Timing is of course everything in PR and marketing. I witnessed a beautiful example of this recently coming out of Denmark. Queen Margrethe II reigned for 52 years, abdicating just a couple of weeks ago in January, 2024. She has been succeeded by her son King Frederik X, and if anyone ever needed advice on how to follow a queen of 52 years, it’s Frederik, who has to fill some very regal slippers indeed.
Fun fact: both Queen Margrethe II and Queen Elizabeth II of England are great-great granddaughters of Queen Victoria of England, who lived from 1837 to 1901 and reigned for just under 64 years. (Queen Elizabeth II still has everyone beat, reigning for an amazing 70 years before turning the country over to Charles III.) It’s an impressive family.
In the piece, she offers 10 ideas for the new King to ponder based on the leadership principles that her college, Absalon, teaches its students as part of the leadership training course that all leaders in the government must take in order to retain their positions over time. It’s a clever, fun way to give the King some advice, talk up the school, and spread the word on good leadership practices at the same time.
Because her timing was perfect, the op-ed piece received widespread notice throughout Denmark, and the school earned a nice moment in the spotlight. Trine is already well-known in Denmark and has appeared on Danish television and in the press over the years, so she is a trusted source for journalists and commentators to reference, quote, and comment on themselves.
In short, her piece has all the necessary attributes to go viral in her world. It’s timely, it addresses a hot topic, she is already a trusted commentator, and the clear structure of the op-ed makes it easily digestible and implicitly gives the reader a way to think about the new King’s role that is relevant and fun.
Here’s her advice in summary form. I link above to the translated version of the piece, but please understand that Google translate doesn’t do justice to the sparkle and wit of her prose.
Learn from your people – they will mirror your successes and failures and your policies’ ups and downs as well.
Lead with empathy and create a strong professional community.
Your kingdom is a chessboard, where each piece has strengths and weaknesses. Make your moves accordingly.
Nurture your people.
The king is like the conductor of an orchestra – create the right harmony.
Think strategically, two moves ahead. As Trine notes, “we’re not quite done with the chess metaphor!”
Practice honest and open communication.
Be ready to change and adapt.
Don’t forget succession planning – help your son, the prince, develop in his role. A pawn can become a king. . . .
Make sustainability core to your reign. Think about the long term.
Good advice for any leader, no? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our next president could take some of these lessons to heart in our divided country?
The value of PR extends beyond immediate numbers, emphasizing long-term brand reputation and loyalty, which ultimately contribute to sustained business success.
Should PR serve the purpose of boosting sales along with other strategies? This question has long been a subject of discussion among business experts. While PR professionals traditionally focus on brand awareness, reputation and media exposure, business owners want to see these factors reflected in increased revenue.
PR is an invaluable tool that becomes an integral part of many business processes, from shaping consumer perceptions to influencing people’s purchasing decisions. Although PR emphasizes brand image and visibility first and foremost, its ripple effect extends to consumer behaviour, which ultimately translates into increased sales figures for businesses.
In this article, you’ll learn how PR can positively influence sales when implemented as a long-term strategy and get tips on maximizing this effect.
Perceive PR as part of the business ecosystem
PR is part of a larger chain reaction in your company. Product quality, marketing strategies and customer service all shape the image and value of a business, and PR can amplify their impact through media storytelling. In other words, don’t expect PR to create a strong brand narrative out of nothing. Build it into the fabric of your company’s culture, values, and actions. PR is most effective when it aligns with the authentic identity of your brand, highlighting and amplifying the inherent strengths that already exist within your business.
To leverage this ecosystem, you need to encourage your sales, marketing, and other specialists to use PR as an extra asset in their work.
Make sales reps and PR professionals work together
Incorporating PR into sales will boost the effect of the former by highlighting brand credibility. It leads to enhanced customer confidence and increased conversion rates.
Here’s what sales managers can do in conjunction with PR:
Provide potential customers with a media list that reflects the company’s recognition and reputation as an industry leader;
Use media publications to create branded presentations that align with the overarching brand narrative;
Browse publications for comments and identify potential leads among commenters, etc.
This collaboration works wonders. PR itself doesn’t have immediate ROI because it takes time to build a solid brand reputation and boost the SERP ratings of your web pages. However, sales managers can leverage PR’s groundwork right away in their strategies.
Marry PR to marketing
PR and marketing have essentially the same goal – to attract and retain customers and drive business growth. That’s why it’s only natural that the two should work in tandem.
While marketing can quickly and powerfully impact sales, PR is a long-term game. Luckily, marketing managers can tap into PR to make it instantly valuable and important for sales growth. For instance, marketers can:
Use PR insights for targeted ad and marketing campaigns. PR-generated data, such as media coverage analytics or customer feedback obtained through PR efforts, helps marketers refine and adjust their strategies. This information can help tailor marketing campaigns to cater to the audience’s preferences and trends observed in PR engagements.
Enhance influencer collaborations. PR experts know how to find celebrities and influencers to endorse your brand and expose it to their followers and fans. Marketers can work with PR to identify the best potential collaborators, initiate contact, and score a great deal to boost your product promotion, leading to more sales.
Choose the right media outlets to generate quality leads
Don’t go random when you want to secure publications about your business in media. Selecting the appropriate outlets is crucial for generating high-quality leads through PR strategies. Choose the media that resonates with your niche and target audience — this way, your message will reach the right demographics.
For instance, if your product caters to tech-savvy consumers, collaborations with tech review websites or guest features in relevant industry online magazines can yield valuable leads. These leads can then be further nurtured through engaging content tailored to the specific audience’s interests and pain points. Tech-savvy consumers often seek in-depth information and insights, so providing them with detailed guides or informative articles that bring real value. The leads will associate this value with your brand and be more likely to turn into paying customers.
Engage in industry events to communicate with your target audience directly
PR is not just about media engagement. Active participation in industry events provides a direct line of communication between a business and the target audience. This creates fruitful opportunities for lead generation and reputation building.
Have a PR specialist you work with track relevant industry events and pick those that will best align with your brand’s goals and target audience. It may be trade shows, conferences, or exhibitions that allow brands to engage with potential customers face-to-face, showcasing products or services in a personalized manner.
For instance, hosting a booth at a beauty expo enables cosmetic companies to offer live demonstrations and active engagement with attendees. This exposure translates into potential leads and increased sales prospects.
Last but not least: Don’t chase (just) numbers
Remember: PR is not directly responsible for sales. It deals with building relationships, enhancing brand perception, and shaping public opinion. While sales metrics are important, PR primarily focuses on fostering trust, credibility, and goodwill among stakeholders.
The value of PR extends beyond immediate numbers, emphasizing long-term brand reputation and loyalty, which ultimately contribute to sustained business success. Prioritizing meaningful connections and a positive brand image over solely chasing numerical metrics allows PR efforts to lay a solid foundation for future growth.
If you want to track the specific metrics pertinent to PR campaigns and their impact, pay attention to:
Media impressions. Measure audience reach through media coverage
Sentiment analysis. Assess public perception (positive, negative, neutral)
Website traffic. Monitor increased visits due to PR efforts
Lead generation. Measure leads attributed to the campaign
If all these metrics demonstrate positive trends, you can be sure that PR is working in your favour and contributing to sales growth, even if this correlation is not immediately obvious.
Strengthen your PR efforts — and optimize your marketing budget — by learning what reporters are looking for.
Enter any editorial office, broadcast station or PR agency, and you may hear chagrins from both sides of the newsroom table: “Why won’t this journalist just get back to me?” or “Why does this PR contact keep pitching me stories we would never cover?”
There are vast misunderstandings between these two industries. Knowing what they are will help you get media coverage for your company — and enjoy the incredible benefits of PR.
Whether your company is managing its own PR efforts or working with a firm, here are five things journalists wish you knew about getting press coverage.
1. Usually, we’re looking for expert sources (not products and services to feature)
The top concern for PR pros is getting journalists to respond, according to The State of PR 2023 from Muck Rack.
It’s frustrating when your company’s carefully crafted pitches go ignored, but keep this in mind: A journalist’s job is to cater to their audience, not companies. Usually, that means educating their audience with valuable information. Pitch yourself as an industry expert first and foremost, not your products or services.
Although many articles benefit readers by showcasing certain products or services, these are often selected from a list of affiliate companies so the media company earns a slice of the sales.
Plus, journalists’ inboxes are flooded with pitches around products and services. It’s much more challenging for them to find credible experts before their deadline.
If you’re quoted as an industry expert, your company will be highlighted in the article and you’ll have the bonus of immediately establishing trust with a new audience. After a few of these inclusions, features focused entirely on your company will be easier to secure.
2. Your credentials matter more than your social media following
Sure, journalists may take a quick glance at your social accounts to see what type of content you’re posting. And yes, it might be a bonus if you have a large, engaged following.
However, there’s a misconception that social media following is the most important part of securing media coverage. The truth is, journalists care more about your credentials than how many followers you have. While social media might help journalists discover you, they’re looking for someone who can truly educate their audience.
Carefully consider how you establish credibility when introducing yourself as an expert source to the media. You can do this with:
Qualifications (Ph.D., MD, CCWS, etc.)
Associations (professor at a university, a rheumatologist at a hospital, etc.)
Titles you’ve been given (owner of an award-winning salon, 40 under 40 recipient, etc.)
Achievements (serial entrepreneur who’s sold several successful businesses, etc.)
Press experience (trusted by The New York Times, Washington Post and beyond, etc.)
3. We probably won’t cover the same topic twice in a short period of time
Newsrooms and broadcast stations always look for a fresh story to keep their audience engaged. Still, a sample of a common pitch editors and producers receive: “I saw you recently covered the best glassware for dinner parties. Would you like to consider my company for upcoming coverage on glassware for dinner parties?”
Instead, pitch a fresh take on the topic: “I saw your story on glassware for dinner parties — it was a great read! If you ever need quick turnaround quotes on how to clean glassware after parties, the best glassware pairings for a soirée or any other related topics, I’d be happy to help. Our company specializes in elevating parties with beautiful dinnerware.”
On that note, if you’re monitoring journalist queries through a service like HelpAReporter.com (where journalists submit queries for expert sources), but you find you missed the deadline for a given story, it may still be worth simply reaching out to that journalist separately.
Let them know that you’re an expert in the beat they cover, provide your credentials and share that you’re available for future stories.
4. Short, succinct quotes make you our hero
You may think more is better when it comes to providing context on a particular topic, but journalists are looking for sources who can get to the bullet points of a subject immediately. Long, winding narratives mean more time transcribing and pinpointing which quotes to feature.
Prepare ahead of your interview so you come to it with the main points already. Think about what will make punchy, memorable quotes — then speak to the journalist slowly and clearly (this is helpful, whether they’re recording your conversation or transcribing in real-time).
These strategies will increase your chances of being contacted again for future stories.
5. If you’re not selected as a source, don’t take it personally
In addition to credentials their editor may specifically request, journalists consider these factors when selecting a source.
Niche: We recently saw a journalist query for an auto insurance expert familiar with GAP insurance in California. With the need to constantly pitch fresh new stories and target particular keywords, editorial content is getting increasingly specific.
Other sources: Journalists will consider how you contribute to the mix of sources. They’ll look for a variety of expertise to approach the story from different angles.
Number of sources: Most pieces of content only need about two to three sources.
The best thing your company or PR team can do is build genuine relationships with journalists, in which you offer your support to them through expertise. This will help them finish their story on time and increase your chances of being a regularly featured expert source.
When you secure this media coverage, the benefits are vast. PR is a long-term strategy that can create a halo effect for your company, establishing you and your brand as an expert. This creates new opportunities for brand awareness, partnerships and increased revenue.
Kelsey Kloss is the CEO of Kloss Creatives, a PR and marketing firm rooted in the principles of journalism. Previously, she was an editor for brands such as Good Housekeeping, ELLE Decor, Reader’s Digest, and more. She has also shaped marketing strategy for Scholastic and AT&T.
Chances are, your brand hasn’t had as difficult a year as Bud Light. After finding itself at the centre of a pointed culture war, here’s what Bulletproof’s strategy chief thinks the brand’s peers can learn.
One of the year’s most surprising developments has been seeing a beer (one described in a user review as “mildly flavoured water with a few bubbles”) thrown into the centre of culture wars and political turmoil.
Around any major piece of PR, the question always comes up: “What’s going to be the damage/benefit to my brand?” Well, how long’s a piece of string?
Having had my fair share of ‘brand health at death’s door’ briefs over the years (not my fault, I assure you), I feel vaguely qualified to delve into this subject. Let’s figure out the extent of the problem and what Bud Light should do next.
WWED: what would Einstein do?
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions”. So goes the famously misattributed ‘Einstein quote’. Apocryphal yes, but the intention is right: we need to first understand the severity of the issue, before we get to solutions.
A lot has been written about the damage to Bud Light, with estimations of sales dropping by c.25% over certain weeks, and claims that it has lost its top spot in the US beer market to Modelo.
It’s worth thinking about the context the brand found itself in before the storm. VP of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid recently explained her mandate when joining the brand: “This brand is in decline. It’s been in decline for a really long time. And if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.”
According to YouGov data, Brand consideration among Americans who are Bud Light regulars was close to flat over the last year, but began to decline (around 6%) at the start of 2023, aligned to sliding market share.
Surprisingly, there’s nothing in brand consideration to give the impression that Bud Light was mid-scandal; consideration rose in points over the last couple of months. It seems that there remains a loyal core.
The data for people who didn’t buy Bud Light anyway is only marginally worse. Given it’s the market leader (still) in America, there aren’t a lot of haters; the change since the start of the year is, in real terms, only about a 13% decline (from 1.33 to 1.13).
But “people who didn’t buy Bud Light anyway will consider Bud Light a tiny bit less” won’t sell too many newspapers or stoke the fires of a boycott. For any brand, there are ‘loyals’ and there will be people who simply dislike it. But most users are the moving masses: those who flit about the category, whose patronage rests on a whim. Remember: according to Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow, c.50% of Coca-Cola customers buy just one or two cans a year.
The moving masses
Looking at Bud Light brand consideration for total US beer drinkers, overall, should elicit a ‘holy shit’. From a YouGov consideration figure of 25% at the start of the year to, now, around 15%: a decline of around 40%.
Brand consideration has nearly halved in a couple of months.
The brand is suffering the consequences with buyers who may not necessarily share the views of the boycotters but who most definitely overhear the vitriol, and are being put off.
How brands grow (back)
The people who pick up a couple of cans every now and again are the ones who decide brand growth because they (not your loyalists or haters) represent the majority. Therein lies the importance of branding: having a concrete answer to what you stand for that extends beyond your loyalists and doesn’t consider your haters.
So the next time you’re thinking of unintentionally inserting your brand into a political fracturing without a strategy to dictate your response: don’t do it.
…Or at least, if you’re going to do it, do it with a plan. Don’t try to placate; don’t try and ‘mehhh’ your way out. Don’t spare a thought about the haters or boycotters, they were nothing to your brand anyway; batten down those hatches, weather the storm, hide the fine china and communicate at scale to those moving masses. Hold your ground and tackle the big problem, like the monumental market share decline you’ve had over the last decade. You were heading for a brand catastrophe eventually, but one just found you.
Discover the key tactics and best practices for leveraging social media, content marketing and paid media in your PR endeavours to catapult your small business to new levels of success.
Social media, content marketing and paid media are powerful tools that can drive the success of public relations (PR) efforts. With a plethora of creative options available, such as compelling content on social channels and targeted advertising campaigns, small businesses can now reach more people than ever before with tailored messaging that resonates with their audience.
Social media platforms enable companies to effectively target key audiences, such as investors or partners, while engaging content attracts new consumers who might be interested in the company’s products or services.
Additionally, investing in well-placed advertising showcases a brand’s overall credibility, essential for successful relationships within any industry. Ultimately, implementing this cohesive approach results in increased brand awareness and fosters sustainable growth over time by nurturing strong online and offline connections through continuous engagement efforts across multiple platforms.
By implementing a cohesive PR strategy that integrates these platforms, small business owners can enhance their visibility, build trust with customers and foster sustainable growth through continuous engagement efforts. Let’s explore how to do it the best way.
Leverage different channels for PR success
To effectively leverage different channels for PR success, small businesses should implement a balanced strategy combining organic and paid media. Focus on sharing engaging, value-driven content to build genuine connections with your target audience across multiple platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram. Collaborate with influencers and encourage user-generated content showcasing your products or services in authentic settings.
However, don’t rely solely on organic reach; invest strategically in paid advertising campaigns such as sponsored posts or targeted ads to amplify the visibility of key messages among broader audiences based on their interests or online behaviour patterns. Additionally, you can now also harness the power of AI-powered solutions to enhance your PR efforts.
Social media
A strong social media presence is essential to achieve PR success. Engaging with your target audience on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn enhances brand visibility and fosters lasting relationships with customers and potential clients. To begin crafting an effective strategy, consider establishing clear objectives based on your business goals, for instance, generating leads or driving website traffic.
Spend time studying successful accounts within your industry and competitors’ activities. Note the type of content that resonates most among users and adopt similar tactics when you create posts tailored specifically for each platform’s preferences.
Be mindful of how frequently you share updates — consistency matters as much as quality. Keep track of key performance indicators such as engagement rate or number of new followers acquired over a certain period.
Content marketing
Utilize diverse content marketing strategies to attract and engage your target audience.
For example, repurpose a single piece of well-researched content into various formats, such as podcasts or webinars, to reach more potential customers across different platforms while providing valuable information. Convert data-driven research into visually appealing infographics to enable the audience to quickly grasp key insights. Offer customized white papers tailored to specific buyer profiles to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of industry pain points and increase credibility among prospects.
Maintain an active presence on reputable forums to foster trust between businesses and thought leaders. Contribute authentic expertise to build credibility for driving continued growth and brand recognition nationwide without relying excessively on traditional advertising efforts alone.
Don’t forget to leverage AI-powered content creation tools to enhance your PR efforts. These tools employ advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to generate high-quality content.
Paid media
Expand your reach with various paid media channels to maximize the effectiveness of your PR campaigns. Consider integrating several options into your advertising strategy to reach more potential customers. Invest in search engine ads, like Google Ads, to ensure higher visibility among users researching products and services similar to yours.
Video platforms like YouTube can also be powerful marketing tools if employed strategically, as many consumers discover new brands via engaging video content. Don’t overlook traditional print advertisements either, as they can have a long-lasting impact on local markets or niche industries where newspapers and magazines remain relevant sources of information.
Explore different paid media outlets suited to your target demographic’s preferences to ensure seamless communication between businesses seeking exposure and individuals eager to learn about them. Finding an appropriate balance is key when leveraging various channels for PR success while staying mindful that consumer trust in earned or owned media typically outweighs reliance on purely sponsored adverts alone.
Creating a cohesive PR strategy
When crafting a cohesive PR strategy, small businesses must consider the integration of social media, content marketing and paid media campaigns. A vital aspect is monitoring key performance indicators to ensure their efforts deliver tangible results. To achieve this seamlessly, you should utilize tools that help analyse audience engagement across each platform alongside click-through and conversion rates.
You should regularly review these metrics to adjust strategies for optimal impact on business growth objectives. Furthermore, you should encourage collaboration and clear communication within your team by assigning distinct roles and responsibilities concerning digital marketing initiatives, ultimately leading to success in public relations endeavours with an integrated approach combining all facets of modern promotion techniques.
Agility is the key to success in marketing and PR. Different channels should be leveraged for maximum efficiency, as each would lead to different results depending on audience reachability and the cost involved. It’s important to understand how paid marketing (using ads), owned media (own content) and earned media (influencers/media) work together for a successful PR campaign and get the desired result within a limited time frame.
Sonu Yadav is a certified digital marketing manager with SEO Vendor. He has over eight years of experience in the field of digital marketing and has helped numerous businesses grow online. He is passionate about helping businesses succeed and enjoys seeing the results of his work.
For start-ups, public relations is an essential component of building brand awareness and attracting customers. However, developing a successful PR strategy can be challenging, especially for new and emerging businesses.
Some of the best ways for start-ups to improve their PR efforts include developing a carefully crafted digital footprint, sharing a compelling story and working with the right partners and specialists to achieve their goals. Below, 14 Forbes Coaches Council members explore these strategies and more for start-ups that want to enhance their visibility and build trust with customers through a solid approach to PR.
1. Be A Storyteller
Share your own story—address the challenges you have overcome, how they helped you get where you are today and the problems your start-up is helping to solve. When I was starting out, I shared a short story as a guest contributor, which helped me secure my first coaching contract and clients. – Adriana Kosovska, Zero To Dream Job
2. Carefully Craft Your Digital Footprint
A digital footprint with consistent messaging and leadership visibility is a must for every organization, especially start-ups. Connecting the company’s vision and mission with exceptional storytelling of solutions offered, such as sustainability and social impact, is an excellent start to crafting PR and enhancing a start-up’s visibility by leading with value. – Izabela Lundberg, Legacy Leaders Institute
3. Use Your Core Values To Shape Your Presence
Define your core values, create a culture you desire, embody that culture and then begin to build a presence. Visibility is key. I began building a presence through podcast interviews, creating my own podcast and being a part of professional communities. Building relationships with the right people while engaging thoughtfully with influencers on social media is also effective. – Dr. Sharon H. Porter, Vision & Purpose LifeStyle Magazine and Media
4. Share Success Stories To Gain Earned Media
A start-up can share its success stories to gain earned media. By sharing my company’s work with the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity, we’ve attracted more clients who are interested in taking action on social issues. One of the benefits of PR is in attracting mission-aligned work. Potential clients and employees find brands that align with their values. – Meredith Leigh Moore, Leverette Weekes
5. Partner With Those Whose Mission Aligns With Yours
Finding a great charity, cause and/or marketing campaign partner to support your reach and influence can prove to be incredibly beneficial. When aligning with the right partner—one whose mission, values or purpose is synergistic with yours—you can work on a win-win strategy to support each other’s causes and elevate your company’s mission and reach. – Joshua Miller, Joshua Miller Executive Coaching
6. Ensure PR Campaigns Incorporate Brand Values
What I saw to be effective in a particular PR campaign was building resonance with the brand values of that particular start-up organization. It was anchored in the brand’s purpose, vision and value and the promise thereof when a customer engaged the company. In this case, the espoused value was sustainability-related, and the campaign connected with the intended audience. – Thomas Lim, Technicorum Holdings
7. Humanize And Personalize Your Brand
When starting up, it’s important to recognize that customers won’t identify with your brand unless you personalize and humanize it. I have found that it is important for the founder to be very visible across all the brand’s digital properties, showcasing their story, mission and values to connect with their audience in an authentic voice. – Ana Reed, Newmanity
8. Focus On The CEO’s Vision And Expertise
The CEO should be the focal point in your PR. Develop and evolve your digital footprint strategy to help build your brand visibility and unique value proposition. Reinforce with content that aligns with the vision, purpose and values of who you are, what you are communicating and how you are helping. Through various media, showcase the expertise you have that resonates with your ideal customer. – Dennis Foo, Pu Xin ASPIRA Advisory Limited – Shanghai | Hong Kong
9. Enlist The Help Of A PR Specialist
Work with a PR specialist who hears and understands your proposition, can effectively represent you to your target segment, has reach, and works toward your desired outcome. It proved invaluable to me to work with someone capable; they offered ideas that I could question, and I selected which to move ahead on. It cut down time, was cost-effective and, ultimately, delivered the outcome I hoped to achieve. – Arthi Rabikrisson, Prerna Advisory
10. Gain An Understanding Of Your Audiences
Develop personae for your audiences and tailor your messaging to them. For example, as a start-up, you’ll be expected to be all over social media, using the latest and greatest channels for PR; on the other hand, your customers may be old-school and respond to traditional PR. Smart companies leverage both and use them strategically. – Emily Grandinetta, Grandinetta Group, LLC
11. Leverage HARO
Use the free site HARO (Help A Reporter Out) to connect with journalists looking for sources. There are over 100 requests a day from journalists who need an expert. I’ve used this site for years and have been featured in Shape magazine, Associated Press stories and hundreds of blogs. It is the fastest and easiest way to gain PR exposure that I’ve ever found. – Krista Neher, Boot Camp Digital
12. Establish The Right Relationships
To improve PR, a start-up should focus on establishing relationships with journalists and influencers in the industry. I have succeeded by engaging in mutual collaborations and doing interviews to showcase our product. It has increased brand recognition and visibility by leveraging existing audiences. Additionally, it has improved our website traffic, as more users are drawn to us due to media buzz. – Peter Boolkah, The Transition Guy
13. Speak Directly To Your Audience
When the founder (or founders) speaks directly to the consumer, it adds real value to the start-up’s PR. It’s highly beneficial, especially during the early stages. I used this strategy in the past when I was building my own service start-up—it helped us attract, keep and further develop a more diverse audience while understanding them more deeply than before. – Alla Adam, Alla Adam Coaching
14. Support Your Local Community
Start-ups can improve their PR by providing free services to local non-profit organizations. If you do enough good in this world, it will come back to you twofold. I’ve done it and I continue to do it, and it has been very beneficial to my brand. – Jay Garcia, Jay Garcia Group
Public relations is changing. The media landscape looks very different than it did just two years ago, and savvy PR leaders should be adapting to the modern world.
PR professionals know how to generate interest in a brand and develop trust. Part of this is achieved through writing excellent content that resonates with an audience and placing it on relevant websites.
Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals understand how good content helps a website shoot up the SERPs (search engine results pages) by using carefully planned keywords. Good research means good content that can secure quality backlinks from external outlets.
Combining PR and SEO achieves great and, most importantly, measurable results. Even Google’s John Mueller backs the power of digital PR.
We’ve seen the results for ourselves. We boosted our PR with SEO and have seen the change in the quality of sales leads coming through. So, how did we do it? Here are some of our lessons learned:
First, look at your website. While this is your shop window, it’s also so much more than that. It’s how you attract people to find out more about you, how to establish yourself as a thought leader and how to create trust.
It’s also what Google analyses and decides to place you in search results for keywords. This is where combining PR and SEO can really work. Content is one of the main links between PR and SEO. It is an essential part of SEO to ensure you are found on Google. The higher up the search results you are, the more likely you are to get in front of your target audience.
Well-written content is highly valued by Google. And so are backlinks to your website.
Deliver what your audience wants.
Find out what works for your target audiences by tracking their behavior. Then, create more of the content that is doing well. Some of our metrics include:
• Number of visits to a blog post or service page.
• Bounce rate.
• Time on page.
• Next page that visitors go.
Use Google Analytics to understand how your content is performing as well as the behaviors of your audiences. This is where your SEO team can help. The PR team can take the information and rework the content on-site to ensure it appeals to the audience.
Create copy that resonates.
Boosting the amount of content on-site will help bring in traffic. Google wants to see plenty of fresh content and defined fresh content as:
• Recent events or hot topics.
• Regularly recurring events.
• Frequent updates.
New blog posts are helpful but so are updates to previous blog posts. SEO professionals can review blog posts, analyze backlinks and make suggestions for updating keywords. Savvy PR writers can ensure blog posts are high-quality written content.
This can be done for clients’ websites and also with media outlets. Identify the keywords that drive traffic, review articles to see their traction, and then work with your PR team to create even stronger content.
Turn your website into an important source.
This is another area where the SEO and PR combination can make a real difference. Backlinks are a crucial part of improving the domain authority of a website and, therefore, increasing visibility in search results.
Backlinks come in two forms: dofollow and nofollow. SEO values dofollow links, as these tell Google that the website is happy to share its domain authority with the origin of the link. Nofollow links tell Google that the websites aren’t sharing domain authority. It doesn’t mean that websites with nofollow links should be ignored, however, as they often come from high DA media outlets. Use them to build brand awareness and trust in the brand and website.
Together, they are powerful. Your PR team can be strategic in securing backlinks in the right places for the right audiences.
Research effective content.
PR professionals have close relationships with journalists and editors and know what their contacts are looking for. Many outlets have their own engagement and reach/view targets to hit. PR professionals work with them to produce content that resonates with their audiences.
SEO teams can help research keywords and topics that have value to target audiences. The crossover between the two is the sweet spot and can enhance relationships with media outlets. Your content will bring them the hits and reach they need.
Get techy with your content.
PR can support SEO work on the wider website as well. Meta descriptions are such an important part of SEO. These are the descriptions under the URLs that appear on search engine results pages. They’re important because they can sway someone to click on your link over another one.
Getting the tone of voice right and choosing the right language to communicate key messages is where your PR professionals will excel.
Choosing the right image to illustrate the blog post is also something that PR professionals can help with. PR people are well versed in sourcing images, arranging photoshoots and more. Journalists and editors often expect images, videos, links, etc. from PR professionals as part of a pitch.
Choose a powerful combination that gets you results.
A combined PR and SEO strategy is a long-term strategy that can increase brand awareness and improve the number and quality of leads as a result. They complement each other perfectly and help boost the quality and success of each other’s work. While there is crossover in skills—used in different ways for different ends— they can absolutely support each other.
Lis Anderson is founder and director at PR consultancy AMBITIOUS and an agency MD with over 20 years in the communications industry. Read Lis Anderson’s full executive profile here.
When considering the future of branding and brands, it is important to properly understand that Communications is now a fractured, complex, and diverse discipline. The challenge for a PR and brand team – and, indeed, for an entire business – is to get everyone working as one. The overarching task is to impart and nurture genuine empathy and understanding for what a brand stands for, along with the overall business goals. The next step is to plan on how that gets communicated effectively to the outside world.
In Communications, working in silos doesn’t cut it anymore. It requires complex, interwoven, and often co-dependent messaging played across advertising, branding, packaging, PR, digital, customer service, and more. Symbiotic, interlocked, and constantly evolving, there is no solitary lens for PR. Instead, there is a brand kaleidoscope that acts as an ever-changing window into how a brand is perceived through the entirety of its communications.
Social media perfectly illustrates how interlocked communications channels can be for brands. A misplaced tweet or a tone-deaf post can quickly catch fire as a PR disaster that can lose customers or have a negative commercial impact on a business. When Dulux became the sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club this year, one of the first things the paint brand’s social media manager did was engage in some Twitter banter about the club’s lack of trophies. This quite quickly whipped up into a PR storm about how a new commercial partner was making a major faux pax by denigrating its new partner. There were questions asked about the suitability of the partnership and it has resulted in the commercial relationship getting off to an unsteady start.
With an improved lens on PR, the brand would have anticipated the potential problem here. In a future, more perfect world, PR fails can be mitigated by ensuring those who are in charge of social media are adequately briefed and aware of the power of social as a communications channel.
In a future world, this sort of mistakes would be stopped at the source because companies would understand how interlocked all their messaging is with the perception of their brand. A misjudged post on social media has the potential to be just as damaging as Gerald Ratner’s quip in 1991, that the jewellery he sold was “total crap”. His tongue-in-cheek remark in front of the Institute of Directors promptly wiped £500 million from the jeweller’s valuation and nearly took the company to the wall. Reflecting on the incident in 2021, Ratner tweeted, “It is 30 years today when I made ‘that’ speech. It seems like yesterday. I wish it was tomorrow. I would cancel it.” A PR blunder can have a lasting impact. Lessons for the future are often gleaned from what has happened in the past.
In a perfect future vision, PR would always have a board-level seat at any business – helping inform and shape decisions as they are made. PR is not an afterthought. PR is not the red phone to ring in a panic when the shit is about to hit the fan further down the line. Nor is it a cherry to stick on top of a cake with a positive business announcement or new launch. It is not enough to position PR and marketing at the end of a business process. That does not work anymore and brands who do it will often come unstuck or fail to properly connect with their customers.
Another great example from the world of football this year is the abortive launch of ‘The Super League’. As the breakaway scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the organizers only decided to appoint an agency to look after PR on the day of the announcement. What they fundamentally misunderstood is that PR cannot be an afterthought. It’s not about managing a few negative headlines with the belief that today’s newspapers will be tomorrow’s chip papers. PR is vital to monitor the pulse of a brand or an idea. It is about fully understanding and communicating effectively with your customers.
PR is a pre-emptive tool that is as much about anticipation as it is about activation. Like the tip of an iceberg, with PR there is much more to it beneath the surface than you end up seeing in public. As soon as the tsunami of negative responses hit, The Super League brand was dead in the water. If the clubs had effectively engaged PR earlier in their process they would have realized the whole shebang was a bad idea a lot sooner. This whole episode serves as a lesson on why engaging with PR early is a necessity for any brand.
In recent years, technology has seen brands become more and more efficient in how they target their audience. Data-driven intelligence hoovered up from our online activities means that advertisers often seem to know us better than we know ourselves. In the early days of this tracking technology, this was hailed as new nirvana. We’d be served better because we’d get shown what we want rather than things that weren’t relevant and of interest to us. We were heading to a perfect world of branding and advertising. With minimum wastage for advertisers, you would only see the products you’re interested in.
More recently, however, that dream has turned somewhat sour. The dystopian vision in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, of being relentlessly targeted with ads, looms larger like a tangible reality. Documentaries like Coded Bias, The Great Hack, and The Social Dilemma each portray a dark and damaging heart at the center of this technology, purely focused on milking and manipulating consumers for all that they are worth.
From a PR point of view, consumers are waking up to how their data is being used and brands need to be mindful of this. Customers don’t like it and the resulting bad PR for their brands may be commercially damaging. From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications. Privacy controls will be placed back into the hands of the customer and, as a result, the PR wildfire that is burning about privacy and data may start to recede. We’ve already seen this come to light with Apple’s new privacy feature, intended to put the brakes on the sharing of customer data across multiple sites. By preventing the targeting that is the bread and butter of many brands online, its introduction may be a catalyst for a dramatic change in the entire online advertising industry.
From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications.
Brands need to continue to adapt and change in step with the world in which we live. Many cultural commentators believed that, after COVID-19, the consumer’s relationship with brands might change dramatically. Our values would shift away from a disposable, frivolous culture and brands would need to follow. The jury is still out on whether this will, in fact, come to pass. If the queues at the UK’s high-street stores, when the lockdown was lifted in April, is any barometer of a new consumer consciousness, it may not, in fact, be the case at all. The hunger to spend on a wide range of goods still appeared to be firmly intact.
It is fair to say though that brands continue to become more socially aware. As part of a brand strategy, CSR is often now firmly embedded into many companies. However, CSR is only really effective when it is integrated properly and not just used as a PR badge to appease a target market or drive sales.
In the future, unpicking the relationship between CSR and PR will be a great step forward for brands. If you consider a brand like Dove, which has ‘body positivity’ at the heart of its brand purpose, you can see how powerful this can be – not just part of a marketing strategy but an entire business philosophy. It’s not just a PR badge adopted in order to shift their products.
In summary, I feel that it is worth addressing the elephant in the room.
“What is the perfect future version of branding and brands?”
Well, there isn’t one, of course. We live in an imperfect world and nothing ever stays still. When Brandingmag launched, 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Fast forward 10 years from today and I expect, fuelled by technology, that change will be even greater. PR, as a profession, continues to evolve and it is now part of a larger, more integrated, communications ecosystem. The days of fluffy ‘Ab Fab’ PR – with boozy lunches and ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ dynamics of doing your job – are long gone. The future vision for perfect PR and brands is to refine and adapt to the broader, interlinked way in which communications operates. It’s also imperative for PR to be positioned at the heart of every business operation. Perfect? No, it will never be perfect, but that’s what keeps the craft of communications such an engaging challenge.
Ad Age-Harris Poll shows VW did not help itself, but it did not hurt itself, either
Despite a wave of negative headlines about its April Fools’ Day prank, Volkswagen is not any worse off with everyday consumers—but the automaker also did not help itself by pretending to rename itself “Voltswagen,” according to a new poll.
Fifty-nine percent of consumers who were aware of the stunt said it did not change their opinion of the brand, according to the Ad Age-Harris Poll. Just 20% think better of VW, while 21% said they now hold a worse opinion of the brand.
The poll was conducted April 2-5 among 1,125 U.S. adults ages 18 and older.
While brands have been pulling April Fools’ Day stunts for years, VW’s joke was more elaborate than most. The campaign, which was handled by Johannes Leonardo, played out over several days and was notable for the involvement of top-level VW execs who were quoted in press releases and used their own social media handles to push the notion that the storied auto brand would rebrand itself “Voltswagen” in the U.S. to push its electric vehicle ambitions.
Several mainstream media outlets, including USA Today, Associated Press and CNBC, reported the name change as fact after being assured by sources inside the automaker that it was not a joke. When it was revealed to be untrue, some of these same outlets ran stories that questioned the automaker’s credibility, while conjuring the automaker’s 2015 emissions scandal in which it was caught cheating to evade regulations.
“The use of deceit is really dangerous. If you’re Volkswagen, it’s doubly dangerous,” Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor, told USA Today. “Volkswagen is the last company that should be playing around with deceiving people, even if it’s for two days. It doesn’t play well when you have admitted guilt to having tricked us before.”
But the saga went unnoticed by a majority of consumers, according to the poll, which found that only 21% of consumers had heard about the “Voltswagen” announcement by the time they were polled. Of those who heard of the news, 73% said they were aware that it was an April Fools’ joke (perhaps because the poll was conducted after reports came out that it was a stunt).
The goal of the prank was to raise awareness of VW’s electric vehicle ambitions, which include the ID.4, a compact electric crossover that the automaker is marketing as “the electric car for the people.”
The poll found that 19% of respondents were more likely to buy a VW after learning of the prank, but 69% said it had no impact on their decision. Only 12% stated that it would make them less likely to buy a VW.
The poll reveals a division on whether brands of any kind should participate in April Fools’ Day pranks: 54% said they should not, while 46% said they should. For those who said yes, the most commonly cited reason was “it’s a creative way for brands to advertise.” The naysayers said the pranks “create confusion for customers.”
But younger people are apparently more into the jokes—64% of millennials and 61% of Gen Zers say brands should partake in April Fools’ Day, but only 38% of Gen Xers and 35% of baby boomers agree.
“Holiday promotions can be a powerful and effective tool for brands to engage with customers and build buzz, but not all holidays are created equally,” states Will Johnson, CEO of The Harris Poll. “April Fools’ Day is polarizing because it gets at the heart of the brand-customer relationship—trust. As our research shows, consumers are divided on April Fools’ Day marketing stunts, so brands must carefully weigh the benefits against the risks.”
E.J. Schultz is the Assistant Managing Editor, Marketing at Ad Age and covers beverage, automotive and sports marketing. He is a former reporter for McClatchy newspapers, including the Fresno Bee, where he covered business and state government and politics, and the Island Packet in South Carolina. He has won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Jesse H. Neal Awards, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the South Carolina Press Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors. A native of Cincinnati, Schultz has an economics degree from Xavier University and a masters in journalism from Northwestern University.
Rarely a week goes by without an inspired billboard, bus-shelter poster or bus livery going ‘viral’ on social media. You’d almost think the work was made for that purpose. Social media’s provided somewhere for impactful out of home ads to further resonate but is the congratulatory feedback loop blinding marketers to the true value of the medium – reaching real people?
If you are in the smallish circle of social-media active marketers who gleefully share nice ads with captions like “clever that”, you’ll have noticed last week a clever exploding ‘dynamite’ Marmite ad, complete with a huge scattered lid, and a mocked-up ad for KitKat from One Minute Briefs contestant Sam Hennig, who was absolutely struck by the warm reception for his idea.
Some onlookers questioned whether you even needed to run the physical OOH ad. Why not just mock it up and tweet it? More questioned whether the top of class OOH executions are supposed to reach real people – or merely awards juries.
In the last decade, the medium’s purpose has evolved, The Drum explores why.
Pain with gains
UK out of home ad spend was 61.5% of 2019 levels, even buoyed by a huge government comms drive, according to the IPA. Meanwhile, industry body Outsmart said the revenue decline in the first half of 2020 sat at 44.8% year-on-year. Lockdowns swallowed OOH footfall and strangled marketing budgets. Similarly, marketers were obsessed with finding at-home screens however they could.
Alistair MacCallum, chief executive of out-of-home specialist agency Kinetic Worldwide says footfall didn’t fall as low as many assumed. Only 30% of people could actually work from home, for example. “19 million people still went to work every day, 30% of school kids were still in school. Many of us went to supermarkets once or twice a day just to talk to someone.”
Not all regions locked down equally. Anonymised mobile data tracked population activity to offer helpful heat maps and work out worthwhile sites. Meanwhile, OOH networks worked to digitise their networks and buying platforms. Buyers can now run hyper-local campaigns within the hour without even lifting a phone. And digital out of home sites, have doubled in number in the last four years in the UK. They also account for a third of spend in the US. Marketers are also excited about the creative opportunities afforded by the outdoor screen.
There’s more incentive to show off, too. Over the last two decades, most people acquired phones, with cameras, linked to mass audiences through social media. People on ’active journeys’ could suddenly, and immediately, share good outdoor creative. In the moment they could be promoted to search a homepage or buy something. Some sites even had QR codes to encourage camera activity.
MacCallum says: “The role of out of home is far more multifaceted than it was. The ways you can utilize the channel is increasingly much more varied.”
Stunted growth
As we saw from last week’s examples, good OOH creative can inspire PR fame.
Real people engage with and share good OOH ads. They interact with said brand on social and even inspire earned media. If people are talking about a billboard, there’s a news story there.
MacCallum says: “There is no other channel that has the level of creativity and innovation. Nobody is taking pictures of banner ads are they?”
Kelly Taylor, head of new business and marketing at creative agency Creature, believes tighter budgets forced marketers to be more effective with the medium. But with the closure of the real world, marketers “finally grasped that social and digital are not add-ons to campaigns, but intrinsic parts of the comms, reach and amplification.“
Any outgoing’s on quality OOH would need to resonate beyond the street. Taylor says: “With the amount of time people are spending online up by 32mins compared to pre-lockdown, there are plenty of eyes looking for content to get them through the groundhog days. And OOH and social is the perfect pairing. Both rely on the ability to tell a story in a single impactful post and both want to grab as many eyes as possible.”
It is a modern opportunity that understands that OOH, like memes have to resonate with a mass audience in a single frame. But Taylor warns: be wary of “viral success,“ and be wary of “brandter”.
“There’s a fine line between nurturing engagement and forcing it”, she says pointing to Marmite’s try-hard social team, which she says unfortunately “diminished the original work”.
BBC Creative’s award-winning Dracula placement evolves as day becomes night. It won headlines and drove a halo effect around a wider, multi-faceted campaign. It was more than a billboard.
Great ideas
Nick Ellis, creative partner and founder of brand agency Halo believes that OOH is the “pinnacle of the advertising craft, a single idea, executed with the acuity of message and creativity.” The best work is appreciated even outside of industry circles.
He talks up executions that create unmissable moments like Carlsberg’s beer tap billboard. Few people may have seen it in the flesh, but on social, we felt the reactions by proxy.
“These moments transcend what we expect from advertising. And advertising itself becomes art. Instead of being intrusive, it reaches people in a truly creative and disruptive way.“
McCann’s Fearless Girl may be the ultimate example, he says “part of the fabric of a city and a significant cultural moment”.
It is because the idea was executed in real life that it “gives the brand a tangible solidity in a way social channels can’t“.
Jay Young, head of creative solutions at Talon, says the “the world literally is your oyster with OOH. You’re not confined to a certain number of pixels on a page”.
He’s used to thinking outside the box with the medium. He says it is big, unskippable, and real. It has power. And impact. And it reaches 98% of the British public (usually).
Extra love on social or adds value and “boosts the credentials” of OOH. In another broadcast media, TV, extra reach is sometimes wrongly called waste. Young’s sector clearly has a form of that too now.
He’s not worried that marketers will be photoshopping up billboards any time soon.
“You really do need to create something in real life for it to achieve the ‘Wow, that’s clever’ moment and escape our industry echo-chamber. People care far more about things that actually happened. They want brands to be honest and authentic.“
To show the impact of great work, he referenced the reaction to his Pepsi Max ‘Unbelievable Bus Shelter‘ campaign (we‘ll allow it). He acknowledges that bespoke builds are “tricky” to get right. They have to be bold and impactful, and people need to live with them. More often than not, they‘re worth the sleepless nights.
“We’re not working on a closed movie set. We’re likely working on the side of a busy road, in the middle of the night with multiple stakeholders to please.”
This old-school movie magic might clash with the industry‘s new hope, a reinvention around real-time buying for a generation of marketers raised on Facebook ads rather than 48-sheets.
But even in DOOH, PR and reactive marketing could play a larger part.
Young says: “You can see a cultural moment blow up on Twitter at 9am. You‘ll get a reactive ad on DOOH across the country by the time you log off for the day. I still love the Specsavers campaign we ran in reaction to the Moonlight Oscars blunder. We could never have achieved the same impact with static OOH going live days later.”
Marketers are giving real thought to optimising OOH creative based on location, time and the weather – there’s more opportunity for impact ahead. But they‘ll need to remember, real business outcomes are more important than LinkedIn shares.
Feature Image Credit: The Drum explores the relationship between social, PR and OOH. Above: Playstation‘s own OOH effort
