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If your company rents construction, landscaping or industrial equipment, you should be doing some kind of proactive public relations (PR) effort to build your business.

PR can:

• Open doors to new business growth and development opportunities
• Generate sales leads
• Help you get discovered by industry influencers such as industry trade media and investors
• Launch new products and/or services effectively
• Position your team members as leaders and experts in the rental industry
• Enhance other marketing initiatives, like direct mail and ad campaigns
• Provide content on social media websites
• Give a “voice” to your rental company

PR is not a luxury for your brand

Not so long ago, only a few rental companies could boast having an ongoing, proactive PR effort as an integral part of their marketing plans. This isn’t because most didn’t see the value, but because it was perceived as a luxury ─ something that would be nice to have if you have extra money in your marketing budget to hire an outside PR consultant to manage it.

But because we now live in a content-driven society, if you aren’t producing it, distributing it and/or getting it published, your target customers may not discover your brand or equipment. PR is a powerful content marketing tool for rental companies to utilize. PR is what you need to do to differentiate your rental company against big brand names and smaller competitors that are nipping at your heels.

PR isn’t just a marketing tool

The sales channel relies heavily on PR too. It is no longer enough for your marketing department to generate leads and toss them over to the sales team. Now, marketing is involved in the entire sales process, nurturing customers throughout the process.

Here’s quick refresher on the sales process:

And here is how public relations can play an active role in every step:

• Awareness: People don’t just discover your company and its products/services. Editors don’t either. You have to make an introduction.
• Consideration: Customers research big rental decisions. PR content can give them the information they need to make a decision.
• Selection: Provide your sales team case studies to show customers examples of other people/companies that rented from your company before and how they are succeeding with it. Make it easy for your customers to feel good about renting from you.
• Interaction: After the rental agreement is signed, PR will continue to make customers feel good about their decision to work with your company. Want to make them feel even more important? Interview them for an article.
• Loyalty: A proactive PR effort that incorporates a variety of communications platforms that drive loyalty and give rental customers the opportunity to voice their own brand affinity.

When you start to think of PR as a content marketing tool, it is no longer optional ─ it is a must! So if you don’t have an active PR effort (or if your efforts are not constant) as part of your marketing initiatives, it’s time to make the decision to get one going.