How a local Chelmsford PR agency can help your brand
In our ever changing world, ensuring that your business or organisation maintains a positive image with its customers is crucial. Right now we can see this happening before our very eyes. Companies and organisations across the world are scrambling to keep up with the seismic shift in public opinion. This is all in response to worldwide Black Lives Matter protests. Businesses are changing the names of their products. Towns and Cities worldwide are seriously considering removing statues built to honour people who profited from the slave trade. PR agencies are working overtime to keep the public image of their clients positive and mitigate any negative coverage that might occur.
What is PR?
PR is short for public relations and involves managing the public reputation of a company or organisation. This is not, of course, all PR is but reputation management is a huge part of what we do.
PR agencies are experts at identifying the positive aspects of an organisation, idea or product and using these to create positive narratives. Through this, PR agencies are experts in creating brand loyalty. One case of this would be the fierce loyalty many consumers feel to specific companies such as Apple or Samsung. In recognising accomplishments and identifying milestones organisations can produce positive stories and improve their public image. An example would be large organisations who promote their local initiatives and charity work. Why? To make them seem personable and demonstrate they care about individuals and communities.
Even if the company is large and and may even be located in a different country; it shows they still care about you and your community.Large organisations understand the critical need to have PR departments that can continually analyse their public image and control the discussions of their business. When any negative publicity surfaces, PR departments are the first to be contacted by the leadership team. This is because PR not only works with maintaining a positive public image; we specialise at mitigating damage to it as well. Small, local businesses may not be able to afford a department dedicated to PR; but this is why there are specialists like VerriBerri, our Chelmsford PR agency, who are available to help.
How is PR different to marketing?
Marketing is paid promotion, good PR is earned. A clear example of this would be as follows, The marketing department at company 1 use paid advertising to appear in the local paper; whereas company 2 is featured for free in an article because of their PR agency. Marketing is paying for a page in the paper, PR is being quoted in the paper. There are advantages to traditional marketing. Although it can be expensive it does guarantee a company exposure. It also allows for complete creative control through visual advertisements and paid promotions. These are created by an in house team who work to continually create new content and promotions. However, sometimes the perspective audience can be skeptical knowing that this exposure was paid for. PR on the other hand builds trust using language. It can be cheaper long term because other outlets provide third-party validation and name recognition. Using PR, the media must be persuaded by your PR agency to support your product. But, when successful your audience is aware that your product has been independently verified and so can be trusted.
Why do companies need it
In the past many companies used to ignore PR agencies until they needed them. Fortunately most have now woken up to the advantages that using a dedicated PR agency can offer. When successful, good PR can lead to higher web traffic, increased sales, boosted SEO and a more recognised brand.
This is especially important for small, more locally orientated businesses. The ability to improve your reputation and control the narrative surrounding the direction your business has chosen can be crucial. A successful PR campaign can lead to reduced marketing costs due to media outlets advertising your company for you.
Featuring in an article means money saved on advertising and more time for your marketing department to invest in other areas. Further advantages include higher staff retention and a larger recruitment talent pool due to the loyalty and pride in working for a company with a good reputation.
Crucially, using a PR agency constantly monitors and controls your companies image, allowing you to stay one step ahead and prevent any misinformation about your business or products within the local community.
Importance of local knowledge
Small organisations face far different challenges to larger national ones. Budgets are tighter and need to be spent more wisely, the focus of the business is normally a highly specialised local market and employees tend to live in the targeted community. Great PR not only reaches the local community, it will turn these employees into advocates as well. Being able to tap into the local community is vital to the success of a small company. Customers are always open to the idea of supporting a local business. But asking them to change their spending habits is difficult as it takes aa substantial amount of trust for consumers to even consider a differently branded product or step through the door of a new shopfront. PR is much more effective at creating this trust than traditional advertising ever can be. Therefore using a local Chelmsford PR agency such as VerriBerri, who are constantly up to date with local affairs and understand the culture, can be the single best way to take your business to the next level.
Contact Us
Every business is unique with specific needs and requirements. Good PR listens to these, using them to promote trust and build relationships with your prospective customers. Public relations are a natural, organic way of building your brands reputation in an affordable manner and VerriBerri specialise in developing personalised plans for local businesses. So to find out more about how we can help you and your business contact our award winning Chelmsford PR agency on 01376 386 850 and see what we can do for you!