Every business benefits from the work of effective public relations (PR), regardless of size, age and scale. The notion that PR is a luxury spend or a “nice to have” when crises emerge no longer exists. Rather, PR is an essential part of a business ecosystem that works equally as hard in times of trials and triumphs.
PR professionals are focused on fostering positive relationships among stakeholders and building brand credibility. This mission is not achieved overnight but is ever-evolving and gains momentum once the foundational building blocks are in place. Whether it’s creating a buzz around new product launches, expanding into new markets or sharing exciting new hire announcements among others, PR plays a pivotal role in shaping perceptions, building credibility and driving sustainable growth and success for businesses.
We interviewed our happy clients about why they believe PR is fundamental to their business success.
Here’s what they had to say:
Billy Loizou, Area Vice President APAC, Amperity
“PR is so important. It's paramount to our success. PR has the perfect placement of channels to make that message clear about what problems we solve. The specialty of being able to come in, take those ideas out of our heads, digest them proactively, write them down into a framework, and then push them out to market is more important.”
Harley Ramien, Director APAC, Bonzai
“What is important when we're moving to new markets is that we have something to showcase and talk about when we want to launch. So that's something that we've been happy to work with [AZK Media] on, and something that's super important moving forward.”
George Mogannam, CRO, Envoy
“The most critical gear that we expect to generate the most opportunity is marketing, which involves PR – that is the largest way to get brand recognition. It is, for lack of a better term, a shotgun that allows you to access many opportunities. Marketing and PR firms are critical, especially when you're breaking into a new market.”
Marcus Paterson, Head of Sales, Storyblok
“PR is absolutely critical for us. Australia is one of our priority countries in the APAC region. Because we're just not known here – we're well known in Europe and across the U.S. and South America – but not in Asia Pacific and Australia. PR is just critical for us to get our message across to tell the story of what Storyblok is all about.”
Gaurav Dhillon, CEO, Snaplogic
“Reputation matters. So when somebody in a financial company, bank mining company or media company is trying to make all the systems work together fluently, in an agile way and without a lot of effort, the reputation of SnapLogic is the most important thing. Reputationally being that well known, a well-regarded company, is absolutely critical.”
Stewart Marshall, SasS Advisor
“PR is absolutely everything today. If you're not in the business of telling a story about yourself, and engaging at a community level, using language that, dare I say, normal humans understand and can identify with, then you just fall into this hole of being just like everybody else.”
Michael Wasyluka, CRO, Loopio
“PR is incredibly important, specifically, as we branch into a new region where our name is not well known. Marketing the value that we provide in the problems that we're solving for is incredibly important. And from a PR perspective, I believe it helps actually shape and tell the story of who we are as an organisation.”
Yun Yip, CCO, iiON
“The more we are able to talk about the success, the more we are able to help people understand best practices, the better it will be and that's best done with PR and marketing.”
Authored by Jessica Poulter, Senior Social Media and Communications Specialist at AZK Media.