As a small business owner, you’re probably all too familiar with wearing multiple hats. One day you’re head of HR, ensuring your employees are loving their day-to-day and the next, you’re forecasting for the upcoming quarter.

As well as all of this, there’s marketing to think about and when budgets are low and money is tight, we have to be creative when it comes to boosting brand awareness.

PR plays an essential part in this however, it can be expensive for businesses who are newly off the ground.

That’s why here at Hexe, we thought we’d help you out and share a few inside secrets on how to DIY your own PR, until you can afford some expertise later down the line of course 😉

Each month, we’ll take you through the different elements of PR, including how to pitch your product, your business and even how to draft a press release.

We’ll kick things off by starting with the basics - what is PR?

PR stands for ‘public relations’ and refers to the strategic communication from a brand to the public. It’s all about maintaining and cultivating a positive public image by interacting with your existing and potential customer base.

What’s the difference between advertising and PR?

To put it simply, ‘advertising is what you pay for; publicity is what you pray for’. The difference between advertising and PR is that advertising space is paid for, while PR results are earned through providing journalists with new stories and angles they can use to inform the public.

A story you’re pitching could be directly about your business activity, yourself as the founder (if you’ve got an interesting backstory to share), a study you’ve conducted or even your own PR campaign you’ve launched - we’ll delve into all of these a little later.

Essentially, PR is about finding what your audience wants and convincing them that you are the right business to give it to them.

The different types of PR

PR comes in many forms and depending on what results you’re after, you can look to focus on one, or try and cover as many bases as possible with the time you have.

Let’s summarise a few below…

Proactive PR

Digital PR

As it says in the name, digital PR focuses on achieving online pieces of coverage, aka, online articles which include a mention of your brand.

Focusing on digital-only results is mainly down to its impact on Google rankings. When your brand is mentioned in an article and when it includes a link back to your website, this can have an impact on your page positioning on Google.

To put it simply, the more backlinks you receive from other websites which have a high domain authority, the more likely you are to creep up the Google rankings and onto the dreamy page one of Google.

For example, BBC News, The Guardian, The Times and MailOnline (to name just a few) all have a very high domain authority, as Google trusts the content that is put out by each of them. That’s why when you’re pitching your story, you’ll want to aim for high domain authority news publications who are also likely to cover your story.

This type of PR is a form of SEO, off-page SEO to be precise. This type of SEO is arguably ‘top of the funnel’ activity and so to ensure you see results for your website’s ranking, you’ll want to make sure your on-page SEO is all up to scratch - but we’ll talk more about that in a future blog post.

Traditional PR

Traditional forms of PR are those which have been used for sometime, mainly with an end goal of increasing brand awareness.

This type of PR will mainly involve drafting press releases, conducting studies which are related to your business’ activity or better yet, a hero PR campaign, which could take the form of a PR stunt for example.

TV and radio interviews are also typical types of traditional PR, with podcast appearances also now falling under this umbrella.

Product pitching

If you're a brand that offers a service, I’d maybe skip this section for now. However if you, like many of our clients here at Hexe, offer a physical product, then product pitching is a vital form of PR - not only that it’s one of the quickest ways to get your products seen by the masses.

This form of PR is essentially pitching your product to journalists and offering samples too, for potential inclusion in gift guide roundups or the like. Keep an eye out on our blog as we’ll be putting together a ‘How to pitch your product to press’ post soon 👀

Reactive PR

So aside from your proactive activity, whether this be traditional forms of PR, digital or both, there’s also reactive PR to consider. Here’s a few examples of how that might look…

Piggy-backing

Noticed a story in the press which your brand might be able to have a say on? Well, this is where piggy-backing is a great tool to use.

Perhaps an official body, take the government for example, has made an announcement that will affect your business.

Draft a comment from yourself as the founder, or perhaps someone else with authority in your business, providing your expertise and insight on the matter. Make sure you bring something fresh to the conversation that journalists will want to add to their ongoing coverage.

If the topic is sensitive, we’d recommend getting some support from a PR professional on crafting a statement, before sending your comments out to journalists - besides, you may end up needing another type of PR… crisis comms 😬

#Journorequest on Twitter

This is a great way to see what content journalists are asking for and better yet, it’s free!

Simply pop #journorequest into your Twitter search bar and you’ll find a plethora of journalists looking for products or comments for their upcoming articles.

Sometimes these journalists have their email addresses in their bio or have their DMs open so you can contact them there and then! But be quick, PR people are hot on these and it can sometimes be a first come, first serve basis.

There are a number of softwares available for journalist requests…

You can sign up to a number of different softwares which will help when it comes to reactive PR. Response source is one we use at Hexe, where we receive around 30-50 emails a day from journalists looking for exclusive comments or products to feature in their upcoming articles.

You could sign up to this software yourself but what I would say is that it’s not only costly but time consuming too. If you look to hire a PR agency, they’ll cover the costs of this software within your retainer at a fraction of the price, as well as managing all of the emails. 50 emails a day from Response Source alone could get overwhelming, especially when running your own business!

Is PR right for my business?

Ultimately, PR will work for you and your business if you’re open minded.

Trust in any expertise you seek and invest a suitable budget into your PR in order to create campaigns that will really work. Appreciate that there will be campaigns that don’t perform as well as others but to be successful, you’ve got to play the long game.

Yes you may receive a fantastic piece of coverage in the likes of the Guardian, but that doesn’t always mean it will translate directly into sales.

A typical customer journey looks something like this:

Reads article in The Guardian
Searches brand name in Google
Visit website
Sees retargeting ad for a blog article
Clicks and visits website again
Subscribes to newsletter
Receives welcome flow email campaign
Opens 3rd email received
Visits website again
Receives a second email with discount code
Makes purchase

Now don’t get me wrong, a piece of coverage can generate sales. For example, this gift guide in Sheerluxe generated over £200 in sales for our client the Bottled Baking Co. this Christmas! However, this isn’t a common occurrence in PR, so be open-minded that every piece of coverage is a step in the right direction towards increased brand awareness.

Are you in need of some support on PR, social media, SEO, content creation or brand strategy?

Get in touch with us by filling in the form on our contact page or give us an email hello@hexedigital.co.uk.

We can’t wait to hear all about you!

How to ‘DIY’ Your Own PR: What is PR and is it right for my business?