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what is it? Public relations is simply the management of important business relationships that you do not control through economic means. Although your regular business dealings with employees, vendors, agencies, suppliers and contractors can certainly be affected by your PR work, they are more likely to be determined by your business practices and strategies. Very few employees will either join or leave a business because of a PR issue. Very few vendors will turn you down as a customer for a difference in PR philosophy. Other groups of people, though, will not be as directly affected by your business plans. The “public” in PR is, obviously, the main group we’re interested with here. Other subsets of the public can be defined as part of an overall PR strategy; customers and potential customers, neighbors to your businesses, legislators, business leaders, community leaders, the press, social and civic groups... the list goes on. what does it involve? The list of PR activities you can undertake is enormous. Just so that we’re clear, Sanestorm is not a public relations firm. If you need a full-time PR firm, we can recommend one. If you need a full-time PR person, we can help with the candidate search. If you need to think about how PR fits into to your overall marketing strategy, we can help. If you have a particular PR campaign or goal you’d like to address, we’d be glad to assist or, if it’s out of our range of expertise, refer you to other professionals. Our preference is to think about the PR aspects of your marketing right alongside the other tactics we’ll be considering. Just as we believe in the fusion of creativity and analysis, we also believe that leveraging your marketing spending with a good public relations program can produce excellent results. why do this? Managing your relationships with these groups is often much trickier and uncertain than your direct marketing strategy. Many organizations address this complexity by ignoring PR until there’s a need for some kind of “defensive” reaction, often called “damage control.” That is, frankly, foolish. If you wait until something goes wrong to begin courting your important interest groups, you’ll only ever be seen by them in a negative light. It’s like only buying your spouse flowers when you screw up. Eventually, they associate all your efforts with your bad behavior. A proactive, ongoing PR program is often relatively inexpensive, provides good contacts for other business objectives, positions you more powerfully in the community, and helps set up a predisposition in your favor throughout your market. why do it with sanestorm? As we said above, we’re not a PR firm. We’re marketing consultants. Good, well-rounded PR programs are often developed within the marketing departments of large organizations, and there’s a reason for that. PR should enhance your business strategy, not just be a “feel good” place to throw some money and time. There are plenty of ways to get your message out, make a different in the community, give employees a chance to participate and get good press. Doing a bunch of “good stuff” that doesn’t fit in with your overall marketing plan can be a waste of time and effort, and can actually do more harm than good. We can help you figure out how to work a healthy PR plan into your marketing strategy. Again, we start with your business goals and work from there. Once the plan is in place, we can certainly help out with some of the tactics, or put you in touch with a long-term PR resource for your ongoing needs. Which is, not coincidentally, another reason to go with Sanestorm for an initial PR strategy consult; we won’t try to sell you a big bag of PR add-ons that we’re not able or willing to deliver.
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