Public relations marketing examples (4 PR strategies)

If you want to develop your public relations marketing strategy, you have absolutely come to the right place.

In this brief tutorial we are going to review 4 PR marketing strategies, and some examples.

The four public relations marketing examples in this tutorial include; 1) New product or service announcement, 2) Newsworthy items about your organization, 3) Human interest story, and 4) A public relations crisis PR plan.

If you have not reviewed our brief tutorial on getting your PR marketing strategy started, you are invited to review that here: How public relations (PR) is used in marketing (+examples). In this article we review the need for distributing your press releases, provide a quality service to get you started, and give you examples of how to set up your digital press kit.

Now that you have that underway, let’s help you build the four categories of public relations marketing.

4 public relations marketing strategies and examples

When we build new public relations and communications strategies within a marketing department, we generally use the framework below. Most of our initial campaigns are focused on press releases as we look for opportunities and make adjustments as needed.

With that, our main priority is to establish a working relationship with editors, publishers and the media. After all, this can give your business an enormous boost. 

But, professionals in charge of editorial content are not going to work with just anybody. 

Your main job is to establish trust and credibility, which may happen for you after one contact with the right person, or it may take 20 points of contact, or more. 

But, regardless of how much effort it takes you to establish a positive relationship, it really may  not matter. The benefits often outweigh the work.

For best results, when communicating with editors and publishers, you want to:

1. Be honest
2. Be clear
3. Tell them what you ultimately want
4. Let your contact know that you will literally “go to work for him/her” using your expertise

Ask the editors and publishers questions such as:

• What kinds of content do you like to provide to your readers/viewers/customers?
• Are there any hot topics that you would like to see right now?
• When I submit a press release or announcement to your publication, what kind of guidelines makes it easiest for you?
• I would like to be a contributing expert one day, how would I go about doing that?

These are some basic guidelines, and combined with the 5 W’s and the H that you learned from How public relations (PR) is used in marketing, you’ll be on your way to delivering content that the news media likes to receive.

Here’s four public relations marketing examples:

1. New product or service announcements 

A new product or service announcement is a common form of press release and is designed to simply tell your target market that a new product or service is available. 

Here is an example of KraftHeinz’s public relations PR marketing and their new, first ever nail polish that Velveeta cheese is releasing.

A press release like this is often about 400 - 600 words and based on the facts. This is not the place to sell the benefits, although there is some flexibility in the sales message when quoting an expert in the announcement.

Your public relations marketing should include a press release announcement for every new product or service your organization develops.

2. Newsworthy items about your business

These are fun press releases and announcements and deliver a “Me” message. This is the category of press releases that announce a company change, a new staff member, a name change, injury free for 30 days, or the announcement of a community award. 

Here’s an example of an extremely simple announcement of a new team member, done by Archer Daniels Midland. Notice this follows a very very simple ‘just the facts’ framework:

1. The headline announcement
2. The announcement 
3. The person's background in 2-4 sentences
4. About ADM

There’s really no rules besides reporting the facts and this is where your team can have fun and brainstorm. 

If your team is searching for good news, pretty much anything can be made newsworthy. 

Your public relations marketing should include something newsworthy about your organization at least one time per month.

3. Human interest stories

Human interest stories include testimonials, case studies, and product use stories. Human interest stories can get you the most public relations traction and are usually the best way to communicate your unique stories. But, these are also the hardest to develop. The easiest way to develop this is to write a 1 page hotsheet of the big events that occurred to the people involved as a result of your product or service in a bullet point format and submit this to your media target market. The writers who are looking for a hot story will contact you and they can weave their magic for their intended market.

Here’s an example of a very well done human interest story that the Tyson Foods marketing and PR team developed.

Fortunately, social media makes finding happy customers and raving fans far easier than it has ever been.  This may be a great source for finding human interest stories to develop. Your team just needs to keep your eyes and ears open.

Your public relations marketing should include a human interest about your organization at least one time per quarter.

4. Public relations crisis PR strategy

Unfortunately, accidents happen. And hopefully you’ll never need to use this portion of your public relations plan, your crisis PR plan may come in very handy.  Probably like you, whether in corporate, in fitness, health care, hospitality or construction, I’ve worked in several scenarios where safety was paramount. 

But unfortunate events occur.  

Here is an example of an extremely unfortunate event that occurred in a Kinder Morgan pipeline. Our hearts go out to these families involved. 

If you have a plan, the system can take over while under duress. Without a plan, the results can be even more devastating. When something bad happens, you need at least a basic go-to framework to handle the most urgent items. This would require a simple document that is easy to find that addresses the most important items, such as “The event”, “The surrounding areas”, and “How to resume”. 

Additionally, a framework would include a communication plan starting with the people closest to the event, the leadership team, the involved party(s) and the media.

The best plan doesn't have to be complicated, but it does need to be clear, documented and easy to act on.

Your public relations marketing should develop a crisis PR strategy as soon as possible. Hopefully it goes unneeded and gathers dust, but it is far better to be prepared.

Get with your CEO as soon as possible, he or she will thank you for it.

All total, your public relations marketing could produce approximately 20 or more media announcements each year. At this pace, your marketing department and public relations and communications team will uncover many new opportunities that will raise the entire organization in the eyes of the public.