June 30, 2015: Public Relations is a necessary practice for most brands; a well-crafted PR campaign can help create and maintain goodwill within a company or organization’s various target audiences through publicity and other forms of communication. However, from time to time, companies may halt their PR efforts or even fire their agencies or consultants because they’re not seeing sufficient ROI.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when executing a successful communications strategy:
-First Conduct a Target Audience Deep Dive. Identify your target audiences’ behaviors, wants and needs, as well as their pain points and challenges. Once you go through this discovery process, you’ll have a better idea about where and how you can capture your key audiences’ attention, whether it’s through certain mainstream publications, industry newspapers, social media, SEO, advertising, or other channels.
For example, if you’re a professional services firm, you would likely find more success by focusing your efforts on industry/trade press placements, a LinkedIn social media program, and an SEO initiative incorporating Google+ and blog post writing so that your target audiences will be more likely to find your company’s name when doing a Google search.
-PR is a Critical Piece of the Puzzle, But It’s Not Everything. You also need to outline your specific business goals. Do you want to increase sales, raise your website traffic, elevate brand awareness, strengthen your company’s reputation, or a combination of all, or some, of these objectives? By solely relying on PR without engaging in a complementary digital marketing program, it will be more challenging to optimize for search engines or elevate your website numbers.
-Don’t Ditch the Digital. Because of the explosion of digital, a PR program must be supported by an online PR program. Choose a public relations program that incorporates a multi-disciplinary approach to the following tasks:
- Traditional press pitching – Pitching via email — combined with targeted journalist follow-up by phone — is an effective approach for reaching out to the media outlets of today.
- Optimized press release writing – SEO-optimized press releases allow for strategic keyword and link insertions that assist in improving brand visibility in online searches.
- Inbound link campaigns – An inbound link is clickable hyperlinked text on another website that points to your own website. This type of campaign is designed to enhance the ranking of your website. Google’s algorithm ranks websites by the number and quality of their inbound links.
- Blog writing – Your thought leadership can be leveraged through blog writing. CEOs, business owners, and other key players can write commentary about compelling topics in their fields. Blog writing positions an individual as an influencer; allows for opportunities for gains in SEO; and should be designed to answer common questions and provide solutions for your customers’ challenges and pain points.
- Social media platforms – Choose the social media platform(s) where you will most likely find your target audience(s). This is a great opportunity to raise your brand awareness, increase engagement, learn more about your customers, enhance business development, and strengthen your SEO.
While there’s a lot involved in executing a solid communications strategy nowadays, there’s also more opportunity. If you can take advantage of the appropriate tactics that are right for your business, you’ll start seeing some real ROI.
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