What makes great PR - Key principles for organisations supplying the HR industry
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
At PR in HR, we work exclusively with brands supplying HR buyers, enabling us to focus on what genuinely effective PR looks like.
Generic approaches often fall short as HR leaders and journalists are increasingly bombarded with sales ‘noise’.
In this article, we take a look at some key principles, from a specialist’s view, of what makes great PR.
1. Deep Understanding of the HR Sector
First off, great PR is never accidental. It begins with genuine knowledge and understanding of your audience. In the HR sector, it’s important to understand HR leaders and their role within organisations - risk-aware, strategic and focused on long-term people and organisational outcomes. They value insight, credibility and relevance and see through noise or sales messaging. This creates, then, a need for HR brands to create messaging that resonates, reflecting HR realities right now. Successful PR reflects an understanding of employment law, workforce challenges, leadership pressures and the evolving role of HR itself. Without this credibility, without talking the right language at the right time, gaining valuable editorial coverage or influence will be hard to achieve.
2. Strong Strategic Positioning
Showing your organisation’s positioning, who it serves and why it’s unique in a clear and credible way helps to define the framework that shapes effective PR.
Strong positioning is built around understanding the real challenges HR leaders face, genuine lived experience and insight. Showcasing how your organisation may think differently compared to competitors, be it data-led, people-first or commercially focused, helps audiences to gain value and build trust with your brand.
It is important to stay consistent with messaging (especially in an AI world) to offer credible thought leadership and have a good understanding of the current news cycle.
A strong and effective partnership between the organisation and PR ensures these values feed through and will help strengthen campaigns. This means challenging assumptions, refining messages and sometimes saying “no” when an idea will not land with an HR audience (or journalist). Trust on both sides allows PR to be braver, sharper and more effective, whilst maintaining its strategic positioning.
3. Compelling Storytelling
For PR, strong stories make insight memorable, help journalists engage their audiences and position HR suppliers as trusted, credible voices.
Repeated association with specific themes or areas of expertise, especially when there is good data to back-up key information, reinforces a clear, consistent story over time, building recognition and authority.
In an article we published on strategies for effective PR comms with journalists, we found that from over 1,500 HR news stories analysed, nearly 60% included research or data statistics. Additionally, our report HR Strategies and Buying Decisions 2023-2024 highlighted the importance of brand recognition, with 71% of HR respondents agreeing that they’re more likely to buy products or services from a brand that knows the market by providing data insights, market trends and thought leadership.
Engaging with your target audience with interesting, relatable and meaningful narratives alongside relevant data helps to reinforce the brand’s strategic positioning as well as thought leadership content.
4. Thought Leadership
Great PR positions organisations as experts and partners, not vendors shouting about features or awards.
This means developing commentary on important current issues, a pivotal element in the B2B landscape. By using thought leadership to share valuable insights, organisations can position themselves as leading experts in their field – a way to build brand trust and advocacy.
In a previous article about how to use thought leadership to deliver new insights to journalists and gain brand awareness we looked at the importance of being authoritative and accessible. HR brands with credible experts who see (and solve) employer/employee issues is incredibly important. This knowledge can form the basis of messaging, research, reports, media relations, social media, sales - the list of potentials is long and plentiful.
5. Media Relationships and Trust
By doing your research and having an in-depth understanding of your sector, forming relationships with relevant journalists and media is more likely.
This trust can lead to better-quality coverage, stronger positioning and sustained visibility in key HR publications.
6. Consistent and Timely Messaging
A defining factor of PR is timing and relevance. Strong PR is both proactive and reactive. The HR landscape constantly changes with new legislation, economic pressures and workforce trends, so marketing teams need to anticipate these moments and move quickly when new opportunities arise, positioning themselves as informed and authoritative.
With good prep, quick reactive commentary can be just as powerful as long-term campaigns, positioning organisations as authoritative voices in moments that matter.
We recently shared an article outlining the importance of timing in the media and why forward planning and deadlines play such an important part of a successful PR campaign.
7. Measurable Impact
A hallmark of quality PR, measuring success isn’t just about volume of coverage, but about its impact. Benchmarking against factors important to each individual organisation helps set clear goals, tracks meaningful metrics and continuously refines its approach.
A scattergun approach with PR may initially look impressive, but digging down into the results often shows very little in return. Smaller, specialist agencies may offer deep sector expertise, enabling sharper positioning and more relevant media engagement, knowing the latest issues, context and all important media contacts.
By setting clear objectives, targeted activity and consistent measurements, PR teams are able to deliver and measure meaningful outcomes.
For more information on how small agencies help SMEs gain multi-channel visibility and measurable results, take a look at the results we’ve achieved for some of our clients.
We know that gaining valuable PR wins in the workplace media is vital, but it’s also complex.
Amplifying your messages with PR strengthens brand awareness and credibility to a much wider buying audience. It helps build trust. It helps grow your brand.
Problematically, there are hundreds of voices clamouring to be heard by national, HR and workplace B2B journalists and influencers, and only a relative few get into the media spotlight each day.
We help your brand to be one of them, repeatedly.
We use powerful PR so our clients - providers to the HR market - rise above the noise to gain exceptional brand recognition.