When business is tough, your PR matters more - not less
Right now, many businesses are walking a tightrope. Sales are under pressure, costs are rising (aren’t they always?!), and confidence is shaky. The natural instinct is to cut all major expenditure – especially that which related to PR. But that is a mistake.
While the spotlight continues to be shone brightly on the financial difficulties facing a business until a resolution is found, such as a new buyer is found or closure is forced, there is another major and often overlooked challenge that businesses must consider: how to protect their reputation and project confidence to their customers when their financial foundations are vulnerable.
This creates a perilous Catch-22 situation. To maintain customer confidence and trust, a business must appear healthy. But the nature of communications emanating from the business needs to be carefully considered.
For instance, if the business focuses on talking about their spiralling debt, falling sales, and potential job cuts then confidence and trust will falter – customers will pull back. The consequences of this happening are obvious – the business becomes starved of vital cash coming in. That will likely hasten its demise and deter any potential buyer.
Of course, businesses do need to be transparent about their situation but their PR needs to be balanced too. It needs to be provide assurances that the steps being taken to tackle the current challenges being faced. Of course, what businesses really want to be talking about is “growth,” “expansion,” and “investment” and whilst that is not possible at this point they can provide a sense of optimism in their PR using terms such as “restructuring”, “streamlining operations,” and “strategic review.”
The hope of course is that the actions taken to steady the ship will lead to a new buyer coming in or a natural change in fortunes for the business. Key to ensuring the business can come through such crisis is the way in which it talks about it at the time. Effective reputation management PR focuses on managing the perception of the problem whilst retaining its ‘good name.’
Most businesses facing serious financial challenges will opt to sever all ties with their retained PR agency, and that does make sense. However, you can still drastically reduce your PR costs and maintain or even improve your current levels of PR activity by building in-house PR capabilities.
Train your team to deliver consistent, credible messaging. Keep your voice active in the market, and stay visible because the businesses that win in downturns aren’t the ones that disappear - they’re the ones that show leadership, stay present - and keep communicating.