationship with a customer, and to get that ball rolling, you have to know why having that relationship is important. Customers trust someone they know, and using PR, you can be a more transparent company.

With some help from the authors of Strategic Public Relations, here are a few things PR can do for your company:

• "Build your brand." I've said it before: public relations, not advertising, builds a brand. A brand cannot be built on advertising alone since PR is more credible and trustworthy than advertising. For a company with millions of dollars in excess monies to spend, advertising may work, but for realistic conditions and companies with limited resourced, creating publicity can make or break your brand's success. Partaking in events, trade shows, or press conferences can help to raise awareness about your products or services. Advertising hopes to relay information, but a press release, newspaper article, or trade show appearance can help to share information and have a meaningful conversation and connection with a customer.

• "Create trust for your company and its products." This adds to the first bullet point: "Because advertising is viewed as more credible than advertising, it's a great tool for helping customers understand that they can trust your product." While trust is not gained overnight, PR can greatly increase your chances of generating that trust from customers. Advertising comes from the company by the company in the hopes that the customers' perceptions and beliefs will change. PR also comes from the company (with press release writings and other copy), but it takes another company to advocate you and your product to generate real PR. To get a story in a newspaper or to have a journalist write about you in their blog, your company must first get their trust by having a real product of value. More often than not, media talk about other products or companies that they've heard of through other media contacts, and the information continues to spread. Being a trusted company to some can turn into a trusted company to more. Credibility has to be earned from customers reading about you, testing your products, and talking about you. Advertising tries to make them trust you, whereas PR can help them to trust you on their own.

• "Shift the perception of your product." "PR is also a useful tool for changing the way customers view your product." Your product, depending on its stage in the life cycle, may already have a perception customers associate it with. These perceptions are sort of like stereotypes about a product that are very hard to change or shift. For example, big cars are usually thought to use more fuel (which more often than not, they do). To change this perception, a company would need to use some major PR tactics. They would need to utilize the media and customers to help that perception change. If the car in fact had lower gas consumption, having consumer reports or tests done on the vehicle could help the company product change its perception. The authors use the example of Vespa who wanted to change the perception of their scooters; they urged cities to advocate the use of less oil, took reporters on test drives, and also created podcasts. This in turn helped them to boost their sales by more than 25% after the 2005 campaign launch. (pg. 12)

PR can be the most useful tool to your company. While advertising is necessary to keep your brand alive once the possible publicity runs out, PR can greatly benefit a company. There are many other things the authors write about in the first section of the book. For a complete list and more detailed information on the benefits of PR, please check out the Strategic Public Relations book.

What are some of the benefits of PR you've experienced?