There are a lot of misconceptions around that PR is limited to press releases, articles and a ‘nice to have’ profile. But there are so many other benefits you need to assume help with growing the business. Maybe, in some instances, your PR function might be limited in doing this. But right now, more than ever, it has to deliver more and work harder.
In the 10 years of CommsCo PR, we’ve learnt a lot about how best to support our clients to become integral to their strategy and marketing efforts, and have rapidly expanded our offering to suit a variety of needs. Here are a few areas that you might want to consider as well as just the core ‘PR coverage’:
1. Messaging
Yes, it starts here – without the key company message, the marketing momentum will not stand up to market testing let alone help grow the business. Create the message or ‘story’ which helps you stand out, and your PR team should be very happy to get involved here. They should also be able to give you competitive insights from a media point of view. It will help everything stand together from sales to marketing and justify PR’s ‘unique pitch’.
2. Optimise your events
Events are expensive but even the smallest can be great marketing opportunities. Budget invested in attendance can be maximised by ensuring you create awareness of presence, book influencer meetings, and drive engagement on social before, during and afterwards. They can also be a forum for gathering insights as well as sharing them – a good marketing ‘tent pole’ to help focus the company message, activity and bring everything together. Your PR team should be guiding and prompting you with this.
3. Get your network buzzing (and handle your digital too)
When you’re attending events, creating content and messages (and yes achieving profile), the beauty of digital is that it can amplify and promote far and wide at no extra cost. You should be able to track results via tools on the website and see what activities are the most successful. Your PR team should absolutely care about this, as well as your SEO strategy. For, at the end of the day, all inbound should aid outbound marketing activities to create momentum. You can make this as targeted as you like by choosing sectors and job titles too.
4. Build your marketing campaigns
In larger organisations, it’s fair to say that marketing leads with campaigns and PR follows. It’s not always the case though. Many experienced PRs can and will map out a marketing strategy for the business to support the overall objective. The teams should plan around quarterly campaigns and be synched up either way. These campaign ideas can come from the top down – and often do but, if you need help in this way, you can assume a good PR will help with creating compelling campaigns.
5. Devise a complete activity plan for the year
Including webinars, videos, podcasts…If the campaigns start with the customer messages, they should end in a production of different vehicles to convey them. A monthly planner which ensures an array of outputs – written, audio and visual, amplified by physical and social – should support your plan to scale. Piecemeal won’t have as much of an effect as planned – with a review every month to see the plan is having desired effects.
Everything should be more focused and integrated than ever – and if you think this is all you can ask for from your PR buck, think again. Part 2 is coming with everything else you should be considering from your PR efforts to support scaling. Feel free to check in again next week!
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