Using PR makes identifying your ideal customer EASY. If you had to “fire” every customer except one, but you knew if you kept that one, every customer from there forward would be just like the one you kept, who would it be? Particularly, how would they think and feel about you?
This is important, because PR uses a bunch of tactics to keep your customers and prospects thinking and feeling the way you want them to feel. Publicity is the means by which you share that, attracting your ideal customer faster and quicker than advertising and direct mail.
So why don’t small businesses use PR more? Because the perception is that it’s only for corporates who can afford to use high-flying PR agencies. Wrong!
Worse, an awful lot of small business consultants steer their clients away from using PR because they think it’s some sort of black magic performed by $2000 a day consultants. As a result PR is saved for the ‘big boys’ and small business is foolishly encouraged to do advertising and direct mail because the perception is it’s easier and cheaper.
Yet research shows EVERY time, the PR dollar outperforms advertising, direct mail, etc in marketing budgets. So why do SME’s — and the people advising them - choose marketing tactics less likely to get return on the budget?
Small business and its advisers need to step up and understand what PR can achieve. I invite anyone working in marketing with small business to attend one of my Publicity and PR Bootcamps in March to really see the difference it makes - for a fraction of the marketing spend.