Public Relations for Small Businesses: Tactics & Tips

Successfully launch new products and reach more customers with public relations.

For small businesses interested in building stronger relationships with their target audience, public relations (PR) is a strategic communications effort that facilitates positive perceptions with different audience segments. PR for small businesses is incredibly important as it helps launch new products, reach new customers, garner publicity, create relationships with the media and other influential voices, and, ultimately, help grow your company.

There are many individual PR tactics and strategies, so your business can choose the public relations ideas that best fit your brand personality, current marketing strategy, budget, and more. In this article, we’ll share PR tactics and PR tips for small business organizations, showcasing how a step-by-step PR strategy can help achieve your company’s objectives.

Why is public relations important for small businesses?

To answer the question of why PR is important for small businesses, it’s critical to understand that word-of-mouth recommendations and positive consumer perceptions are one of the most beneficial tactics for attracting and retaining customers. PR for small businesses aims to generate attention and even elevates other marketing and advertising efforts. Small business public relations might include tactics like media outreach, press releases, launch strategies, participating in community events, garnering third-party endorsements from subject matter experts, leveraging influencer marketing, and more.

Well-executed small business PR tactics solve a slew of business problems for owners. They help cut through online noise and gain attention while building positive perceptions in the minds of target customers. Engaging PR tactics can create social media engagement, amplifying your brand’s owned messaging like a company blog post or press release. Strong PR tactics ultimately create more business revenue, keeping you top of mind for your target consumer’s next purchase.

Benefits of public relations for small businesses

There are numerous benefits of solid PR tactics for small businesses, including accurate monitoring of brand sentiment and improved consumer perception.

Enhanced monitoring of brand sentiment

While 80% of marketers indicate that managing or monitoring their brand reputation is one of their social media goals, 38% say that they are not doing well with responding to or identifying inaccurate or misleading brand or company information.^[1]

Online chatter is vital to keeping a pulse on customer sentiment, and business leaders should be aware of any misleading information or customer complaints. Monitoring and engaging with these opportunities can help build trust, clarify inaccuracies, and demonstrate the humanity behind your brand. 

Small-business marketers are more likely to disagree (17%) that their company is prepared to respond to fraudulent or inauthentic content on social media compared to midsize or large business marketers (9%), so tools like social media listening platforms can help automate their process and reduce manual efforts.^[1]

Improved consumer perception

Consumer perception is one of the most influential purchasing elements, especially when it comes to deciding between multiple businesses. Having a positive relationship and sentiment already built into the mind of your target customer helps you stand out and keeps you top of mind when a person is ready to buy. Plus, consumers are more likely to buy from brands they know, like, and trust, so PR goes a long way in building that rapport ahead of time.

PR tactics and tools to help your small business

PR campaigns and tactics are engaging and creative, often lasting several weeks or months. All of these strategies work together to create a comprehensive PR strategy. Recent Gartner research illustrates a multichannel approach to reaching complex consumers is the best way to adapt to a new interconnected environment.^[2] Take a look at some individual PR tactics and tools to execute your ideal PR strategy.

1. Define your PR strategy

First, define your business objectives and goals. If your business wants to improve website traffic or build relationships with local journalists, outline exactly what you hope to 2accomplish. This will help guide the rest of your PR strategy and allow you to choose channels and tactics that will work for you.

2. Build relationships with media professionals

Many PR tactics for small businesses center around media mentions in relevant online and print publications. However, building relationships with media professionals is not a one-and-done event, and it takes continuous maintenance to build long-lasting working partnerships. Once you have industry writers on your side, it’s helpful to engage with them throughout the year, offering unique perspectives on current articles they’re writing or bringing a different data point to their attention.

3. Create and distribute high-quality content

High-quality content marketing is another helpful PR tactic, which could include blog posts, whitepapers, infographics, and social media content. Disseminating your company’s message through multiple channels is key to increasing the frequency and repetition of your PR campaigns. For example, if your PR strategy involves sharing your company’s values, create different types of content like leadership interviews, employee interviews, and more.

4. Create and manage social media accounts

Social media is one of the best ways to disseminate your PR messaging, so creating and maintaining active social accounts is key. Choose one or two platforms to focus on by determining where your target audience spends the most time. Post relevant, informative content multiple times a week to stay visible in social feeds and capture the attention of your customers.

5. Plan and execute community events

Local and industry community events are important moments to capture the engaged attention of your target audience, so orchestrating PR campaigns around these conferences or events is important. You can also plan and host your own industry or community event, creating a go-to resource and place for thought leadership.

6. Work with influencers or bloggers

Leveraging influencer marketing provides an impactful, third-party, trusted recommendation from a respected expert within your industry. If you have an actual product to send out, you can gift it to influencers or bloggers, encouraging them to post or review your company. Sometimes, influencers might want monetary compensation, so if your budget allows, consider allocating money to larger influencers with engaged followings.

7. Hire a PR service provider

Outsourcing to an expert, specialized PR agency is often a cost-effective strategy for small businesses. Instead of housing multiple full-time PR employees in-house, it’s often cheaper and more strategic to work with a PR service provider. These PR agencies have experienced, specialized communications professionals who already have established relationships with reporters, and they’re often knowledgeable on specific industries and markets. Hiring them might include services like press release distribution, content marketing, media outreach, company positioning, and more.

8. Distribute press releases

Many PR campaigns and tactics lead with an engaging press release distributed to the media. Press releases include a newsworthy headline and detailed subheadline and should answer the 5 Ws—“who, what, when, where, and why” in the first paragraph. A press release often kicks off PR campaigns and allows journalists the opportunity to cover your news, company story, or initiative.

9. Use relevant software to automate

From social media management tools to email marketing tools and social media monitoring platforms, relevant software helps streamline, automate, and reduce the manual workload of measuring the success of PR campaigns. Without platforms and tools, public relations measurement can feel extremely time-consuming and manual and be vulnerable to human error.

Track and measure PR results

A critical component of gauging PR tactic success is tracking and measuring results. You’ll already have goals and objectives established, so measure actual metrics like impressions, engagement, media mentions, sales, website visits, and more. Depending on what metrics you want to measure, see how key performance indicators (KPIs) have improved throughout your PR campaign. If one of your main goals was media mentions, you can even ask publications if they can provide an overview of page visits, clicks, and more. While PR might not provide specific data on sales and conversion, you can look at other leading indicators like website impressions, engagement with product pages, and more to see if you’re capturing the attention of interested buyers.

Launch public relations tactics for your small business

Public relations for small businesses helps elevate your brand, reach your target audience, capture interest, and build positive relationships with different publics. The benefits are numerous, allowing you to improve consumer perception, monitor brand sentiment, and ultimately grow your business. Different PR tactics all play a unique role in your holistic strategy, so consider ideas like creating high-quality content, distributing a press release, hosting community events, and using relevant software to automate the heavy lifting. Once your PR campaign is complete, measure your actual results and gauge how your tactics performed against your goals.