Earning Performance Recognition

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” If all you care about is having your name in the headlines, the old P.T. Barnum adage may be right for you. However, for most businesses bad publicity can have a very negative impact on their bottom line.

Most seasoned print professionals know the most important thing you can do to build a good reputation is to deliver on your promises. But even if you do, amplifying your success in doing so has become essential. In an age in which customer trust is hard to come by and easy to lose, search rankings can make or break businesses, and buyers are increasingly turning to AI overviews in their searches for information, meaning reputation is everything.

The Importance of Managing Reputation

Influencing what people say and even think about a business is the bread and butter of the public relations (PR) profession. We work to manage, improve, and sometimes repair perceptions of companies and organisations held by the public – usually a mix of customers, investors, employees (and potential employees), community stakeholders, industry peers, and the media.

Whilst it often – and particularly so within the print industry – works in concert with marketing, PR’s focus is on driving ‘earned’ media coverage, whilst advertising is ‘paid’ and content marketing is ‘owned’. The overall communications strategy behind these channels tends to mean the lines between them blur, which is why communications agencies like Karis Copp Media offer both content and PR services. In essence though, earned media is exposure achieved through reviews, commentary, and mentions in channels such as trade or consumer media, newspapers, local press, blogs, and even word-of-mouth and social media that aren’t controlled by the brand itself.

The most successful PR professionals understand the importance of building relationships with journalists. The highest profile spokespeople in the print industry understand that too

The reason PR is so important for businesses is that earned media often has a greater impact on influencing attitudes and purchasing behaviour than other channels. Or in the words of Richard Branson: “A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front-page ad.”

Increasing Visibility by Amplifying Performance

Boosting visibility has always been one of the reasons businesses have invested in PR, but its role in search engine optimisation (SEO) has made it even more important over the past decade. SEO used to be about the right mix of keywords and backlinks but today search engines factor in the intent behind users’ search queries and endeavour to serve the best results for that context. In addition, online visibility is also very closely tied to your ‘authority’ on the topics you want to be associated with. Essentially, this comes down to the credibility you build through your own blog and case study content alongside that earned through third-party reviews, recommendations, and media coverage. As AI increasingly comes to impact search engines, credibility and knowledge is becoming even more important. In fact, your company’s PR efforts are no longer just about shaping what people say about your business, they are also impacting what AI says about your business.

Before you think about SEO, first consider whether you are making the most of customer testimonials. Potential customers are more likely to be persuaded to buy when they can read (or watch a video) about customers like them who have (successfully) bought the same products they’re shopping for. Best of all, those people-centric stories are also the ones that the media and your industry peers will enjoy hearing about, creating an opportunity to ‘get the word’ out even further.

Using Human-Centric PR Tactics to Build Your Brand

If you’re not in a position to hire a PR manager or retain an agency or freelancer, there are some simple PR tactics you can try out yourself. The key is to keep it human by focusing on what drives your customer’s intent.

• Use empathy in your messaging
  What motivates your ideal customer to buy from you? The answer to this needs to sit at the heart of all of your communications if you want them to be relatable. By understanding what keeps your customers awake at night, you can use your PR activities to demonstrate how your business offers the solution. Thinking this way can also help ensure you’re telling the right stories to the right people, even if you have a variety of customer groups.
• Tell stories about real impact for real people
  Case studies, testimonials and people-centric news stories are impactful because they’re relatable. When you’re planning an investment for example, you place a different kind of value on what industry peers and trade magazines say about equipment or software than on what you read in the sales brochure. You still read the sales brochure, but you’re more likely to feel confident in your purchase if you can build a multi-dimensional impression before making your purchase.
• You don’t have to be a writer
  If you have a great story to tell about how print has had a positive impact for one of your customers, try approaching some trade media journalists to tell them about it. They’re very friendly! Also, remember that a good quality, high resolution picture can be worth a thousand words.
• Build relationships, not databases
  The most successful PR professionals understand the importance of building relationships with journalists. The highest profile spokespeople in the print industry understand that too. If you take the time to read the trade media and your local press, you’ll come to understand which publications and journalists are most interested in which kind of stories. Then you can tailor your approach accordingly. By choosing a handful of impactful stories through the year and matching them to the right publications, you stand to earn far more meaningful coverage and build longer-term relationships than if you’re spamming every journalist weekly. Effective PR isn’t just about visibility. It’s about reputation and credibility. By telling authentic, human stories, you can build lasting trust, boost your SEO, and shape how people see your brand.