With the advance of social media platforms, multi-channel markets, the Internet of things, and omnichannel campaigns, many businesses are trying their best to navigate this field in terms of marketing and public relations.
The first step in maximizing the return on investment when it comes to public relations as well as marketing is to figure out where the target audience already is, how to best communicate with that audience, and what the audience needs to hear from the company.
Rushing to share news
When creating or executing PR campaigns, plenty of businesses tend to get excited to share their campaign with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this leads to a very common mistake in public relations where the company releases the entire campaign before it’s finished.
Before a campaign is released, a company should develop its own voice, tone, identify the target audience, create key messages, and find arguments against the key messages for situations when a message gets challenged. Only after all of these things are complete can a company finally share its PR campaign and receive positive media coverage for the right reasons.
Continuous plan
Another common mistake that businesses make in public relations is failing to understand that they should have ongoing and multi-channel PR campaigns, instead of sharing an announcement every once in a while.
Most of the time, it’s far from enough to only communicate with the target audience occasionally, through a blog post or a graphic on social media platforms. In fact, sharing occasionally can even harm a company’s reach, since with today’s algorithms it’s become increasingly difficult for businesses to get in front of the right people if they don’t share often.
A common rule in promotion is that a potential client has to come across a company’s message at least 7 times before they can be convinced to make a purchase. Companies looking to get to that point have to create consistent and regular public relations campaigns.
Patient communication
Next, although public relations as a field is rather dynamic, with journalists receiving over 100 pitches on a daily basis, companies still have to be patient and slowly build up a newsworthy narrative or story. And it’s not just the story that matters, as the relationship between the company and the journalist, or even the media outlet, is just as important.
Offering the company’s perspective on various newsworthy or trending topics consistently, and continually demonstrating that the business is capable of providing fresh or different perspectives, is also important. When a company is able to do all of these things, it’s able to create a professional relationship that’s based on trust, and their pitches or press releases will get picked up by relevant outlets or journalists.
Involved business owners
Finally, journalists prefer hearing directly from business owners themselves, as they are the ones in a company who tend to have the most insights and experience on the products or services.
Creating a strong relationship between a business owner and a reporter is easier than ever with the help of social media platforms, which makes for more positive media coverage at the end of the day.
