PR (Public Relations)
Public Relations
What is PR?
- Managing reputation through relationships with the press and the public
- The trusted voice of a third party (the press)
- Includes crisis management
Once PR starts working, the first sentence in the sales room changes. Where reps used to open with 'We do this well,' they now start with 'That case in last month's trade journal was us.' The moment the speaker shifts from us to a third party, the other side's guard drops a notch. In B2B in particular, the person evaluating you will always search your company name during review, so what appears on the first page of search results becomes the real first impression.
In practice, exposure channels are managed in three groups: paid media (advertising you buy), owned media (your website and newsletter), and earned media (coverage that journalists and experts choose to give you). The core of PR is earned media, and its tools are press releases, bylined articles, interviews, awards, and citations in reports. A press release deals in facts, so it needs news that answers who, what, when, where, why, and how, such as a signed contract or a product launch. A bylined article deals in perspective, so it works even without an event. In B2B, a steady presence in your industry trade press reaches decision-makers far better than a single mention in a general daily.
Results aren't counted in number of articles. You look at whether our intended key message survived in the body text, how our share of mentions compares with competitors, and whether searches for the brand name and for 'company name + product' have grown. PR is a long-lead-time activity, so it usually takes 3 to 6 months for a single contributed article to turn into an inquiry. That is why there is a big difference between companies that put a line like 'Where did you hear about us?' on their inbound inquiry form and those that don't.
The most common mistake is handing a press release to a distribution agency and ending the report with 'a few articles ran.' Articles that run without a single word changed are usually in outlets nobody reads, while the real ones are those where a reporter calls you back with questions. The danger is greater in a crisis. When a controversy over an instructor's remarks or a learner data breach erupts, the decision to 'wait until things quiet down' becomes the costliest choice. If the company has no position within the first 24 hours, community posts and competitors' sales reps will fill that blank for you.
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of "B2B Marketing Design" and CEO of Nanum Consulting
Jongsung EunExpert in AI, marketing, business models, and management strategyA communications field systematized in the early 20th century by figures such as Edward Bernays, who is known as the father of modern PR.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, a leadership training specialist with 41 employees and annual revenue of about KRW 6 (≈ US$1) billion, ran into the same wall for three years. When it called training managers at large corporations, the first response was 'Sorry, who are you?' and it made the RFP invitation list only 4 times a quarter. It couldn't afford a large advertising budget.
- The marketing manager dug through the pre-assessment data of 12,000 training participants over the past three years and pulled out one number: 38% of new team leaders show signs of burnout within six months.
- The CEO personally pitched a monthly column to two HR trade publications, won a six-month series slot, and featured that 38% in a chart in the first installment.
- In the third installment of the series, a reporter from a business daily called and asked, 'Can I see the original data behind that figure?' The manager handed over the entire raw data table. Two weeks later, an in-print interview ran.
- The sales team attached the article PDF right after the proposal cover page and added just one line in the first meeting: 'This was written by a reporter, not by us.'
- Six months later, monthly inbound inquiries rose from 3 to 11, RFP invitations went from 4 to 13 per quarter, and 47% of respondents who were asked how they found the company said 'I saw it in an article.'