Your company has developed a great product, delivers fantastic services and you have satisfied, happy customers. You develop a great, eye-catching ad that shows off your product, has a great call to action and you think you’re set. Well, you’ve done a lot of things right, but there are ways to extend that message from the glossy, colorful, full-page ad to have an even greater impact.
Some standard public relations activities can help extend the messaging that begins with advertising and progresses to demonstrate solutions, thought leadership and expertise. Advertising is great at helping to build awareness about a brand or product, but since advertising copy is quick and to the point, filled with graphics and photos, there’s little time to truly dive into the benefits of what the products actually do. That’s where public relations activities shine.
Several public relations tactics can help deliver messages about just how well your products do what they do, and how your customers do their jobs better because of it.
Bylined articles
Bylined articles discuss a technical issue and detail why that issue is a challenge to industry, and details solutions. For example, high energy prices are issues that face manufacturers and consumers. A recent bylined article by an automation manufacturer discussed how variable speed drives can help manufacturers reduce energy costs by controlling motors that control fans and pumps in industrial settings. To be valuable to readers, the information must be unbiased (read: non-commercial and non-promotional) and provide solid information people can take back to their jobs. Bylined articles can benefit your company by discussing the exact challenges that your company solves with its products.
Case Studies
When you tell your friends a story, you use examples. When your sales people talk to prospects, they talk about the experience they have with other companies in similar situations. Case studies do the same thing, but to a wide audience. Trade publications, such as Plant Services, are always looking for interesting case studies that show their readers just how companies are using technology to solve challenges and make plants more productive. Developing case studies that focus on the end user, not on the products you sell, and submitting them for publication is a fantastic way to use public relations to help tell your story and extend your communications and marketing activities.
All in all, public relations can be a great way to extend your marketing and advertising activities that enable you to tell your story in more in-depth ways than an advertisement or brochure can. Developing bylined articles and participating in articles in trade publications can also give your company and staff credibility and position as experts in your field, all of which can help do what every manufacturers needs: sell more product.
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