One of the main reasons why plenty of companies pursue public relations campaigns is to generate positive media coverage with targeted outlets that are able to reach the target audience of that company. Public relations efforts are helpful in influencing purchasing decisions of the target audience, as well as improving the public reputation of a company too, but both of those goals can be achieved with the right media coverage. There are a few different ways that companies can generate positive media coverage with various outlets, especially if they start pitching positive stories about themselves, and what they have been doing behind the scenes.
Business innovations
Companies that innovate their industry, or their company culture can always pitch that innovation to media outlets to generate some positive media coverage. Instead of simply thinking about the solutions of the company and how they can be pitched to be covered in the news cycle, companies can also think about the way that they create the solutions or the way that the company itself operates, and figure out how it has been able to innovate to company culture and make it unique in a way that helps the business stand out from the crowd and gain a lot more attention. A big element of successful public relations efforts are also aimed at both attracting new talent and keeping talent on staff, and this is precisely what the company Coexist figured out when it started giving its female employees time off during their monthly cycle, and it became the first company in the UK to do so. Given the fact that this was such an innovation in company culture and a new move from the HR department, the company managed to generate a lot of media coverage and even land a story in national outlets too.
Charity
There are plenty of charitable organizations that are looking to partner with companies in an effort to increase their fundraising, and by partnering a company with a charitable organization, businesses can share that partnership with media outlets. This is especially of interest to media outlets when companies manage to fundraise a significant amount of money for the charitable organization. This is what happened when the big insurance company BGL decided to partner with the cancer charity Sue Ryder located in the UK and managed to donate 50,000GBP to the organization. Then, the company ended up sharing this charitable donation with local media outlets which generated a lot of media coverage with the targeted outlets, and even landed the story on a few regional outlets, too. Although public relations efforts aren’t the sole reason why companies should pursue these types of partnerships, they are an additional great benefit that companies can rely on when they need to generate more media coverage.