When you are looking to get people’s attention on your brand, what do you employ? Most people nowadays will go straight to digital marketing, believing that some of the older strategies are dead, like public relations. However, what they don’t realize is that a PR branding strategy is still a very important piece of a bigger, integrated strategy.
Before you dismiss a PR branding strategy as part of your next campaign, discover the value it can bring to your company. The benefits of this “dated” tactic will surprise you.
Importance of Quality PR Branding Strategy for Your Advertising Campaign
A quality PR strategy is very important for your brand as it puts you in the right spotlight and allows you to get the right attention. For instance, press releases can build brand trust as over 90% of customers trust earned media.
A quality PR strategy is suitable for many reasons, from creating and improving your brand awareness to generating leads and making sure that the customers do not ignore you. To make you understand better, these are some of the reasons why a quality PR strategy is essential.
- Effective branding creates trust
Your brand identity and your marketing campaigns will have clarity with a working PR strategy. This is why you have to focus on your core values when creating a PR strategy. That becomes people’s idea of your brand. You should concentrate on the critical characteristics of your business and USPs.
- Increase lead generation
Your brand visibility will increase rapidly with a good PR strategy that promotes you across different media types- blogs and social media. Idea, forums, TV, press, news sites, reviews, etc.
Social Media, for instance, is already ingrained in our daily lives. In the US, 68% of adults visit FB regularly, while 78% visit YouTube regularly. Having a PR strategy that promotes you on social media makes you more visible to the users.
This way, you will be getting in front of more people. This means more prospects and more leads for your business. As your brand becomes more visible to people, they learn more about your brand, your products or the services that you render, etc. Invariably, this will lead to the generation of more leads for your business.
- Managing and recovering from a crisis
The crisis is a part of the business, and even the best of us might experience it at any time. However, a strong PR strategy ensures that you’re prepared for anything that comes your way. If you’re able to work out a PR crisis management plan beforehand, then you can be sure that your public image will remain intact when the storm has passed.
An example of a company that used good PR to manage a crisis is Starbucks. There was one incident of racial discrimination involving staff and two black men (who got arrested for just sitting and waiting for a friend).
The response of the CEO wasn’t to brush off the case as a one-off, isolated event. Instead, they took responsibility for what happened and admitted that it should never have happened. Then they closed down 8000 Starbucks stores across the US and sent all of their staff for a Racial Bias Training. This sent a message to the audience that they’ll do what it takes to do the right thing. They also lost an estimated $12 million during that time. It was probably their price for being back in the public’s good book.
- Increase and strengthen brand awareness
Your PR strategy can help to generate huge consumer interest in your brand and brand products/services. The purpose of a good PR strategy is to ensure that you remain in the “good books.” Seeing the positive light in which your brand is being mentioned in the media can capture their attention and make them interested in your brand.
This increases the credibility of your brand, and because of this, customers and target audiences will be more willing to listen to what you have to offer as they now hold your brand in higher regard. This will be a plus to your marketing campaigns because you’ll be able to reach more people with relative ease. Their receptiveness means that you can also increase your sales with some little effort.
Customers today want to buy from and relate with a trustworthy brand. Research shows 64% of purchases are belief-driven based on the customers’ trust in the brand. They want to have the assurance of a brand that they are using. As a brand, the best way to win over a customer’s loyalty and trust is by personalization. There is no point in being hard when your customers want you to relate with them.
A typical example of a brand that combined personalization with a quality PR strategy to boost its global brand awareness in one massive marketing campaign is Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola started the #ShareACoke campaign in 2011 in Australia. They swapped the name on the brand that is meant to be on the bottle with other famous names and encouraged consumers to share pictures of them holding personalized bottles with their name on social media.
This one campaign was massive as it expanded globally and served as both a PR and marketing campaign.
The difference between marketing and public relations is the goals. The goal of a PR strategy is to boost the reputation of the brand and win over more people’s trust. This might not directly impact sales, but it promotes the brand in many ways, paints the brand in a positive light in front of the prospects and customers, and makes it easy to win them over. However, the goal of a marketing campaign is to drive sales, increase revenue, and profits.
The PR strategy always boosts your marketing campaign as it increases the trust that people have in your brand. So, it is easy for them to buy from you and become loyal customers. It is even more likely that the first engagement that prospects have with your brand is through your PR efforts. They are then easily convinced by a little marketing effort and get converted into customers.
This was what Coca-Cola sought to achieve with its #ShareACoke campaign, and they executed it to perfection.
How to develop a quality PR strategy?
To develop a quality PR strategy, you have to be very diligent while at it. You might want to start by looking into the past for what went wrong. What happened? How did you deal with it? Are there roadblocks that might cause problems for your future efforts? These are basics that you have to handle well enough first.
Also, be sure to research as this is important for identifying and understanding your current opportunities and creating new opportunities for yourself. There are several things that you need to put into place in trying to build a quality PR strategy. Some of these are:
- Review your previous PR activity
- Set and clearly define your objectives and goals
- Identify your target audience
- Understand and deal with both macro and micro environment
- Create your key messages
- Create your content
- Choose the right PR tools.
- Decide on the best PR tactics
Conclusion
Good PR is essential for the growth of your business. The truth is, you can’t buy this with money, and you have to be strategic with it. You have to earn it. The amount of trust that you will gain from customers and prospects can’t be quantified or valued well enough. PR is the best way for your target audience to know about your brand without feeling like you’re trying to push something down their throats, like with marketing campaigns. Apart from the increased awareness and improve reputation that comes with it, customers also tend to fall in love with your business.
In case of crisis as well, PR is the only way to go. With good PR, you can go through a crisis and come out with more customers that fell in love with how you handled the crisis. This can also bring about positive changes in your working methods. PR is all good and is the way out for your brand advertising campaign.
Author’s Bio
Tobias Foster has work experience for 5 years as a marketing specialist, social media manager, writer, journalist, and editor. Also, he is a professional content writer at essay writing service uk and offers assignment proofreading in such topics as blogging, marketing features, progressive education programs, and business.
