Using PR to make your professional people a leading authority

Nowhere is the phrase ‘people buy people’ more relevant than in the professional services sector.

It’s why successful professional firms – from solicitors to accountants – want to hire people who not only are experts in their field, but who have a strong and loyal ‘following’ of clients and professional intermediaries. Many specialists are brands in their own right.

Putting in place a PR and communications strategy that puts your key people in the spotlight and keeps them there, can help them become a ‘go-to’ expert and open doors to new enquiries.

Here’s five steps professional firms and their marketing teams can take to leverage the power of the personality.

Identify the right experts

The first step is to identify the right service and sector specialists in your firm, be it tax planning, commercial property law or technology. It needs to be people who have that deep level of specialism in their niche area, but who are adept at explaining complex subject matter in simple, human terms.

People who are confident public speakers will be able to grow their profile more easily by engaging with the media or presenting at business events.

Develop a communications plan

Perhaps the most important step in this process is developing a coherent, thought-out plan for putting your experts in the spotlight. This maintains momentum and ensures your efforts don’t run out of steam. This will involve sitting down with the expert to gain a thorough understanding of their target audiences, and where and how those audiences can be reached. Your approach will likely include a mix of owned channel, earned channel and paid media.

Present their knowledge

A key skill of PR and internal marketing teams is helping to unlock the expert’s knowledge and packaging it up in a way that becomes appealing to external audiences. This may be through thought leadership articles, expert commentary and reaction on key industry issues, or video and podcasts. Engaging with journalists to secure media coverage for your experts builds authority and reputation, helping them to secure further opportunities to comment in future.

Use multiple channels to create your professional stars

Making sure your ‘owned’ channels are working hand-in-hand with external media channels can also help your people to shine. For example, if your expert generates great media coverage by commenting on an important issue, this content can be amplified on your website or LinkedIn channel, either by reposting the original article, or turning the content into quotes or video.

Measure what matters

Measuring the impact of your people-focused comms activity enables you to evaluate its effectiveness. For example, has the PR activity generated increased search visibility for your expert? Have they gained more engagement and followers on LinkedIn? Has this translated to an increase in enquiries for that person or their service?

This will help you to make decisions on future activity that can help to raise their profile further, such as event sponsorship, panel speaking opportunities, and other media relations activity.

Freshfield has been providing strategic communications support to professional services businesses and their leaders for over 20 years. If you want to discuss a project, in confidence, contact our team at hello@freshfield.quicklaunch.co.