Leverage a PR team to communicate effectively and consistently building a foundation for your future

Businesses today, small and large, are faced with new communications needs and opportunities that require thoughtful strategy and sustained deployment. Companies that communicate and connect with their teams, partners and customers effectively will emerge from this crisis stronger and better poised to be successful during recovery as well as during the potential next wave of closures and restrictions. As experts in communications strategy with an acute understanding of consumer mindset, we’re sharing six ways hiring the right PR team can help you today and for the days to come. 

1. Get an outside perspective on how you’re communicating internally with your team, vendors and partners. Let your PR team share their findings on how the most successful companies are achieving this and allow them to modify your tone, language, call to actions based on intent and vision. If you’re comfortable, PR can help you write new communications pieces and create a cadence of regular communication. 
2. Gain customer feedback to better understand their needs during this difficult time. What do they need right now? What’s most important to them? How do you fit into their lives - personally and professionally? What can you uniquely offer them? What are you sharing that they are engaging with? Leverage PR to help you listen and decipher the best way to communicate with your customers and community. 
3. Develop a communications plan for consistently communicating with customers in the way they seek to be communicated with for the long term. Your PR team can help you map out communications for the coming days, weeks and months that will be helpful, adaptable and strive to deepen the connection you have with your customers and community. 
4. Leverage PR for new content development. It’s so exciting to see how brands are evolving.  We saw & Other Stories partner with a floral business to share a “how to” on creating “little pieces of art with florals”.  The opportunities for brands to identify and create content their customers want is endless. A smart PR team can help you build out a content plan, identify and develop partnerships, as well as create and distribute the content. 
5. Let PR tell your stories. The primary role of PR for most companies and brands is to tell your unique and new stories - whether it’s a new product launch, a new CEO, an experience everyone will want to have, or the opening of a new studio, restaurant, store. During this time, finding a PR firm that can help you tell your stories - whatever they may be throughout this crisis - allows you to connect widely with new and existing audiences through media while also offering important third party validation that doesn’t come with advertising. Your PR team can also help you navigate the myriad of channels you can use to tell your stories – media, influencers, social media, email marketing, slack channels and more.  
6. Get connected. You’ll find PR people to be the most well-connected people you know. Leverage your PR team for their connections, and not just to media or influencers, but also to influential people and politicians. 

As you consider if PR can help your business, think beyond traditional ways companies engage with PR.  For example, you can engage with more than one PR firm at a time.  You can hire a PR firm to support your internal communications team.  You can hire a firm to help you build out strategy and let your marketing team focus on deployment.  You can hire a PR firm to act and function as part of your internal team, attending sales meetings and stakeholder calls, participating in strategy sessions and developing executive communications pieces. Still wondering if you need PR, read this.

If you’re interested in exploring how PR can help your business, reach out to us at connect@revolutionpr.com.