How to win clients and influence people - Introduction
We are all in the business of PR.
If you’re responsible for how your organisation’s customers perceive you, for persuading them to make a change to their behaviours, for influencing future purchasing decisions, or simply reminding them of why they chose to do business with your company in the first place, you’re using PR to sell something to someone at some time.
I’ve been in the business of helping businesses and brands to stand out – for the right reasons – among the ever increasing melee for the best part of 27 years now. Not always in public relations, though.
The first ten years were actually spent selling advertising. When I became self-employed in 2006, I learned how to sell Me Ltd. in a way that despite having fewer years of experience compared to my more established competitors, I was able to position myself as a provider of choice.
I had to stand on my stool day in and day out and make the case as to why marketers, business leaders, business owners should listen to me and allocate a chunk of their annual marketing budget to me. I was having to persuade and convince them that this was actually a sound, strategic move that would deliver a return on their investment.
To do this, I had to PR myself.
2014, I moved out a contracting – posh word for freelancing – and into what has now become an established, growing and award-winning Public Relations Agency called Clearly. As a team that currently stands a little over a dozen, our people work with clients in the legal, financial, human resources and recruitment sectors, charity, manufacturing and hospitality.
All clients face their own challenges. Each has its own nuances and each has a story to be told, so we tell it to the right people in the right way and at the right time. And in doing so, we help change their target markets mind and thinking in a way that prompts action, change.
Selling yourself is really hard and most businesses get it so very wrong. Want to know why there are so many market leaders
with unrivaled experience out there? Because they haven’t quite figured out yet what sets them apart and, more importantly,
how to communicate this to their audiences.
And that’s what this series of video short sets out to do. Using real-world practical examples from our own clients, we’ll share with you some of the secrets to creating public relations programmes that deliver powerful results without the need for a promotional budget the size of a small country’s GDP.
Some of the tactics we talk through may already be part of your existing PR and comms plan, but I’ll wager you that we’ll persuade you to rethink and repurpose those tactics in a way you may never have thought possible before.
So stay with us throughout the series of three videos, and I promise you, you will be better aware of how you can use public relations to achieve greater brand awareness, influence, and greater impact for your organisation.
