By Paul Button, General Manager of award-winning business Rotorua Canopy Tours.

Public Relations (PR) is a great way to get your brand out there and for us here at Rotorua Canopy Tours, PR has been a big part of our domestic brand building over the last 5 years. You can get quite deep into your specific markets and we know that it has had a really positive impact on our sales over the years too. But it can be overwhelming and hard to know where to start. So, here are few tips that I have learnt running PR campaigns for Rotorua Canopy Tours.

Photo: Paul, General Manager of Rotorua Canopy Tours, has some top tips to share from working on PR strategies for one of the most award-winning tourism businesses in New Zealand.

1. Know your numbers and share them

The media loves numbers, it helps to deliver a credible story. It changes the narrative from, ‘I think’ to ‘I know’. For example, a story about our post covid performance should say “our family visitation increased by 16%, but our revenues dropped by 50%” which sounds better than “I feel the changes to our family prices have encouraged more families to visit, but overall our sales are down”. Or “we think we have removed 1000’s pest from the ancient forest in the Dansey Road Scenic Reserve“ does not sound as credible as “in the last 6 months, we have recorded 800 rat kills, and our monitoring data shows the Possum saturation is down from, 100% in 2012 to 3% in 2020”.

2. Collab with others

Multiple voices make a stronger story. This can be tough when you have a great story and you do not want to share the spotlight. But in media, sharing is caring and you will get more pick up from media outlets by including 2- 3 strong voices in your article.

3. Lead with your ‘why’

Consumers of the media (your audience) can smell your commercial angle a mile off. That is why your PR should be a slow burn campaign. Every media win you get, you need to ensure your ‘why’ is subtly spread throughout. For us, we want to deliver premium nature experiences and we would use emotive language and highlight our unique selling points (USPs) to suggest that. Make sure you roll it casually throughout your content, rather than a cheesy one-liner at the end, which will always get cut by the final edit.

4. Don’t be scared of opportunities to go live

A live interview is nerve-racking but in a lot of ways, it’s the best opportunity for you to get your brand position across. Whenever you have a media op, the journalist will use what they need to angle their story. But the magic of live TV or radio is they can’t cut you and you can deliver your key messages within the story. But be careful, if you go too hard highlighting your USP’s, the media outlet may feel you are too commercial and not call you back for another opportunity.

I hope you appreciate these tidbits to help you with your PR campaigns. We really feel that that investment into our brand has helped us survive the effects of the pandemic over the last 12 months and we hope a few of our tips will help you build your business too.