Who needs public relations?

Is there a certain size a company needs to be before they can utilize public relations? Is public relations only for established companies? Is public relations just for business? If I'm doing marketing, do I need to do public relations?

These are all good questions. In fact, they're questions that many small and medium size business owners ask themselves.

Let's start by addressing the question of size. This is an instance where size DOESN'T matter. Public relations can benefit an organization of any size. Whether you're a one person company or have a fully staffed office.

If you're in the stages of starting up your business and don't have the budget to hire someone to do your public relations, you can easily manage some basic PR yourself by making contacts with industry media, drafting press releases, getting involved in your community events, etc.

A mid-sized business might consider hiring an agency (perhaps a boutique agency as they tend to be much more affordable) to be their virtual PR department. Such a company might have a point person within their organization to coordinate with the agency.

Whether you're a small or medium sized company, your public relations efforts will build visibility, credibility, and motivate your customer base to interact with you - moving them towards a purchase.

Public relations isn't only for established companies. In fact, it is amazingly successful in helping new companies become noticed, bringing attention to new products, and re-defining brands. Public relations helps to shape the public's opinion/view of your organization, so it can be used by an organization at any stage of it's life cycle. Different strategies can be tailored for each organization's specific goals.

But what if you are your product; you are the brand. Can public relations help you? The answer is yes. Public relations helps people to build visibility for their books, for speaking engagements, establishes them as industry experts, and helps them spread their message.

Speaking of getting the message out, many companies already have marketing departments and wonder if they're doing marketing, should they do any PR. The answer is overwhelmingly YES. Public relations and marketing are two different things. But, they complement eachother well when done together. Public relations raises visibility and awareness of the brand while marketing works to keep the brand, organization or individual in mind. With both marketing and public relations working together, the likelihood of gaining a client or making a sale is dramatically increased.

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