A public relations company can offer support in various ways, but usually PR agencies are hired to help increase the visibility of brands or people. The reason for this is to help their businesses grow.
We’ve written more about what the role of a PR agency is here.
While there are a number of different tactics that public relations agencies use to deliver PR, these are the most common ones you’ll find a PR agency doing for its clients:
- Press releases
Press releases are the bread and butter of the industry. A PR professional will come up with interesting stories and angles about their clients, write a press release and then send it out to relevant journalists who might be interested in covering. If the story is covered, then of course the business featured will be visible to the audience that consumes that specific title / media.
- Features
Features are another way of getting media coverage. The way features usually work is that a journalist will write about a wider topic, for example, the impact Brexit will have on a certain industry, and ask for relevant companies to contribute to that article. If a PR agency is in regular contact with key journalists and one happens to be writing a feature that is relevant, then hopefully it will bear certain clients in mind. Otherwise, a public relations company may pitch a feature idea to a journalist (which will feature a client) and the journalist might want to cover!
- Opinion and comment pieces
Another PR tactic might be placing an opinion or comment piece in a specific title and essentially these position a company spokesperson as a thought leader. Comment or opinion pieces can be about any relevant topics and can sometimes be off the back of another story that has been in the news. This requires the PR person to keep on top of the news to spot opportunities that their clients can ‘piggyback’ off.
- Interviews and profiles
Interviews happen if a journalist is looking to profile your client or is asking particular questions about a new story involving the client. An in-person or phone interview, require the most input from the client, and a supporting PR agency can help to brief and media train its client for that occasion. Otherwise journalists sometimes allow for written answers to interviews, which a PR professional can happily fill out on behalf of the business it’s supporting.
- Press office
A public relations company can offer press office support to the business or brand (or even person) it is supporting. This includes things like responding to media requests for information and or quotes, or even reactively pitching the client to journalists that have covered stories that are relevant to the client’s industry, as a way of shoehorning a quote or mention of the client.
- Influencer engagement
Sometimes influencer engagement can fall within a social media or marketing agency’s remit, but PRs can deliver this too. At Radioactive PR, we offer influencer engagement as it’s another channel where we can get the companies we work with exposed to their audiences. Like media coverage, an influencer covering a client can be really valuable as it offers third-party endorsement of the business or brand to the influencer’s audience. However, in most cases than not, an influencer will need to be paid to offer support.
These are some, but the most common, tactics that PR agencies use to get their clients covered. However, the tactics that are used depend entirely on the objectives set out at the beginning (what the client is looking to achieve from using a public relations company) and what’s used to achieve these for a company will differ to the next.
If you’d like to know how our public relations company can support you, please get in touch!