Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net. Word count is 990 including guidelines and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2004. Do You Really Need PR?
The right kind of PR, that is,
kind that puts you in charge of care and feeding of a lot of people who play a major role in just how successful a manager you’re going to be?
As that manager, it also helps if you accept fact that you need kind of external stakeholder behavior change that helps you reach your business, non-profit or association objectives.
And it’s also helpful if you believe it’s a good idea to try and persuade those important outside folks to your way of thinking, then move them to take actions that help your department, division or subsidiary succeed.
Given all of that, if it now appears that you need to do something positive about behaviors of those outside audiences that most affect your operations, yes, you really need public relations!
I mean, look at sort of results you could be getting: politicians and legislators starting to view you as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities; prospects starting to do business with you; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; membership applications on rise; customers starting to make repeat purchases; community leaders beginning to seek you out; welcome bounces in show room visits; higher employee retention rates; and even capital givers or specifying sources beginning to look your way.
So we agree that, yes, you really need public relations. But here’s what’s got to happen.
From get-go, assure yourself that public relations people assigned to your department, division or subsidiary know you’re determined to find out what your most important outside audiences actually think about your organization. Reason being that target audience perceptions usually lead to behaviors that can help or hinder you in achieving your operating objectives.
Pin down which audiences are really key to your success then build and prioritize your list of important outside groups of people whose actions most affect your unit. And begin work on that top external audience.
Your new public relations effort will depend for its success on how efficient you are in gathering perceptions of your organization held by your key target audiences.
Put your public relations team to work interacting with members of that #1 outside audience. Or, if you can tap a good sized budget, you can ask a professional survey firm to do job for you. However, because your PR folks are already in perception and behavior business, my choice would be to use them for this assignment.
Either way, someone must interact with members of that prime audience and ask questions like “What do you know about our operation? Are you familiar with our services or products? Have you had any negotiations with us? If so, were they satisfactory?”
