While you’ve probably heard the expression that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” any small business that has lost revenue, customers, and an otherwise pristine reputation due to a negative PR situation would certainly disagree with that sentiment.
And while these type of situations can catch any business off guard (very few businesses intentionally seek out negative press), how you respond to a PR crisis is just as important to how you prepare for one.
In fact, our recent survey of 300 small businesses found that 50% of those businesses that had a formal PR crisis plan in place found their preparations to be “extremely effective” when responding to a negative press situation.
That “extremely effective” assessment dropped to just 21% for businesses that only had an informal PR crisis plan in place.
In other words, when it comes to preparing for the unexpected, it pays to go the extra mile rather than just loosely hashing a few “what if?” scenarios together.
The importance of PR crisis management
For small business owners, negative publicity can put jobs and customers on the line, and can even result in irreparable damage to your company and your brand that you’ve worked so hard to establish.
From innocent gaffes to fully fledged PR nightmares, small business owners should understandably be concerned about bad publicity and the impacts that it can have on everything they’ve carefully built over the years.
In our survey, we asked small business professionals about how they handle public relations, their negative press prevention and response measures, the financial impact of negative press, any changes they plan to make in the future, and more.
Here’s what we discovered.
How Do Small Businesses Handle Public Relations?
We began our survey by getting a sense of how small businesses are currently handling their public relations needs. While it makes sense for giant corporations to handle PR in house, that isn’t necessarily the best way for small business owners and entrepreneurs to manage their public relations needs.
It’s important to note that public relations is a broad term encompassing several disciplines, all of which are critical to businesses large and small. From relationship management to marketing strategy, social media and community engagement, brand reputation management, crisis communication, and much more, public relations is an essential component of a successful business plan.
That said, 70% of our respondents indicated that their company counts on an in-house PR team for some or all of their public relations needs. In addition to this, almost half of our respondents said that they use outside PR consultants (49%) or an outsourced PR agency (41%) either in addition to, or in place of, an in-house team.
Reinforcing the idea that larger businesses are more capable of handling PR in-house, our survey found that businesses with 101 to 1,000 employees employ in-house PR teams 74% of the time, compared to 64% for businesses with 100 or fewer employees.
Those larger businesses are also more likely to leverage PR consultants, at 52%, compared to 45% of the smaller businesses.
Preventing Negative Press or a PR Crisis
Whether using their own in-house team or the services of an external public relations agency, our respondents cited a variety of strategies for preventing or limiting public relations problems.
More than 60% reported that they work to avoid bad press by instead focusing on creating positive publicity for their brands through charitable donations or community service, for example.
Proactive approaches–whether that means having a plan in place, building relationships with local media, or training employees–were the most popular options among those surveyed.
This type of proactive stance makes good sense, as it positions businesses to respond head-on should any negative press arise.
Holding regular media training sessions for employees may seem like a tactic reserved for larger, public-facing corporations. But ensuring that everyone across your business knows how to respond to negative items or misinformation, understands the basics of good PR, and is prepared to serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the brand (should that need arise) ensures consistency inside and outside of the organization, no matter the size.
Crisis Plans and Dealing with Negative Press
Moving on to crisis planning, we wanted to get a sense of how many small businesses have a plan in place for dealing with negative press or online reputation issues. And here the results were interesting.
More than 60% of our respondents indicated that they do have a formal crisis plan in place. While we didn’t go into details, these formal plans are likely to include standardized responses, templated communications options, a “phone tree” of employees and departments to contact, and other standard procedures documented and included in training materials.
Nearly 30% of our respondents indicated that they have an informal crisis plan in place for their organization.
Whether formal or informal, these plans seem to be effective, with a resounding 97% of these respondents rating their preparations as either somewhat effective or extremely effective when they needed to lean on them during an actual PR crisis.
Notably, 70% of the businesses that outsourced their PR to an agency or consultants had a formal crisis plan in place, while only 63% of businesses that primarily handled PR in-house had a formal plan in place.
While inconclusive, this could suggest that agencies and consultants are better equipped to help clients formalize their PR crisis plans.
Effective Strategies for Addressing and Correcting Negative PR
Next, we asked our survey group questions about the financial impact caused by negative PR and their thoughts on the most effective options for dealing with bad press in order to hopefully limit those financial losses.
On the first point, almost 30% of the businesses we surveyed estimated that they had lost between $10,000 and $50,000 as a result of negative PR in fiscal year 2022. Still another 20% indicated that bad press had cost their companies somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.
Whether from a full-blown PR disaster or a simple mistake, the significant costs of negative publicity were clear in the bottom line.
Related to this, we asked our group what they felt were the best or most effective ways to deal with, and limit the negative impacts of, bad PR. And this is another space where our respondents offered a variety of helpful options.
Topping the list was direct communication with customers or clients, which nearly 60% of respondents indicated as the most effective way to respond to negative PR. Social media statements and company leadership statements rounded out the top three options, while–in an encouraging display of good business sense–ignoring or downplaying the situation received relatively few votes.
Reputation Management and PR Approaches for the Future
With these results and responses in mind, we asked our survey group what they had planned for their future PR strategies for dealing with negative press. Among those respondents whose organizations didn’t already have a formal response plan in place, creating a negative PR response plan was the number one choice.
When looking at all businesses, including those that already have a formal response plan in place, launching social media monitoring software and hiring an outside agency joined creating a response plan at the head of the pack of top options.
To close, it may be helpful to look at a cross section of businesses that rated their negative PR preparations as “extremely effective” in order to find clues as to what has helped them handle negative press so well.
Among those businesses that rate their PR crisis preparations as “extremely effective”:
- 83% said that they had a formal crisis plan in place (as opposed to the 17% that only had an informal plan).
- 63% said that direct communication with customers and clients was among their most effective response strategies.
- 59% planned to add social media monitoring to their negative PR response strategy in the future.
Good Press Requires Good Help
Public relations and communications for businesses have come a long way from printed press releases, and there is a great deal more that small businesses need to consider to stay top of mind in a good way. From trending hashtags and social media content to customer reviews and online responses, business owners have a lot to do to reach, engage, and maintain their target audience of customers and clients.
Connect with an experienced PR agency to ensure your business is ready to handle a negative press situation, should one arise, and have peace of mind that you’ll be well-equipped to protect your reputation.