Award-winning PR expert Sophie Attwood reveals five things to make sure your business doesn't fail and instead, thrives from ‘invisible PR’ to having an end goal, she shares her five tips.
There are 5.93 million businesses in the UK and approximately 20% of all businesses fail within the first year while 60% go bankrupt within the first three years.
Award-winning PR expert and author of Beautiful PR: Finding Your Brand's Heartbeat for Authenticity in Communication, Sophie Attwood, suggests that effective PR and marketing, or lack of it, is the reason why most businesses fail.
‘I see regularly how people have a brilliant idea, product or service but without an effective communications and marketing strategy to get it out there to the public it simply won’t succeed. It’s very sad to see so many businesses failing because of this - when their business is often, on paper, set to be very successful.’
Here, Sophie reveals the five things you MUST do to ensure that your business doesn’t fail:
Find your heartbeat
‘Marketing is about connection. It’s about humanizing your brand rather than simply shouting: ‘We’re the best! Buy us! Sometimes, people forget where they started - and that then has a detrimental impact on their communications strategy. At the beginning of every business - big or small - is someone, somewhere, with a reason for doing it. This needs to come through within a brand’s communications strategy.’
Communicating your heartbeat
‘Once you’ve found your brand’s heartbeat you need to communicate it. By that, I meant that you need consumers to really understand what this brand is about. The best way to do this is to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell.’ In other words people need to read about what they’re buying to feel a reap connection. Stories need to be told; real, raw emotions need to be experienced.’
Know your end goal
‘Knowing what your end goal is is one of the keys to a successful business,’ insists Sophie. ‘Are you looking for more clients? Are you looking to expand to a global market? Are you hoping to launch a bricks and mortar offering? Having a really clear idea of what you want to achieve before you set out to do it is of course vital.’
Be honest and ambitious
‘Being honest and ambitious with your goals is often overlooked but it is very important. You can help to achieve this by being honest about what you have to say to your target audience and recognising how that will make them feel. What can you educate them about? Which publications would mean the most to the consumer you’re trying to attract and how would this link to your end goal?’
Don’t forget the Invisible PR
‘Invisible PR is what people think of you/your brand or business and say about you when you’re out of the room,’ explains Sophie. ‘It’s a series of tiny, often seemingly inconsequential things, which, put together, matter hugely. This is the subconscious response that you and your brand evoke for everyone who comes across it. It’s your reputation and how others will decide to view you for years, even decades, to come. Ultimately a brand is not what you tell people it is, it’s what others (your consumers) agree it is! It’s something every brand and its employers need to be incredibly aware of. And it’s always the little things that matter. From the way people are spoken to on their initial introductory call, to your tone of voice in the quick email fired off to a colleague or potential client, everything matters. It’s the character of the people behind the brand and the way consumers are treated that will impact how others see the brand too. And this alone, has the power to make or break a brand and business.’
Sophie Attwood is an award-winning global communications expert specialising in the health, beauty and wellness industries and author of Beautiful PR: Finding Your Brand's Heartbeat for Authenticity in Communication.
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