PR and Marketing Strategy: What to Consider
What should you do with your PR and Marketing strategy for the rest of 2021, with things still so up in the air?
I mean, can you believe it’s already spring? And we’re still in a pandemic. Which, despite vaccinations and many feeling more hopeful and at ease, means we are still in a time of uncertainty.
If we take a look back, despite all of the trauma, and in some cases because of the trauma of the pandemic, some industries thrived in 2020: Virtual anything (Zoom, Teams, Facetime, Hopin), Pharma & Logistics, Medical Supply, Rubber Manufacturing, Cleaning & Sanitization, Packaging, Home Improvement, Green Energy, Crypto, TikTok financial “experts,” Cannabis and Pet Care.
Like a lot of companies, we were thrilled to survive, to service great clients and keep out of the pandemic’s line of fire. And like our clients, we had to adjust our plans, have plan C’s to back the Plan B’s in case COVID continued to disrupt Plan A. We also had a lot of empathy and compassion for the companies that didn’t fair well, no matter their efforts.
But here you are, well into 2021, with a basic idea of your plan, pressure to execute with excellence and with hope you can move from surviving to thriving before the year ends.
What are some ways to keep moving forward with your PR and Marketing strategy, while navigating revenue uncertainty, market fluctuations and ambient stresses? We have some ideas for you.
Hiring PR Firms
Contrary to popular belief, PR isn’t “the cheap version of Marketing.” PR done right, like marketing, includes goal-setting, vision for the future, long term strategy and patience. The more you can invest in your PR campaigns, the better your chances of success. But how do you figure out your public relations and media relations strategy and who should you hire?
Here are some things to consider when hiring PR:
Do you have an in-house resource with communications, PR and media relations experience to execute a PR plan or manage external PR teams?
Do you have established goals? Are they aspirational but realistic?
Do you want Brand Awareness? Product Awareness? Thought Leadership (again, goals)?
Does the brand and/or product have an established media footprint and/or brand affinity/ visibility?
Do you know which earned media resources you want to target? What’s earned media? See below.
Will the PR strategy work in tandem with or in place of a Marketing strategy (paid, content/social, experiential)?
Do you have established angles or will you need assistance strategizing? (Do you need Tactical? Strategic? Both?)
Do you have budget? (We think you’re amazing too. But we’ll only invest in you, if you invest in us).
Many companies, without communications experience on their in-house teams, make the mistake of presuming shipping out press releases en masse, to bulk lists or across a wire services, will garner coverage. It doesn’t. THAT’S SEO NOT PR. This mentality is usually derived from a sales or marketing mentality, and a lack of communications experience on the team.
PR, specifically Media Relations, is focused on earned media (i.e. media you earned rather than paid for). In order to earn media, a 3rd party (journalist, editor, influencer) needs to see value in your product or service with regard to their audiences.
Marketing is “HEY! LOOK AT US! We’re COOL. YOU NEED US!” (paid influence)
Media Relations is: “We saw/reviewed/ spoke with this company/product/person and we think they’re worth your time /money.” (earned influence)
Communicating your company’s value requires an understanding of your market and customers, but also of the media entity and the media gatekeeper (i.e. the editor, writer, producer, host, etc.). The media want story angles, products, services and information that will be valuable to their audiences. Leveraging communications experts in the field of Media Relations (i.e. what many refer to as PR’s or Publicists) is the best way to do this.
Media Relations and PR are a critical part of LONG TERM strategy. In much the same way a piece of digital (SEO) content returns on investment over months and years, PR shows its true value over time. This is why PR contracts are usually a minimum of 6 months and, more often, extend beyond 1 year.
The principles of PR and Media Relations are reflective of that in Marketing. You put messaging out to the media targets, they give feedback (in the form of action or inaction) and you adapt your messaging accordingly. Likewise, the goal in PR, as with Marketing, is that the messaging you are communicating is adopted by your intended audiences.
One of the best metrics for determining whether a PR campaign is a success, is when the market (media, analysts, competitors and target customers) shift their own views and communications to mimic and reflect your messaging and view point.
Marketing Strategy
What’s your brand plan, Jan? We wrote about Brand Building and Networking previously and why it’s so important to marketing strategy and overall business health. So, here are some other things to consider when formulating your Marketing strategy:
Do you have a budget to execute? Be honest.
Do you know what your competitors are spending? Find out!
Do you know what channels to leverage to expedite audience and customer adoption?
Who do you have on your team for strategy? Tactical marketing plan execution? Partners to leverage?
How are you measuring your objectives? Wait, did you even set objectives yet??
What does success look like to you? Your team? Your board? Your shareholders?
What customers and brand advocates can you utilize to strengthen your marketing efforts?
Taking a look at budget first, is critical. Are you flush with investor capital to out-scale your competitors or proactively defend against future threats? Or, is your marketing budget mandated to 3-12% of your revenue? Either way, your budget is really just a TIME vs. MONEY game. The more money you have, the more time and influence you can buy at once. The less money you have, the more time it takes to get results. That means YOUR time and your team’s time must make up the budget differential.
Knowing what your competitors and potential competitors are spending helps you understand the cost of capturing market share. The more they’re spending, the more it will cost you to compete. That’s where strategy comes into play the most. What are your biggest opportunities to exploit against the threat of the competitors or market conditions?
This feeds into the channels you’ll leverage. If your target customers predominantly consume information and shop online, having a digital strategy will be critical to your success. Likewise, if traditional retail is your largest opportunity for sales, brand validation and brand alignment, then a mix of digital, experiential and traditional campaign investments are needed.
Choose the path of least resistance. Your marketing strategy and your marketing budget must be weighted towards the channels and opportunities that take the least amount of time, the least amount of money and garner the largest returns on investment (ROI).
IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO SWOT! Understanding Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and conducting/updating SWOT analyses regularly, makes your marketing strategies much, much smarter and efficient.
Industry and consumer events are still not happening. Or, perhaps you’re not getting the same value out of digital events that you did in-person. What can we do? Well, you can reinvest that money into:
Affiliate programs to generate sales and customer leads. When they win, you win (or vice versa).
Sponsored content / partnerships. Buying high-quality content and partnerships serves many purposes:
Evergreen content placed on favorable, high domain authority (DMA) media properties and with high-value influencers endears your brand to their audiences, shows that you are a vetted brand, sources new eyeballs/customers and enables you to leverage their domain authority and keyword rankings. You’re paying for the legwork that they’ve already done in gaining audiences and influence.
Your own online and social channels (this is our “do as we say not as we do” advice).
Develop a content strategy or calendar with topical content that increases your value to your targets.
Show your domain /thought leadership. Have an opinion on matters in your industry. Share facts and thoughtful perspectives.
Make it easy for people to buy things.
Newsletters/email — Make them count! Make them relevant and don’t make them multiple times in the same week (unless your audience wants them… engagement, open rates and subscribes/unsubscribes will clue you in).
Webinars and podcasts— take a lot of work. Everyone’s got Zoom fatigue. Decide if it’s better to start investing in appearing on others’ webinars and podcasts before starting your own. If you’ve got a dedicated audience, start your own and invite partners, star customers and influential people. Make them beneficial to everyone.
Automate lead nurturing without AUTOMATING lead nurturing. Don’t make people feel like they’re working with robots (unless they like robots!). Automation helps you scale teams. But make the messaging and responses thoughtful.
Survey every chance you get. This can double as engagement. Get to know people, market characteristics and inspire people to give their thoughts, opinions, feedback and advocacy. It doesn’t have to be a survey to be a survey.
Product giveaways, care packages and discounts. Reward people with your gratitude and your product. Serves you well and builds brand affinity.
Building and re-structuring your marketing operations. Have a site overhaul that never makes top of list? Now’s the time. Need team input from other departments? Now’s the time. Neglecting that CRM? Get into it. Blind to your team strengths and gaps? Now’s the time to dive into this.
There are a number of other factors and channels to consider. So, we’ll try to surface solutions to important, barrier-raising pain points, to help you eliminate them.