An example of public relations might be exhibiting at a business event
One phrase many of us hear in the world of public relations, press relations, marketing and content writing is ‘what’s the return on investment?’. If someone keeps asking that same question over and over again, I know they focus on cash in business and not on people, opportunity, outcomes or taking a risk.
Yet the most successful business owners take risks all of the time, often these risks are calculated and thought through but running a business is risky. Today I often hear business people say ‘we want certainty’ or ‘we want stability’ and it does confuse me - when in business have I ever truly had stability? When, these days, in employment are we ever really ‘safe’? The notion of a job for life has, for most of us, gone. My grandfathers and great grandfathers were coal miners, working in the North Somerset Coalfield thinking it would go on for ever. But it didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong - in my line of work, you do have to look back and measure as far as you can how successful something has been, but you also have to think - what does success look like? An example for me which has come up several times over the years - is the business person who wants national publicity in the UK.
If someone says to me “I only want national publicity, I’m not interested in the local press’ I instantly know they don’t understand how the media works and they probably won’t be suitable clients for me. Getting national publicity in the UK is difficult and it takes time and effort on my part and on the client’s part. It can take two to four years if it happens at all - and for some clients it might be nice but it’s irrelevant to the success of their business. Then we will talk about the return on investment against their business goals. Sometimes you’ll have to invest in more than my time and your time. If you think you can work with me for a few months and you’ll be in the Daily Mail or The Times, you are not listening to anything I’ve said - you are holding on to an idea of what is ideal, not the reality. It could happen - and it has in the past - but it’s very, very unlikely.
Back to ‘return on investment’ - what’s the return on investment of any type of public relations activity? The answer - I don’t know because I don’t know what you are going to do with the opportunities which come your way, through me.
Can you list the return on investment of your website? your logo? your office? your staff? your kit? What you should be looking for is an organic growth in your business over time because you are more visible and present than you’ve ever been before. There are no shortcuts to this - but you do have to invest and those who do will see more growth. Do you have to keep on doing it? The answer is yes but it does depend on your overall business goals.
If your goal is to get enough work to fill the hours when your children are at school - you may be able to stop for a while. But when clients fall away - as they always do, you’ll have to start again. If your goal is to get 30 paid members for your organisation - do you stop when you’ve got to 30? Possibly but what happens when a member leaves? Do you start again from scratch?
An example of public relations is telling people what you are doing - especially if you are working with someone who is well known.
What I often say to clients - look for the outcomes and opportunities which come your way - as that’s what good public relations does. Done well, by yourself or a third party, it will create opportunities for you, opportunities to sell your products or services, mainly, in my view, by creating the correct environment for people to buy from you. However if your sales process is terrible, or you have not had any training in how to effectively close a sale - is that my fault or is that your fault?
Let me give you an example - I worked for client who ran high profile events involving big UK sports stars. I did some minimal PR for this person for an event which had the capacity for 200 people to attend at around £50 a head. His only investment, as far as I could see, was me writing two stories about the event. When he was about half full, he kept on saying ‘people ought to be booking on this event, it’s going to be amazing’ and ‘I’m not running an event here again’ and finally ‘the press relations are not working’.
I had to admit I was a little confused, it was a great event and the publicity did get out there through the usual channels in that particular area. I decided to do some mystery shopping and paid for a couple who loved sport to attend. Their brief was to ask around about why and how people booked. The answer came back load and clear - many people had visited the relevant website but the booking form took them to an A4 word document which had to be printed out and then sent off with payment. This was some years ago but even then it was old fashioned. One guest told my friends, she’d have bought seven tickets but couldn’t be bothered to do all of that for her contacts who may have wanted to attend.
I later fed this information back to the client suggesting a complete overhaul of his website to make it more user friendly and to make it easy for people to buy. He refused flatly, he refused to acknowledge this could even be a problem. The next time he wanted to do another event and came to me for press relations I turned him down. I knew the return on my investment of my time would be wasted - because he didn’t listen.
My point in telling you this story is - return on investment in public relations is not solely about the performance of your PR expert, it’s equally about your performance, what you do with the opportunities which come your way. I’ve yet to meet the PR person who can vomit miracles - but if you meet that person please put me in touch - I’d like to make the most of the opportunity.