Small businesses face plenty of challenges. One of the toughest? Simply getting noticed.
The popularity of social media and the influence of search algorithms mean big brands can dominate the retail sector and leave the small guys behind.
Public relations is therefore a vital part of any small business growth strategy because it’s often your best route to standing out. Get it right and you can rapidly expand your audience and achieve swift market penetration.
Whether you’re announcing a new business launch, hosting community events, or releasing a new service, earning media coverage and building a positive image can bring in business leads, improve brand perception, and foster emotional connections with your target audience.
Knowing how to leverage PR for small business is the difference between staying local and reaching a wider audience across multiple markets. This guide will show you how to crack the public relations code so your small business can get the attention it deserves.
Why public relations is crucial for a small business
Building brand awareness doesn’t happen overnight, especially if you’re a small business owner. Public relations helps position your business as trustworthy, timely, and relevant.
Think of it this way: the media only reports on what’s interesting. If your brand has interesting stories, you’re more likely to gain PR leads, making your brand more relevant.
From local newspapers to major news sites, every outlet and platform you connect with increases your chance of reaching a wider audience and obtaining earned media. As a small business, you might not get media attention every day. Journalists and reporters might not even know you exist, so you need to be proactive in getting their attention.
Effective public relations turns everyday updates into compelling story angles that resonate with your community, industry, and even national media if you play your cards right. The key is ensuring you know your story and can tell it in the right way.
The difference between PR and marketing
Before we dive into the rest of this guide, it’s important to distinguish the difference – and similarities – between PR and marketing. The two work closely together in order to help a brand present the right image and achieve its goals.
Public relations focuses on maintaining a brand’s positive reputation. That means working with external publications to highlight and promote the brand, and ensuring a good level of positive earned media. Marketing is more focused on selling products or services – on ‘marketing’ the brand – often through owned or paid media.
However, the two are intertwined. A PR campaign needs to be aligned with marketing initiatives to succeed, and a marketing campaign needs some publicity to achieve awareness.
As a small business, you may have a team or a sole employee who works across both public relations and marketing. For the purposes of this guide, we’re focusing on PR. However, knowing what marketing techniques you could weave into a public relations strategy is always worth knowing.
Key PR building blocks for your small business
There’s a lot to balance when you handle the PR for a small business. You might encounter reporters and journalists who don’t know your story while you’re trying to attract audiences who aren’t familiar with you either. You therefore need to develop various PR segments that eventually come together to form a cohesive narrative.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Develop a compelling story
Every small business owner has a reason why they started their business. Maybe you were inspired by a charitable endeavor or developed a new innovative technology that changes how customers solve a problem. You might have simply spotted a gap in the market. Whatever your brand’s origin, highlight that compelling story to create emotional connections with readers and potential customers. Powerful storytelling – whether it’s about your business opening or your community events – makes for stronger PR campaigns that resonate with your target audience.
2. Create a media kit
A media kit is a vital part of your PR efforts. It’s essentially a ready-made set of resources that media outlets and journalists can use to learn about your company. A thorough media kit typically includes:
- Company overview: A brief background on your business, including its founding date and core mission.
- Key facts and stats: Market data, sales milestones, or positive reviews from loyal customers.
- Leadership bios: Short bios of the founder or key members.
- High-quality visuals: Company logos, product photos, or images from local events that show your brand in action.
- Contact information: Dedicated press contacts so journalists can easily reach you.
Your media kit can also include your brand's latest news and developments. If you create a dedicated ‘media’ section of your website, you can channel all journalist requests to one place, making your PR efforts much easier.
Providing a polished media kit helps your small business appear prepared and professional. Make it available on your company website and update it to match your visual branding and tone of voice.
3. Prepare multiple angles for press releases
Small businesses use press releases to attract the interest of local and, at times, national media. However, press releases may need to be tailored to the recipients.
For example, if a local florist decorates its storefront for Mothers’ Day, the press release for local media might include a section that encourages people to view the display. Meanwhile, the press release sent to national media could focus on the store’s online shop.
Make sure you craft interesting angles when you write press releases. Reasons for issuing them include:
- Product launches: Highlight your new innovative technology that solves a pressing need.
- Local breakthroughs: Share how your small business positively impacts the community.
- Business milestones: Showcase growth, expansions, or partnerships.
You can use a tool like CisionOne to cultivate your press contacts list and get writing help in finding the right story.
4. Build strong media relations
You have your brand’s story and your media kit, and you know how to reach journalists through press releases. Now you need to improve those journalistic relationships.
Check-in on journalists and reporters to see what news they want to receive. A local TV network, for example, will want interesting local news with good visuals. A trade magazine might want more in-depth stories.
5. Monitor mentions and collect your data
A small business thrives on real-time feedback. You can use something simple like Google Alerts to see if your company or key terms are mentioned in local newspapers, news channels, or other brands’ content.
However, to fully understand your PR efforts, there are social media management tools like Brandwatch that can track media coverage, user sentiment, and any PR campaigns you’re running on social media. A tool like CisionOne, meanwhile, is perfect for overseeing campaigns in traditional and digital media.
By using dedicated monitoring software, you’ll be able to see which publications are using your press releases and how effective the messaging is. From here, you can refine your strategy and improve the other building blocks that go into future PR campaigns.
Using social media for PR
You can’t ignore the role of social media in PR campaigns, even if your initial activity around a campaign doesn’t involve social platforms. You might send out press releases and liaise with reporters, expecting your story to be published on their sites or publications. But you should also expect your story to spread on social media too.
As a small business, this is where your public relations content – press releases, company milestones, latest updates, etc – becomes marketing content. While external media sources might publish your story on their social channels, there’s also no harm in doing it yourself!
Using social media to amplify your message
After writing press releases and distributing them to your media contacts, sharing a condensed version on your social media channels is worth sharing. This widens your potential audience and ensures you control the narrative. Remember, a journalist doesn’t have to print your press release word-for-word, so it’s worth publishing the story yourself, too.
A short post directing readers to your full announcement can spark conversation and increase engagement. Remember to adjust your tone to fit each platform. For LinkedIn, consider strategies in what to post on LinkedIn for a more professional angle; for TikTok, check tips tailored to small business TikTok audiences.
A tool like Brandwatch Publish enables you to schedule posts, analyze engagement metrics, and keep a unified brand voice. When you automate social media marketing, you free up more time for deeper media relations and creative PR campaigns.
Measuring social media impact through analytics
Brandwatch is also the perfect tool for assessing the impact of your PR campaigns on social media. With Measure, you can watch how PR campaigns unfold on social accounts of news channels, magazines, newspapers, journalists, and anyone else you have contacted with your story.
You can also track your own posts to see which have successfully cut through to your audience. Add to this Brandwatch’s social listening capabilities and you’ll get a fully-rounded view of your PR campaign, who it’s reached, and what people are saying about it.
Using local media for PR
Small businesses can come to rely on local media to get noticed and grow their brand awareness. Local media is still hugely influential, even if social and national media dominate the digital landscape. Here are some ways a small business can work with local media to benefit both.
Working with local media outlets and newspapers
Focusing on local newspapers, radio stations, and TV coverage can be a game changer if your small business caters to a neighborhood or region. Why? Because your business relies on a smaller number of people buying into your brand. You need to ensure your localized brand awareness is high because it’s these people who are most likely to be your customers.
Therefore, while landing a feature in a global publication is great, consistently showing up in local media fosters trust, draws foot traffic (if you have a physical location), and can transform curious residents into loyal customers.
Don’t be shy about providing them with press release examples that include upcoming local events, product launches, or a compelling story about your growth. You could even offer to write editorials for free or place ads in these local publications as a thank you for being organically featured.
Remember, with public relations, it’s all about hooking your contacts – the journalists, reporters, and editors who decide what goes into the publications – with content their readers will find relevant.
Find the right local media
The secret to all this is figuring out how to provide relevant stories about your brand to your target audience. To do this, you’ll first need to know a little about the publications, radio stations, TV networks, and local social media influencers that operate in your neighborhood.
Use a tool like CisionOne to understand their audience. Does it align with yours? Is the influential local newspaper predominantly read by seniors a relevant PR contact for your brand? Do you need to attract local TikTok stars with a predominantly under-25 audience to your store that caters to retirees?
Once you know how relevant and influential each local media source is, you can then begin to focus your energies on the ones that matter.
Let Brandwatch empower your PR journey
Small businesses have to compete in a big marketplace these days, but PR is a great way to overcome obstacles and get noticed at a local level. You don’t need massive PR agencies to get started – just a bit of willpower and an understanding of your brand and audience.
Focusing on short news announcements, distributing strategic press releases, engaging with local media, and using analytics tools can help you lead your small business toward steady growth and a glowing reputation.
Ready to take your public relations to the next level?
- Discover how Brandwatch Consumer Research offers real-time insights into trends, sentiment, and media monitoring. Book a Brandwatch demo today.
- Explore Brandwatch Social Media Management services that help you handle multiple social media accounts and automate marketing for consistent branding.
By merging strategic public relations tactics with data-driven media relations, your small business can earn valuable media coverage, reach a wider audience, and cultivate lasting emotional connections.
Start small, keep refining, and let PR become integral to your success story in 2025 and beyond.
