Public relations is the use of third parties to endorse the messages that an organization wants to make about itself, its products and services or issues that are important to it.  For most businesses and nonprofit organizations, public relations means placing stories about the utility in news media that cover its service area.
 
Public relations is a remarkably effective tool for communicating with virtually all of your audiences, including customers, employees, vendors, the general public and elected officials.  The primary reason that PR is so effective is that when a story runs in the news media, the third party—be it the daily newspaper, consumer website or evening TV news show—is endorsing the validity and importance of the information.  Contrast this endorsement with advertising.  Everyone knows that an organization pays for advertising, so it is inherently less credible than PR.  In fact, some studies have shown that when people see information in an article they are six to eight times more likely to believe it than if they see the same information in an advertisement.
 
Another advantage of PR is that it is less expensive than advertising.  Our experience has been that the typical PR program will cost from one-fourth to one-tenth the price of an advertising program that reaches the same number of people.
 
But to say that PR is less expensive than advertising is not to say that it is inexpensive.  Whether an organization uses internal staff or hires a public relations agency, it must allocate resources to determine which media will help it reach the audiences of importance to it, analyze the needs of that news media, write material, present it to the targeted news media, coordinate interviews and collect stories.
 
Here are some of the strategies that an organization can use to design and implement PR relations programs that are both inexpensive and cost-effective.
 
Start with objectives
 
If you don’t know exactly what you want to achieve, you will dissipate resources.   Some common objectives of a PR campaign include:

• Raise awareness of the organization and its products or services in the marketplace.
• Link the organization’s name with a clear message.
• Introduce a new product or service.
• Demonstrate that the organization is a good corporate citizen.
• Advocate a position on an issue of importance to the organization.

It is important to quantify these objectives, and the best quantification is the number of stories generated and cost per story.  For an overall PR program that consists of at least several distinct campaigns, you want to generate enough stories so that your cost per story is between $200-$750.
 
Consider the budget
 
Every marketing communications vehicle, including PR, requires a critical mass of frequency or it will be ineffective.  The critical mass is the point at which appreciable numbers of people are recognizing and remembering the message of the marketing campaign.  If an organization does not have a budget sufficient to obtain critical mass, the entire communications investment is wasted.   For example, it will probably take about 20-40 print, broadcast and Internet stories to make the public aware of a new service.   To generate 20-40 stories might require three to six separate forays at the news media, be it as news releases, pitches to individual reporters, an Op/Ed piece or any of a number of other common PR tactics.  If the organization does not have the funds to pursue such a program, it should reevaluate its plans.
 
Focus on media of importance to target audiences
 
You are trying to reach specific target audiences with your PR program.  To reach those targets you employ the news media.  Any work that your organization does to generate a story in news media not read by the target audience is wasted effort. 
 
Make sure it’s newsworthy
 
Any organization can fall victim to inward thinking, i.e., thinking that something important to the organization is also important to its target audience.  A good marketing department understands that it has to describe products and services in terms of benefits to the target market.  But with PR, there are two target markets:

1. The audience you want to reach
2. The news media itself.

Something can be of interest to both your utility and the target audience, but if the news media doesn’t care, your PR campaign will not succeed.

Tags: PR, Public relations

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