You’ve come up with your amazing business idea and you’ve invested a considerable amount of time, effort and money into the new venture. Now all that’s left to do is the fun part, take it to market.

For any type of startup, having a range of good PR tactics is pivotal to business growth. Many see PR as a luxury, only to be enjoyed by large scale companies. But in reality, PR is an essential and a highly valuable marketing tool that can increase visibility and help a business to stand out from their competitors.

Here are three reasons why PR is important to your startup.

It gives your brand a voice

When first starting, very few customers will know about your company or understand why it’s amazing. To grow into a successful business this needs to change, and getting your voice heard in the press can be a seriously effective way of doing this.

PR provides lots of different ways to communicate who your brand is and what it stands for. In its simplest form it encourages others to do your advertising for you. As a startup, you’re likely to face challenges around communicating a new offering within busy markets, particularly if you’re trying to disrupt existing product ranges or ways of doing business. An active voice is therefore essential, and a 360 PR campaign provides a means for that voice to be heard.

Driving awareness

Your startup is only new once, and once you’ve introduced yourself and developed your brand’s voice, your aim should be to justify and highlight your market position. Making customers aware of what makes your business different and keeping them talking about it is a great way to do this. PR provides a means to enter and engage in industry debates and develop conversations around what you’re doing, how you’re impacting the market and how your startup is benefiting consumers.

PR allows organisations to continually demonstrate capabilities within key vertical media and get noticed. The more people that talk about your startup, the more aware they will become.

Enhancing credibility

Markets are crowded. Once you’ve started generating awareness around your brand, it’s important to use PR to build your reputation. Credibility can be enhanced by engaging in industry debates or having a controversial opinion on industry challenges.

Accessible content will position you as an expert within the field and generate exposure to make your business more attractive to potential customers.

It is difficult to introduce yourself as a new player, particularly within a market with other long established businesses. We’re well aware of the challenges here. PR can be a highly valuable and important marketing tool in providing a vessel to quickly and effectively raise a company’s profile within an industry sector, and ultimately make them stand out from the crowd.