Public Relations Firms Jackson MS

By Robert A. Kelly

How cool is this? You're a business, non-profit or association manager. You decide to get serious about your public relations and shift the spotlight away from communications tactics. You implement an action blueprint that (1), helps you persuade your key external stakeholders to your way of thinking. And then (2), helps move them to take actions that lead to your success as a department, division or subsidiary manager.

It comes into sharper focus when that public relations blueprint helps deliver target audience behaviors like new waves of prospects buzzing around, more qualified calls about strategic alliances, a jump up in repeat purchases, a boost in the number of engineering consultants specifying your products or services, and even increased membership applications and contributions.

What is that blueprint, anyway? Try this: People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.

As I've said many times in the past about that fundamental premise of public relations, it shines the PR spotlight directly on those outside groups of people with a large say about how successful a manager is going to be - namely, it targets his or her most important external audiences.

But you need the PR folks assigned to your unit to buy into the program and shift their priorities from communications tactics to a workable, comprehensive plan like this one designed to deliver those key, outside audience behaviors.

Behaviors, by the way, that obviously help or hinder a manager in achieving his or her operating objectives.

The real work for you as the department, division or subsidiary manager starts by listing all your key external audiences in priority order so that you initially focus your resources on that number one audience.

Next step is answering the question, what do members of that audience think about your organization? Short of spending big money on professional survey counsel, you and your PR team can/should/must interact with those members by asking questions such as "What, if anything, do you think about us? Have you ever dealt with our people? Were you pleased with the experience? Have you heard other comments about our organization?"

At each step in this perception monitoring drill, you and your team must watch carefully for negatives like false assumptions, rumors, misconceptions and inaccurate statements. In other words, negativities that might turn into target audience behaviors that could really damage your operation.

The monitoring data you collect is the stuff of your public relations goal. For example, stifle the rumor, straighten out the misconception, turn around the false assumption, or make that inaccuracy ...

Why Do You Want PR? To get someone's name in the newspaper or a product mention on a radio talk show?

If that's all you expect, fine. But that response tells me that, as a business, non-profit or association manager, you may have overlooked an important reality: people act on their own perception of the facts, leading to predictable behaviors about which something can be done on your behalf.

And you may be compounding that error by failing to insist that your department, division or subsidiary PR people make this very special effort: create, change or reinforce the perceptions of those external audiences whose behaviors really DO impact your unit.

If true, it means you don't have a proactive public relations plan that targets the kind of stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your operating objectives.

Still, I'll bet you'd like to do everything you can to help your unit's PR team persuade your important outside stakeholders to your way of thinking. Especially so when such a program works to move those stakeholders to behaviors that lead to the success of YOUR department and YOUR programs.

Well, there's still time to fix things.

Sit down with the public relations people assigned to your unit and make certain the whole team buys into why it's so important to know how your outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. Be sure they accept the reality that perceptions usually morph into behaviors that can hurt your unit.

Explore with them how you will monitor and gather perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audience: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the interchange? How much do you know about our services or products and people? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Of course, you can always engage survey pros to round up these data for you, but that can be expensive. Besides, remember that your very own PR team is already in the perception and behavior game and could be of use for this opinion monitoring project.

Regardless of who interacts with members of your target audience, questioners must stay alert to false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, misconceptions and untruths.

Here you must be cautious because the perception information you gather helps you set a specific public relations goal. For example, clarify the misconception, spike that rumor, or correct the false assumption.

You pursue that goal by picking the right strategy from the three choices available to you. Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. Be certain, however, that the strategy you choose is an obvious fit with your new public relations goal.

The question now becomes, what will you say to members of your key target audience who harbor the offending perception, to help persuade them to your way of thinking?

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