The PPP - Public Relations

Public Relations

This week’s episode of the Practical Protection Podcast is all about public relations and insurance. Kathryn is joined by co-host Roy McLoughlin and Kevin Carr from Carr Consulting. They discuss what public relations is, how it might be able to work for you and the benefits you might see from raising your profile.

Kevin has worked within the finance industry for many years. He started at Nationwide advising on mortgages which then led onto his role as adviser at LifeSearch, which quickly changed to include public relations. This was a clear next step for Kevin, he was drawn to this by seeing that talking with journalists often leads to being featured in the press and then being noticed and contacted by more clients wanting advice.

Public relations or PR for short, is all about how organisations and people communicate with others and promote themselves, it also includes building a reputation and influencing opinions. It can cover a lot of different things, not just the press. There are many ways that you can raise your profile, this can really depend on what you want and need to support your career.

People value PR in different ways. It really can be beneficial to raise your profile as this then gives people a face to contact and talk to, raising awareness of you and your business. One thing to pay attention to is are you focusing on the right topic, in the right area, towards the right audience, and often enough?

Insurance doesn’t always get the best rap, especially with all the horror stories people see in the news and online of insurers not paying claims or living up to expectations. Thankfully, claims within protection insurance are much higher than other types of insurance. A real question is why do we hear so many bad stories and not positive ones? I guess people feel more confident sharing their negative experiences if they think other people will benefit from it, but might not necessarily want to share their private information without a positive knock on effect. If someone gets paid £500,000 after they’ve been diagnosed with a critical illness, or a partner has died, they might not want to shout about it for fear of people asking for money. They have also been through an incredibly distressing time and speaking to a journalist is unlikely to be top of the list of things to do.

Another thing mentioned in the podcast is that ‘life insurance policy pays out’ or ‘plane lands safely’ aren’t news. News is often what somebody else doesn’t want to be printed, which is why it might seem like there’s more negative stories.

Companies and organisations have to really pay attention to public relations but it can be equally important for individuals to pay attention to their public relations too. It could be that you’re an experienced member of the industry or you could just be launching your career and want to know how to get started. It’s likely that an individual might not have the big budget that organisations do, but there are still things that can be done to get your name out there. 

Awards are great, it’s an honour to be nominated or win them and great PR too, but they definitely aren’t the be all and end all. What you do with your award win afterwards can be just as important. As mentioned, they can be great PR, but if you don’t utilise this then it might not bring any benefits. Awards can get insurers to notice you and possibly take you more seriously, and they also look great to the clients looking to use your services. They can really help you to stand out on social media and work to increase your lead generation. 

Local awards can be just as good as national awards, as local PR can bring a lot of local people wanting what you have to offer without having to search far. It can also be a useful way to get yourself seen as a key employer in the region, helping you to recruit.

Kathryn mentions that she does a lot more PR than she realises, as many different aspects of marketing are counted as PR, such as social media, awards and comments in articles. These are all things that have helped Kathryn to establish her as a key protection insurance expert within our industry, that has led to her winning awards and more importantly being involved in industry projects that influence the way that protection insurance will work going forward.

You can catch more of what was discussed in the podcast below:

To listen to more episodes of the Practical Protection Podcast, click here.

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If you want to know more about how to arrange protection insurance, take a look at Kathryn’s Protection Insurance in Practice course here.

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