What is PR, and when a growing business needs it

PR (public relations) is the work of earning attention and trust you do not pay for: coverage in the media, expert commentary, speaking, and how the business answers when something goes wrong. For a growing business it pays off when you have something true and specific to say, and someone inside who can say it on time.

Below: what PR covers, how it differs from advertising, what journalists say they want, what to prepare before a difficult day, and when it is too early to start.

What is PR, in one sentence

The Public Relations Society of America defines it as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK puts it more plainly: PR is about reputation, which it describes as the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

The second definition is the useful one for a small business, because it puts action first. No press release can repair a promise the business keeps breaking.

PR and advertising: rented attention and earned attention

Advertising buys a place. You choose the message, the audience and the moment, and the reach stops when the budget stops. PR asks for a place. An editor, a host or an event organizer decides whether your story is worth their audience. You give up control and gain something advertising cannot buy: a third party who chose to talk about you.

One way to map this is the PESO model, which Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks describes as four kinds of media: paid (advertising, sponsored content), earned (a publication writing about you), shared (social media, which we cover in our article on SMM) and owned (content that lives on your own website or blog). They work best together. An interview becomes a post on your social pages, a page on your site and, if it worked, a candidate for paid promotion.

A paid article is advertising

Some outlets sell articles that read like editorial. That is advertising, whatever the format, and it should be labeled as such. It matters for search too. Google's examples of link spam include paid articles whose links pass ranking credit, and links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites. Paid links do not break the policy when they are marked as sponsored or nofollow. Paid placement can fit a plan. Just do not buy it as PR, and do not expect it to work as a recommendation.

What a journalist needs from you

Two recent surveys of journalists are a useful starting point. In Cision's 2025 State of the Media report, based on more than 3,000 journalists in 19 markets, 86% of journalists say they will immediately reject a pitch that does not match their beat or audience, and 72% name the press release as the most useful resource PR teams can offer. In Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026 survey, 69% preferred pitches under 200 words.

In practice that means four things:

• A reason to publish now. A new product is news to you. To an editor, news is a change that matters to their readers: a service that did not exist in a neighborhood, figures from your own work that nobody else has, a view on a decision that affects a whole industry.
• The right person. Read what a journalist has written in the last few months before you write to them. One relevant email beats fifty identical ones.
• Short and checkable. What happened, why it matters, one fact that can be verified, and who can comment. Photographs and a fact sheet go behind a link, not into the first message.
• A speaker who is available. A founder or specialist who answers the phone the same day and speaks plainly. If the journalist calls back and nobody answers, the story may run without you.

What PR includes for a growing business

We split the work into five parts, and not all of them are needed at once.

• A story bank. A list of what you can credibly say that others cannot: data from your own work, an unusual process, a founder's expertise, a decision you made and why.
• Press materials. A short company description, facts and figures you can stand behind, a founder bio, logo files and photographs, in one place and up to date.
• Media relations. A short list of outlets and journalists whose readers are your customers, and steady, personal contact with them.
• Expert commentary. Articles, interviews, a talk at an industry event. This is where a specialist business can show what it knows.
• Reputation care. Watching what is said about you in reviews, comments and the press, and having a plan for answering.

Before a difficult day

A business can have a bad day in public: a mistake in an order, an angry review that spreads, a delay that affects many customers. The time to prepare is before it happens. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention built its crisis communication framework around six principles: be first, be right, be credible, express empathy, promote action and show respect. It was written for public health emergencies, but the logic carries over to a business: say quickly what you know and what you do not know yet, acknowledge the people affected, tell them what to do next, and never guess.

A one-page plan is enough to start: who speaks for the company, who approves a statement, where the first answer is published, and the three or four situations most likely to happen in your line of work. If the matter has legal consequences, the plan includes your lawyer, working alongside communication rather than instead of it.

When it is too early for PR

PR multiplies what is already there. It is too early when:

• the product or service still changes every month, so a journalist's question about it has no settled answer;
• nobody inside can give a few hours a month to interviews, facts and approvals;
• the website and social pages would disappoint someone who arrives from an article;
• the goal is a quick rise in sales. Earned coverage is slow and unpredictable, and for a sales target next month advertising is the better-suited tool.

And be wary of anyone who guarantees coverage. Editors decide what they publish. What an agency can promise is relevant material, the right contacts and consistent work.

How to tell whether it works

A count of articles says little on its own. Better questions, asked every quarter: did coverage appear where your customers actually read? Did it describe the business accurately? Did direct visits, searches for your name or inquiries move in the weeks after? Ask every new customer where they heard about you, and keep the answers. Articles about you can also become sources for others, AI assistants included, when they describe your business; more on that in our article on visibility in search and AI answers.

Where to start

Write down three things your business knows or does that others in your field do not. If the list is hard to write, start there rather than with a press release. If you want an outside view of how your business is presented today, request a free audit. How we handle media relations, press materials and reputation work is on the PR and communications service page.