PR gets people to open the door – but what happens next is what really matters.
You can have the most brilliantly executed PR campaign: the perfect positioning, top-tier media coverage, and an influx of the right audience landing on your website. But if the inspiration ends there, people will leave just as quickly as they arrived.
PR’s Role: Visibility, Trust, and Influence
Public relations are about creating awareness, building credibility, and influencing demand. It sparks interest, earns trust, and places brands in the conversations that matter. But conversion? That’s a team effort.
If customers aren’t sticking around, the blame can’t be placed solely on PR. The real question is: what’s meeting them on the other side of the door? A slow website, poor brand identity, your user experience is clunky, or your own-channel content feels overly sales-driven… it can be a turn off for customers discovering your brand through well-done PR.
This is why PR should never be a siloed function.
The best results come from through-the-line thinking, integrating PR seamlessly with marketing, product development, SEO, and sales.
A successful PR campaign doesn’t just generate visibility; it ensures the brand experience, expertise, or service being promoted is showcased authentically and compellingly.
PR Isn’t a Quick Win – It’s a Long-Term Strategy
One of the biggest misconceptions about PR is that it should deliver instant, or even purely commercial returns. That thinking undermines its true value. PR is not a campaign tactic; it’s a sustained investment in how your brand is perceived, trusted, and talked about over time. Here’s why:
PR builds visibility, not direct conversions
The goal is to earn attention in the right places, making it easier for potential customers to discover, engage with, and trust your brand.
Strong PR earns attention, it doesn’t buy it. Through earned media coverage, thought leadership, partnerships, and storytelling, your brand becomes easier to find, easier to believe in, and easier to engage with.
PR creates an ecosystem of awareness that supports all other marketing channels, making your ads perform better, your SEO stronger, and your reputation more resilient.
The impact is often mismeasured
Too often, PR success is judged by short-term metrics like the number of articles published or the size of the audience reached. But true PR value lies in the subtler, cumulative effects it has on your brand’s equity.
Look instead at how PR contributes to your brand recognition – are more people aware of who you are and what you stand for? Are you being mentioned, linked to, searched for, or quoted in ways that boost your discoverability? Are journalists, partners, and customers finding you organically? Importantly, over a period of time, are you becoming a trusted voice in your category?
It takes time to see real results
If your competitors have been building their authority for years, one campaign won’t magically close the gap overnight. PR is about consistency – so commit to it, and the long-term impact will follow. PR isn’t a discipline you can chop and change with, it’s most effective as the bedrock that underpins your external (and internal) communications output.
The brands that win at PR are ultimately those that commit to it. They understand that consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. That’s why PR shouldn’t be something you switch on and off between campaigns, it’s most effective as the foundation for being found, trusted, and chosen.
Done right, PR becomes the connective tissue between your marketing, brand, and leadership. And in a world where authentic visibility is everything, that potentially makes it a game-changer.
Great PR Is About Relevance, Not Reach
It’s easy to assume that more reach equals more impact. But the best PR isn’t about being everywhere – it’s about being in the right places, telling the right story, to the right audience. That sometimes means knowing when to say no, hit pause, or hold back on certain messaging.
Not every media opportunity is a good one. Not every journalist is the right fit. Not every story needs to be pitched to the press.
Good PR is about strategic storytelling – not just broadcasting a message but ensuring that message resonates where it matters most. The focus should always be on quality over quantity, depth over breadth, and relevance over reach alone.
PR Isn’t Just Storytelling – It’s Story Finding
One of the biggest myths about PR is that it’s just about crafting compelling press releases, catchy headlines, and thought-provoking campaigns. While those are certainly part of the job, truly great PR starts way before a pitch is even sent.
The real foundation of effective PR is research. Without it, PR becomes a guessing game, missing valuable opportunities. Here’s what great PR professionals do before they act:
Dig into data
Audience behaviours, search trends, industry reports – you name it, PRs aren’t numbers people, but we love data. Leveraging these insights ensures PR efforts are strategic, not just reactive.
Listen before speaking
What’s already being said in the media? Where is the conversation heading? What’s the gap your brand can fill? What’s genuinely different about your perspective?
Spot the opportunity, don’t just reach
The best PR doesn’t just jump on trends – there’s a place for that – but instead, it works to find the right moment to insert a brand into the conversation in a meaningful way.
Know your media and nail the hook
Research who you’re pitching to and what actually matters to them. The best pitches are clean, sharp, and cut through the noise.
Define the news value
Before pitching, ask the three golden questions top travel editors use to evaluate a story: Why is this relevant? Why now? Who actually cares? If you can’t answer these clearly, neither can a journalist justifying your pitch to their editor.
Skip the research, and PR becomes a shot in the dark.
Get it right, and PR stops being just a function – it becomes a powerful tool for shaping perception, influencing demand, and building lasting brand equity.
PR Is a Growth Engine, Not a Sales Funnel
Nail your PR strategy, and it fuels long-term growth. It shapes how people perceive your brand, builds authority in your space, and earns the kind of visibility that translates into real impact over time.
This means PR isn’t just about media coverage – it’s about positioning your brand in a way that makes you impossible to ignore.
If you’re looking for a quick win, PR might not be the answer. But if you’re into playing the long game? PR just might be the most valuable investment you can make.
