Why You Need PR and How to Use It to Increase Visibility for Your Brand with Alessandra Pollina

Why You Need PR and How to Use It to Increase Visibility for Your Brand

A sit-down with Public Relations Expert: Allesandra Pollina

Welcome to episode 48, The Determined Mom Show, We discuss all aspects of working from home and Public Relations with our special guest Allesandra Pollina. 

She owns the Pollina PR firm and has so much experience in PR and helping her clients get that exposure and all other aspects of marketing as her firm is a PR and Marketing agency. 

How To Start Public Relations?

We will get into how she started working from home and her overall Public Relations journey, as this will allow our readers to make notes so that they can start their businesses. Many people are interested in “how to work from home” Allesandra has expressed that she started working from home seven years ago in 2014 and loves its flexibility. 

She started doing PR for a small firm that built her experience, and within a year of graduating college, she started her own PR business. She also had done a lot of internships and opportunities throughout college, along with years of experience working for big and small agencies. These experiences, over time, allowed her to fully grasp the PR industry and network to build a list of contacts for herself.

Allesandra finds that PR and most forms of marketing are very conducive to working from home, making it an easier transition from 9-5 to fully working from home or starting your own business. She recommends starting with 1 or 2 clients and then, over time, learning what it takes to grow your own business.

How to use PR to increase the visibility of your brand?

Allesandra explains that her firm is a full-service PR and marketing agency. They start from the beginning of their client’s journey and work towards getting that company’s story or brand into the media and news outlets. So PR can encompass and does encompass a lot of other components too. And a lot of them do overlap a lot with marketing.

So the difference is that a PR firm like hers will offer services like organizing events and helping with cross-promotion relationships or social media collaborations for clients. They also do other forms of direct marketing, like helping with digital and email campaigns. Her PR firm makes her clients relatable to their target audience while being featured in the media. 

Public Relations & E-commerce

Direct Marketing has advanced over the years, especially with email marketing and chatbots that allow clients to reach the audience on their immediate list directly. PR assists any business in reaching its target audience that is not on its immediate list. PR tells your brand’s story so your target audience can notice you.

It’s important for businesses to work with the right firms so that their brand reaches a wider audience and to avoid the pitfalls of having an article promote your business only on one site. Companies and small businesses need to work with PR firms to control their brand’s story and share it with the world in the right light.

Who are your PR clients?

I posed these questions to Allesandra; Do you work with brick-and-mortar businesses? Or do you work with many online businesses, and is there a need for online businesses to do PR? 

Her response: “Yeah. It’s a mix. I do work with a lot of brick and mortar businesses and also online businesses.”

What marketing advice do you have for businesses?

“I think the main thing to remember is that many people don’t necessarily start their business with a marketing budget in mind, which is a huge mistake. In almost every case, especially with many online businesses, you can start alone.

That might be fine as long as you can get a couple of clients like you can have your business up and running. But if you need to reach larger audiences or want to set yourself up as more of a key player in your space, then you do need to be planning to do marketing and some PR.”

These are the list of things that businesses should be doing to increase their exposure to their target audience:

• Have a set marketing budget (PR, Blogs, Ads, etc.) to increase brand visibility. 
• Networking with potential clients or other businesses to learn from them 
• Join Social Groups for your industry on networks like Linkedin & Facebook groups. 
• Be involved in your local area, so your business can be seen for, e.g., sponsoring a school or event.

Overall, these things will help your business be seen more and can lead to it getting featured in the media. The main point to drive home is to be active in telling your company’s story to reach a wider audience, and it will increase your visibility.