Advice on PR strategy with regard to the market, not the media.
But Were Afraid You'd Have to Pay For
Good PR doesn't work the way you think. It's simpler. It's more powerful. And you're the only one who can do it
Public relations remains a mystery to most small-company CEOs, an esoteric field often involving expensive agency retainers, massive press mailings, and the queasy feeling of money wasted.
It doesn't have to be that way. Effective public relations can drive your company's marketing plans. But you have to start at the beginning. Forget agencies. Forget press releases. Smart PR starts with a careful thought process inside your company.
-- C.H. and L.B.
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A moment of sympathy, if you will, for Stephen Tepper. He'd been so optimistic when he launched his first public-relations push in the winter of 1987 -- and so frustrated when he called Inc. last spring.
After 17 years in retail clothing Tepper and his brother, Leslie, had developed a "fashions under $10" idea. Cleared to franchise in 32 states, with the first store open and a second in the works, all he needed was franchisees.
He'd tried advertising, running ads three Sundays in a row in the franchise opportunities section of the Chicago papers. But he'd had only a handful of inquiries, and none that he could close. So Tepper turned to public relations instead. "Consumers just don't believe ads much," he reasoned -- he tuned them out himself. But a good story in the paper made people take notice. And PR seemed cheap, too, just a few thousand dollars in envelopes, printing, and postage.
Out went the press packets, with copies of Tepper's franchise brochure, to 12 different editors, along with a personal letter to each of them. "I told them everything I could think of to make us sound interesting -- that we were a local company, that we could put people in a business of their own for around $65,000, that we were great guys." But all 12 ignored him. So he tried an agency, "one with media connections." All he found there were vague promises, a boilerplate proposal, and a demand for a $3,000 minimum monthly retainer. A year and a half later he was right back where he started: confused and looking for customers.
What could I tell him? He'd been looking for short-term selling when he should have been thinking about long-term marketing. He'd started talking before he knew what he wanted to say. He'd asked what the media could do for him, not what he could do for the media.
But Tepper's biggest mistake was more fundamental, and much more easily corrected. He'd confused public relations with press relations.
It's a common misperception among small companies. A PR seminar at last year's Inc. 500 conference filled up quickly with chief executive officers eager to learn the mysteries of writing a press release for The Wall Street Journal -- and emptied quicker still when the speaker started talking about "what you can expect for your $3,000 to $8,000 monthly retainer.'
"We're only a $25-million company. We can't afford that luxury," Denny Boyd, CEO of Royal Waterbeds Inc., insists. "There's just no cost advantage for a company our size.'
Boyd is right, if you define public relations as sending out press releases or hiring an agency. But when Royal Waterbeds rolls out giant spotlights and hosts a local radio station's live remote broadcast to launch a new store, Boyd is sending a public-relations message, although he calls it sales promotion. When he donates waterbeds to a program for terminally ill children, he calls it civic responsibility. What has kept Royal Waterbeds on the Inc. 500 for five years is that all those messages fit into an integrated marketing strategy that reflects a corporate mission continually refined since Boyd opened the first of his 18 stores 11 years ago.
Every action your company takes sends a message to someone -- usually many messages to all kinds of people. If you change your logo, clean up your loading dock, press the flesh with suppliers at a trade show, start an employee newsletter, or take a banker to lunch you're practicing public relations. Many good CEOs seem to know this intuitively. The best try to manage it, to concentrate on reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.
For small companies, "the right people" usually means customers, current and potential. Presumably you could give them a reason to buy your product or service if you could meet them face-to-face; if you can't you'd better rethink your business. But with personal sales calls running some $375 a shot, you have to convince someone else to carry your message for you.
Forget the general or business press. They are the hardest messengers to convince, as well as the least effective or cost efficient. You'll get far more leverage by targeting the key players, the movers and shakers your customers look to naturally: trade journalists and leading-edge customers, key suppliers, analysts, or bankers.
Consider the buying process. Are your potential customers more likely to be swayed if they read about you in the Daily Bugle or if they hear your product praised at a chamber of commerce small-business breakfast? Will they be more impressed by an article about you in People or an article by you in Plant Engineering News?
Don't misunderstand me. After 15 years as a journalist I've seen what can happen when a small company hits the media jackpot. But that's a crapshoot at best. Better to take advantage of your size, aiming to develop a one-to-one relationship with the people at the pressure points. They are closer to your customers than the general press, and consequently easier to reach, with opinions that carry more weight.
Smart PR means thinking about marketing, not just the media. It's a process with results you can measure statistically, in sales -- not emotionally, in column inches.
There's one more benefit. If you decide in the end that you just have to have those column inches, then smart PR will give you your best chance of getting them.
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I took some heat last spring when I wrote that it's possible for CEOs of small companies to do their own PR ("Behind the Scenes," April). Letters flooded my desk, mostly from professional practioners, generally of the "Dear Sir, you cur" variety.
