Welcome to the CATAAlliance Public Relations Resource Centre. This section provides insight into the role of PR, how it can help your company or organization, and how you can get started.
Public relations is many things to many people and the purpose for engaging a communications program can be just as broad. For instance, your company may want to secure new investors, increase sales, or develop relationships with industry analysts. For the most part, public relations is a program aimed at generating visibility and awareness by leveraging recognition with media and industry analysts through a variety of tactical and strategic activities. Ultimately these activities will translate awareness into a change of behaviour. A change of behaviour can include buying a new product, joining an association, or investing in a company. Essentially, a PR campaign is a deliberate, planned, and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its target audiences.
The greatest difference between PR and other marketing activities such as advertising is that PR generates third party credibility for companies. With PR, not only is somebody else talking about your company but you are also establishing company representatives as industry thought leaders.
As a technology company, you have unique PR challenges. Not only are you required to prove your technologies to customers, but media and analysts as well. Uncertain technology markets in the past created many skeptics who witnessed markets negatively impacted by current and past economies. While public relations cannot change the economy where tech companies operate, it can help you and your company stand out in a crowded market.