Building Public Relations in B2B

Public relations (PR) is an "imprecise science" - and, perhaps, this makes it unpopular in our culture today to specify and measure "success" as objectively as possible.

PR is an element of the 'marketing mix', which comprises promotion. Advertising is what you say about yourself; you create the message and buy the space to put it. On the contrary - and in addition to advertising, along with other marketing activities - PR is what others say about you. So PR is more credible than  advertising, but much more difficult to design and evaluate.

Some of the most important points to emphasize in dealings between public relations firms are:

1. There can, of course, no guarantee of media coverage - unless you own media! That's why more organizations are turning to produce their own electronic publications in support of their media activity in Buyers marketing. In public relations terms, each story should be issued as news for a chance to compete successfully with all the other stories published each day. On the other hand, the editors of "paper" should recognize the value of the stories before the readers of its publications are given an opportunity to do so - and have the space available in an edition that will soon be published in publication of the story for a chance of being published.

2. Any public relations campaign will need at least three or four months to take effect and that its effects are seen - if only for the waiting times in some publications and often they are published (for example, issues of magazines bi-monthly and monthly are being finalized two or three months before the date of publication - for a campaign from, for example, in January, could not wait to see many results until around March or April). These days, however, web-based news sites and news agencies offer a more immediate return on investment in public relations. The key, however, knows which of these sites are widely read and, therefore, influence - and are not.

3. While customers want their media to bring the sales, B2B relationship is impossible to evaluate. For example, "buy" to a client's potential customer after reading a news article or two - or more - and in what time?