How the World’s Smartest Companies Turn PR Into a Revenue Machine
James Elms is the Head of Business and Corporate at Legacy Communications. He writes about how major companies around the world are using PR to increase their revenue globally.
Companies spend millions making it easy to buy from them, then make it impossible to trust them. They optimise checkout flows and sales processes whilst their prospects Google them and find silence. Or worse, competitors.
In B2B, 57% of buyers are more than halfway through their purchase decision before they contact sales. The battle is won or lost before your team gets involved.
In done well, PR sits in a unique position as a growth engine that drives demand, defends pricing, and accelerates revenue simultaneously. And, turn that trust into beautiful revenue!
When your company appears consistently in respected media, when your executives speak with authority on industry challenges, these signals transforms “Can we trust these people?” into “Everyone knows these people.”
Strategic PR establishes credibility in the invisible half of the buying journey. It makes you uniquely valuable. And unique vendors get chosen, often at premium prices.
PR accelerates your pipeline
Companies with strong brand recognition close deals 33% faster than unknown competitors. When prospects arrive familiar with your company, conversations skip credibility-building and dive into substance. Objections decrease, approvals accelerate and deals close.
As more deals close with the same sales capacity, better forecast accuracy, lower customer acquisition costs, higher team productivity, it compounds and protects your margins
Buyers accept higher prices when they perceive lower risk. People don’t choose what they like. They choose what feels safe to defend!
The vendors maintaining premium pricing are invariably those with the strongest market presence. That perception protects your margins and stops the discounting spiral that erodes profitability.
It removes buying friction
Recognised brands require 40% fewer approval layers than unknown vendors. After your champion agrees to work with you, the real battle begins: internal selling. If you’re unknown, each stakeholder, procurement, legal, finance, leadership, requires education and proof. Each one can kill the deal.
If you’re recognised, it’s a shortcut to objections diminishing before they form. Approvals accelerate. Deals close. Recognition removes resistance. Resistance creates delay. Delay kills revenue.
If your sales team burns the first two meetings establishing credibility, you’re extending every cycle and killing conversion rates. If you’re competing primarily on price, it’s because prospects see you as interchangeable, without reputation, commoditisation is inevitable. If you lose deals when you’re the unknown vendor in a shortlist, you’re not alone: buyers choose recognised names three-to-one when all else is equal.
What strategic PR actually requires
It means mapping the trust journey your buyers take before contacting sales. What questions are they asking? Which publications do they read? It means positioning your executives as definitive voices on the challenges your buyers face, not your features, but their problems.
It means securing placement where your buyers actually form opinions. And it means measuring what matters: deal velocity by prospect awareness, win rates against recognised competitors, pricing pressure across your pipeline, and inbound lead quality.
The competitive reality
The smartest companies treat PR as non-negotiable growth infrastructure. They’re compressing sales cycles whilst their competitors grind through objections. They’re defending pricing whilst competitors discount their way to the bottom. They’re winning on value whilst competitors scramble on price.
This advantage compounds. Every quarter with strong PR builds on the previous quarter. Every piece of strategic coverage makes the next placement easier to secure. The flywheel accelerates.
The companies winning their markets have already made this choice. They’re investing accordingly and pulling further ahead every quarter – they’re closing deals faster, protecting margins better, and building the reputation moat that makes them increasingly impossible to displace.
Sources
- B2B buyers are more than halfway through their purchase decision before contacting sales (57–70%) Google & CEB (now Gartner), The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/b2b/digital-evolution-b2b-marketing/
- Strong brands close deals faster (brand familiarity linked to materially shorter sales cycles) LinkedIn B2B Institute, The 95-5 Rule & B2B Brand Research https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute
- Companies with stronger reputations can command premium pricing (up to ~9%) PwC, Global Consumer Insights Survey – Willingness to Pay for Trusted Brands https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/consumer-markets/consumer-insights-survey.html
- Typical B2B buying groups involve 6–10 decision-makers (driving layered approvals) Gartner, The New B2B Buying Journey https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/the-new-b2b-buying-journey