When it comes to your marketing strategy, where do you tend to put the majority of your focus? As the industry changes, it’s more likely that your efforts will follow the trends, meaning that your strategy could be more digitally focused and follow what consumers want. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it may not be in your business’s best interest to follow an all-new strategy. The tried and tested classic methods of marketing really do hold some weight, and it’s for a very good reason too – they work!
One of the most classic forms of marketing that is still going strong today is Public Relations (PR). PR has been a key part of the marketing mix for decades and continues to show significant results across a wide range of sectors. So, it’s time to ask yourself, are you utilizing the world of PR to the best of your abilities? If not, you could be missing out on some of the PR world’s power. Adding a strong PR strategy and a range of campaigns into your marketing mix will ensure that your entire promotional portfolio not only impresses but holds major influence too. Covering a couple of the classics and few newer mediums, let’s look at how you can create a powerful PR push for your company.
Media Relations
One of the biggest parts of PR is the media relations side of things. Dealing with journalists and harnessing your image in the press can be an incredible form of promotion for your business, but you have to get it right.
What’s The Story?
First of all, you’re going to need to figure out what your story is. When you’re looking to contact the media, you need to know that you have something that is newsworthy to share with them. Finding a creative news angle is a part of a successful PR campaign. You need to be able to spin a story into something that the media can use in their publications.
Create Contacts
Another part of nailing your media relations is having good contacts. If you’re going to be able to reach out to journalists, you need to know who to reach. So, start a list. Building a media contact list might seem hard at first. But once you know what publications and journalists you want to target, you can then use resources like Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn to find their contact details.
Get In Touch
Then, with your story sorted and your contact list ready, you’re then going to want to actually reach out to the media. To do this, you’re going to need two things. The first is a press release containing all of the information on your story that the journalists will need. And the second is a media kit that will contain details on your business and your press contacts should the journalists need them.
Nurture Those Relationships
One of the biggest parts of media relations is that it is all about the relationships you have with the press. It’s important that you can build strong relationships with journalists if you want to ensure that you can get coverage. By being respectful, interacting with them often, and actually reading their work, you should get off to a good start.
Social Media
Although social media marketing is definitely its own kind of marketing method in its own right, it’s also an essential part of modern PR. If you’re going to be able to ensure that your PR efforts are effective, you need to make sure to incorporate social media into your strategy.
Controlling Your Image
One of the great things about utilizing social media within your PR campaigns is that you can directly work on your image. Your business’s social media profiles are brand building, and they contribute to the brand image that your audience has of you. So, managing your business’s reputation on social media should be one of your top priorities.
Communicating Directly With Your Audience
The beauty of social media is that it’s accessible. Before its invention, you could only access and influence your audience via the media – which put a lot of pressure on your media relations. But now that you can communicate directly with your target audience, you can directly control how your business comes across. So, you can support the media relations that you’re doing with a similar conversation on social media.
Working With Content
Another recent connection with social media has been the introduction of content. Although, again, you’re likely to have your own content strategy, you can combine your PR and content to create magic. By doing this, you’re able to strengthen your message and make sure that all of your communications are consistent. At the same time, you can also share your content across social, to get it directly in front of the right audiences, all while controlling your message.
Reaching The Media From Another Angle
When you utilize your social media platforms as a part of your PR campaign, you’re also getting access to the media. Because journalists and publications are also on social media platforms, not just your consumers. So, you can work to build your relationships with the media via your social accounts, meaning that your media relations efforts should benefit too.
Events
When you’re working with communications and promoting your company, one of the most effective ways you can do this is with events. A lot of your PR efforts will be conducted online or via email or telephone, so in-person events can come with a lot of pull.
Host A Pop Up
An event should always be exciting. Even if it seems like a huge hassle to plan, you always want the idea of your event to excite your audience. This is often where pop-up events come in. They can be short and even come in a series while you host them in different places. They often come with a lot of buzz too, which is an invaluable form of PR. So make sure that you utilize the right resources to make it happen.
Put On Something For Fun Customers
If you’re looking to host an event that’s going to get your customers attention, you should always aim to make it all about them. Sometimes, you can throw an event just to reward your customers. It can be something in store as a way to say thank you to your customers, or it could even be something planned that you invite them to, just because. Plus, hosting a huge event always attracts the right kind of attention.
Team Publicity With Fundraising
Charity events are always a good thing to put on as a part of your marketing strategy too. Now, you’re going to be able to do a great thing for charity here, so you’re also ticking off some of your corporate responsibility. Whether you throw your own fundraiser or sponsor a larger one that is being held by the charity itself, having your name associated with something charitable can do great things for your brand image.
Throw Something Formal
Lastly, you may also want to think about throwing more of a formal bash. This can be a great way to focus on corporate hospitality. If you have clients to entertain, you’re going to want to pull out all of the stops. So focus on your corporate entertainment, Be sure to discover great acts, learn more about Characters for Hire, and research great music choices too. With an event like this, you can wow your audience and get a great story to share with the press too.
Influencer Engagement
The digital world is definitely shaking the PR world up, particularly when it comes to influencers. First, media relations started to extend to cover bloggers, and now we have the world of influencers too. As a blogger-celebrity hybrid, the world of influence goes hand in hand with PR.
Working With Bloggers
By now, you should know enough about bloggers to know just how influential they are. PR teams and businesses have been working with them to harness that influence for years already, so you’ve got to make sure that this is a crucial part of your PR plan. Working with bloggers will give you another great way to access your audience. Plus, they are often trusted by their readers at high levels, meaning your results should be great.
Get Influencer PR
After bloggers took over the world, influencers crept up closely and stole the crown. Digital influencers, those that have a lot of followers and, of course, influence on their social media platforms, can be another great addition to your promotions. You can often connect with a wide audience and team your collaboration with various other aspects of your PR strategy too.
Celebrity Endorsement
Then we get back to the original form of influence – celebrity endorsement. While some may say that this is a tired form of PR, there’s a lot of evidence to say that it still works. After all, you can influence a lot of sales and gain brand loyalty by just working with the right celebrity. As long as they have their own brand name, there’s always going to be ways that a business can harness it.
carinacyril says
Eye opening and inspirational – thanks 🙂