How to grow your business through Public Relations


It’s rare these days to find a successful business that doesn’t have its own dedicated communications team or PR agency to assist in enhancing its reputation.

Both SMEs and Blue Chip organisations undoubtedly need Public Relations. The reasons why are usually two-fold; a) to help them raise awareness and b) to protect their reputation.

Here we take a look at how to grow your business through PR and give our helpful hints and tips:

Set objectives for the PR campaign at the start

More than ever before, Public Relations is a tangible marketing tool. The introduction of Google Analytics (and Social Media analytics tools) means that we can measure results.  Setting clear objectives is important from the outset, as your PR agency should then be able to report back after 6/12 months on their achievements.

It’s important to be realistic with objectives, for example, a PR campaign alone is unlikely to be able to deliver 50% sales increase. The PR objectives should also be SMART (Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timed) and should be reviewed regularly in conjunction with the PR agency.

Select a reputable PR agency with specific industry experience

It is important to choose to work with a PR agency that is the right fit for your business. Most PR agencies, like Dragonfly PR, have a specialism, for us it’s construction and manufacturing, for other agencies, it could be food or FMCG. Do your research at the start and find a PR agency that has the right experience in your key market sectors. This means they should already have established relationships with journalists and be able to write authoritatively within a short time, minimising the amount of time it takes for them to get up to speed.

Create a plan for the next 12 months

Any reputable PR agency should work to a plan and that usually involves creating a PR schedule for the client for the next 12 months. This is the way we work with all our clients, as it gives them full visibility over our planned activities. This will include thought leadership articles, blogs and case studies. We use it as a working document, to highlight when projects have been completed and what the results are. As the old saying goes, ‘failure to plan means to plan to fail’. Working to a plan therefore means you have a structure for the campaign and the client knows there will be activity taking place every month, rather than relying on them to come up with stories. Having a proactive agency is the key to a successful Agency-Client relationship.

Grow your social media presence

Social media is an important part of any PR campaign these days and we encourage clients to take advantage of our integrated social media service. Any social media campaign should have its own objectives and strategy that dovetails with the overall PR strategy.

It is a straightforward process to monitor social media engagements, likes, follows and retweets, which means we can demonstrate just how well this is working. It also means that online content, such as blogs or media articles about your business can be shared with an even wider audience too.

Monitor and evaluate at six monthly intervals

Every PR or digital marketing campaign should be reviewed at least every six months. This gives the opportunity for the PR agency to demonstrate how much media coverage they have achieved and to review Google Analytics and Social Media Analytics to demonstrate the impact this has had on visits to the website or sales conversions.

We have recently completed a six month review for a construction trade client and delivered over 1m opportunities to see, with an advertising equivalent of £65k and a PR value of £195k!

To find out more about our business to business PR and digital marketing service, where we specialise in helping construction and manufacturing companies to increase sales and awareness, contact our team on 01709 300130 or email: marina@dragonflypr.co.uk

Call us on: 0114 349 5341