PR stands for Public Relations and is a broad concept mainly focusing on how organisations communicate to the public or to a specific target audience. The purpose of the communication is to strengthen a brand’s image, create opinions and/or influence decision making.
For a long time PR was all about getting your message into the media and many companies didn’t have enough resources to do effective PR efforts. Today the world has changed; the rise of the internet, and especially social media, has created completely different opportunities for businesses to reach and interact with their target audience – no matter the industry or size. In this blog post we will go through 5 reasons why PR should be a central part of any organisation.
The difference between PR and advertising
Companies fight for the consumers’ attention. Where marketing and advertising uses paid collaborations and spaces, PR is all about the “earned” attention.
From a business perspective PR is a great way to earn trust with the target audience, which in the long run not only helps you sell your products and services, but also creates invaluable ambassadors for your brand. Efficient PR leads to so called earned media, which means others are talking and writing about your brand on their own initiative. Often the distinction between PR and paid media is “With ads you are telling others how great you are, with PR others are saying how great you are”.
Research from Nielsen shows that earned media – that includes word-of-mouth, customer reviews and editorial content, tends to be more believed than paid media. It is also proven that PR is almost 90% more efficient than advertising when it comes to influencing the consumer.
Reach the right people – PR adapted for a target audience
Efficient PR is based on the right message reaching the right people. What does your target audience look like? A target audience can be anything from a single person, for example a politician that will bring up a decision that affects your business, to an industry or a whole generation. Perhaps your target audience is obvious in which case a lot of the work is already done; otherwise it is important to define who you want to reach with your message and how you want them to act. Then do a thorough target audience analysis to identify what engages those you are trying to reach and how they usually interact with each other. If the goal is to engage traditional media you should make sure that the content you publish follows the classic news criteria.
PR on social media
For a business, to be present on social media is no longer just a good idea – it is a must. With tools like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter and blogs you can grow your engagement and build relations, both with your customers and journalists. According to We Are Socials report Digital 2021 the number of social media users increased by almost 10 percent from 2019 to 2020 – and today almost 50 percent of the world’s population is active on at least one social media platform.
However it is not enough to just create an account and publish sporadically to build an engaged audience. Besides the fact that the audience often demands your presence to not lose interest, the algorithms on the platforms are constantly changing and your chances to spread your message changes with them. Changes in society can also make your audience suddenly move to another arena. In the big debate about private corporations’ right to censor posts on their own platform many users decided to leave the giants Facebook and Twitter for less centrally controlled options. Therefore it is important that you stay updated on where your audience is and how they interact to keep engaging with your message.
But don’t forget the traditional media – even if social media is growing you shouldn’t rule out the traditional channels with their reach and credibility – being mentioned in media has a great, sometimes invaluable, value for your brand.
PR and media monitoring
Through media monitoring, what is being said about your brand, you can optimize your PR strategy for a low cost. Instead of over time identifying what campaigns get engagement organically and guess what is the best way of interacting with your audience, an effective media monitoring tool can do it in just a fraction of the time.
Today businesses are using media monitoring in a more proactive way in their communication than ever before and creates PR for their own brand by using current events and news. The emergence of social media and the demand for “immediate response” makes media monitoring even more important to be able to act quickly if anything happens that is, or could be, relevant for your brand.
An unwritten future
If nothing unexpected happens we seem to look forward to society opening up for real again in a not too distant future. A lot has happened in the many months since most offices were traded in for working from home. Digitalisation has taken giant leaps forward and changed the conditions for many jobs. Nobody knows exactly how the world post-Corona will look, but as always when society faces periods of change, marketers can win a lot by staying sharp to act fast when new opportunities arise.
Download our PR plan to develop a strategy that strengthens your brand.
