Smaller IFAs can reap the benefits of public relations. Linda Winder tells Paul Robertson how.
Is it at this point that we would expect Winder to suggest someone like yourself steps in, but she is an advocate of firms having a go themselves first.
“If you have people internally who are able to think like that, sometimes it is just being aware about the outside world a bit more and what consumers or the industry are actually going to find interesting.
“The main thing if you are going to do PR is understanding who it is you are trying to reach, your end audience and how it is that you are going to get there. Just think about what they are genuinely going to be interested in, not what you think they should be interested in.” Give it a go. Linda Winder thinks you should, and she should know.
“Also, you need to think about all of the different communications avenues there are and make sure you have contacts, so that when you get your news out there you need to know which one of those avenues will work best.”
Winder is a fan of the long-term strategy in terms of what firms want to be known for and to consistently get the message out. If you are serious about it, you need to have thought it through properly. This should be about what you want the perception of you to be and what is going to be most useful for your business.
Winder said: “If being a specialist in IP is your main thing, or if that is the part of the business that you are trying to drive at that point, then get out there, talk about IP and consistently say the same messages so that is what starts to sink in.”
So far so good, but as with every venture, there have to be risks and downsides to consider. There is cynicism, even among those who would consider doing PR, perhaps a lack of trust in the media. So how would you address that issue?
“I think people are definitely cynical towards many aspects of PR. But for something really simple, such as developing key messages, if you want to do PR and make it a proper part of your business, then developing key messages is absolutely essential. Because you work out what is distinctive about your company, why it is different, what people are going to find interesting, have more information to back that up and then facts to prove it.
“No matter what you are doing, whether it is an internal presentation, external presentation, marketing, PR, you have always got these facts to home in on, to go back to, to tell a consistent story about the business that you are working for, or what it is that you want people to know about you. And that is hugely useful.”
This is a great issue to raise and, apart from the fact that looking at your firm from a PR perspective helps focus all aspects of the business, from an interaction with the media perspective, it is proof that counts.
As Winder noted: “Just because something sounds good, it doesn’t mean you can say it. So if you said something like: ‘I have the best customer service in the industry’, or ‘I have the happiest clients’, can you prove it? But once you have that list of provable points, that is valuable.”
Few people actually consider PR to be a risk to their company, at least not when it is their own PR that they control. However, this is not the case, and a sense of perspective is as important as the sense of judgement already discussed.
