Wendy Alpine of www.alpinepr.com discusses what you should NOT expect from PR.Last week, I talked about what you can expect PR to achieve for your business. The main things are establishing awareness for your brand and connecting you with the right influencers. This post will discuss what you should not expect from PR:

  • Get people to keep using your product if it’s not working correctly.
  • Cover up bad customer service – certainly we can try to help fix a crisis, but this shouldn’t be the ongoing plan.
  • Be clairvoyant – share information with your PR team and trust them to help you come up with the best, most strategic plan on what information should be communicated, and to who, how, where and when.
  • Make reporters write about you. We can give them facts, we can encourage certain angles. “But they’re not puppets and we’re not puppet masters,” PerkettPR says.
  • Make a commercial for you. We need hooks, angles and compelling ways to answer, “Why should I care?” If you want to control your message, it is best to take out ad space. If you’re in an industry where there’s consumer fatigue (lots of competitive products that make outlandish claims), don’t expect to get quick hits. It will take time to find the right timing and angle. Be patient.
  • Be responsible for repeat buyers. That’s your job – through great customer service, good products, and stellar relationship management. While we get people interested in your product, it’s up to you to maintain the relationship.
  • Tie directly to sales. While PR can create and build brand awareness and establish credibility, it may not translate directly into sales. In some cases it does, such as the case with an esthetics school client who had several prospects sign up for her school after a local story ran. While this is what we hope for, it is not always the case.

What do you expect from PR? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Wendy Alpine
wendy@alpinepr.com
www.alpinepr.com
Phone: 770-321-1695
Fax: 404-806-5316