Many Small and Medium businesses (SMBs) fight for a slice of the action in fiercely competitive markets.
It’s difficult for many to invest large sums of money in advertising, but they fear they will be out of the loop if they don’t.
Public Relations is an affordable or accessible alternative to the usual advertising and marketing strategies,
Sometimes, they can produce even better results (since news stories are deemed more reliable than advertisements).
Below are some suggestions to help you create innovative Public Relations campaigns.
Get those lines in order – your business is getting interested!
These suggestions should be customized to the specifics of your business model, your approach, your customers, and the journalists and media. However, they should offer some general guidelines to follow:
Transform a section of your company into a unique gathering location:
- The ability to attract people to your establishment is the first step to converting them into customers. If your company is off the main road or there’s lots of competition, it is possible to start getting people to visit your company by offering them an area for specially designed meetings.
- It would help if you chose a topic for your gathering that meets the following requirements:
- It provides an engaging event for members of your group (such as an exhibit, a talk, or even a game).
- It is more than likely to be a “Hot” news item that has not been attempted before in this region and is a subject that concerns the majority of the population.
- Is it directly related to your company’s service or strategy and your reputation to the greatest extent possible (if you sell natural food additives, for instance, or a place to meet for environmental preservation).
- Organizing this does not necessarily mean you must spend a lot of money. You can find ways to keep costs minimal, for instance, by:
- Young professional performers and artists have a platform where to gain experience and recognition without the need to pay any money (these may be artists who are aspiring comedians, hairdressers, etc.).
- Find volunteers and encourage them to join you in the task. It should be easy to connect this location to a charity or goodwill activity – like making gifts for children at hospitals in your area.
Try breaking records or win an event that is a particular contest:
- For instance, if your establishment is an eatery, you could organize an event where people try to beat the Guinness World record for eating a particular food item. If you’re a carpenter, attempt to create a record by making a chair in the fastest time possible and invite guests or their loved ones to place bets on the outcome.
- Create competitions for specific individuals who will likely make the news, for example:
- Competitions for unique and “interesting-news-items” groups of people (children, homeless people, disabled people)
- A provocative contest is only allowed if this is what you want your image of the business to be: inciting!
- “Man Against Machine” competitions – against a computer, vehicle, or robot (all should be relevant to your company).