How PR Can Support Different Business Functions

Public Relations holds a unique power - it’s one business unit that truly supports every other business function within an organization. From sales to engineering, PR serves as a necessary link connecting a company’s work with the right audience for their product or service. It can be important to pinpoint exactly how PR is supporting each business function to maximally extract the benefits. Here are the different ways that Public Relations can support your business development, sales, marketing, and engineering plans.

Business Development

• Generating Brand Awareness - leads to easier sales: As you know by now, effective PR increases brand awareness. Whether you are trying to drum up more customers or build partnerships, having an already aware audience is a great starting point. Consumers are more likely to trust and invest in familiar brands and likewise, partners, investors, customers, and influencers almost always prefer companies who have already established a name for themselves. Getting your company in front of the eyes and ears of your target audience has the power to create a greater demand and broader reach for your product or service. 
• Building a Positive Reputation - leads to getting prospective customers on the phone: It is important to generate favorable 3rd party validation for your company. Creating a positive reputation for your brand can open the door to new opportunities with press and media, as well as adjacent opportunities within your industry. PR can also disseminate case studies that herald success stories from past customers or partners. Case studies magnify the positive impact of your product or service and can be a potent resource for building a strong brand reputation.

Sales

• Creating Credibility - leads to trust in partnership: Sales teams are often focally centered around performance. PR is often the factor that either makes or breaks that performance. You might have a stellar product or service on your hands, but add in a media article that talks favorably about the company? Sold. PR’s third party validation creates trust that can support any existing product or service and of course, sales messaging. 

• Humanizing Your Story - leads to a human connection: A good media article makes your story human. It may talk about the founder, the customers, or the problems you are solving for. It makes it engaging – and helps you connect with your potential buyer. Effective PR can help the audience understand what they are buying into, and more importantly, why. Sales scripts can take many forms, but are usually focused around the key selling points of your brand. Your PR efforts should match the narrative and messaging pushed out by sales scripts to offer a look into the heart of your company. Lastly, utilizing success stories in your PR campaigns can also be effective in driving home sales. 

Marketing

• Improving SEO - leads to brand discovery: Every article, website, and advertisement available online about your company can help optimize your search engine rankings. Therefore, releasing and posting PR materials such as press releases, can boost both awareness and engagement. PR professionals are trained in determining the most effective communication channel for a given project, whether that be a tweet or blog post. Especially if you choose to distribute your press release over a newswire (Businesswire, PR Newswire, etc), you increase your chances of good SEO and better searchability.
• Aiding Relevant Messaging - leads to finding the right customers: PR aids in the development and refinement of marketing messages by identifying storylines that are relevant to the given audience. Using messaging that is aligned to both marketing and PR strategies can support overall efforts to reach and attract customers. By using performance metrics, you can track the effectiveness of your marketing and PR work and zero in on the most productive methods. 

Engineering

• Publicizing Innovation and Tech - leads to hiring and recruiting: While PR often focuses on targeting potential customers, it can also aid in the hiring process. Driving awareness around the innovative or unique tech work your company is doing can recruit potential employees eager to get involved. A candidate can’t know that they want to work for your company unless they have knowledge on how they could fit into your team. Well-placed PR efforts can build a bridge to a world of competitive candidates you didn’t know existed previously.