Why must your marketing strategy include a PR plan?

Public Relations is about communication, which involves in maintaining a favourable image and building a beneficial relationship between the business and the public communities, group, and the people it serves. The goal of public relations is to increase exposure and to shape how people think about a company, product and/or service – like telling a story on brand messaging which resonates with the target market and engages them in professional dialogue that is consistent with the company’s cultures, values, vision, and mission.

A PR agency’s main focus is improving the image of their clients by communicating with the public via various platforms such as media channels like social media – influencers, TV news, a magazine. It is more than just sending out a mass email to a media contact database, an effective PR strategy should be targeted, precise and well planned. Knowing the right angle to pursue and using the influences of current trends to leverage a pitch are vital.

Nowadays, PR is a better-performing field and enhancing greater opportunities to amplify key messages and milestones than any other marketing tactics. According to Forbes, PR can be 90% more effective than advertising. This is because third party is promoting a business through PR, which comes off as fairer and therefore less biased to the customers. People are more likely to believe a third party’s opinion of a certain brand. On the other hand, an advertisement would be viewed with skepticism since it is a paid placement from a biased source, the ad sponsor.

Some advantages of PR include:

• Organisations can use PR to amplify the things they are trying to communicate via other channels when PR activities are well-aligned with other marketing activities. To illustrate, a press release about a new product can be timed to support a marketing launch of the product and conference where the product is unveiled for the first time. With the right PR company assisting them, the brands of today have a much higher chance of reaching the target audience effectively.

• The use of PR allows customers to find products more credible. PR gets a targeted message to your preferred audiences in impactful ways: It gets people to make quicker buying decisions. Hence, having a good creditability is crucial to an organisation’s success by creating a positive image among the public.

• PR helps to increase profits or sales in collaboration with social/digital strategies, it can be used to push profits and sales. By having a client within a trusted publication, it will gain additional eyes on their brand. Partnered with tactics such as utilising a special offer to get people into a bricks and mortar store.

• PR can provide a unique touch point – in other words, adding value to a product or service offering that can help differentiate a company amongst its competitors and put it at the forefront of a particular industry. They can add value through increasing visibility of your products and services, personalise a company’s brand, raise the company’s profile, build strong relationship, and manage brand reputation.

• PR allows a much easier approach to retaining and attracting a target market. A well-written article on your product/service offerings in the magazine can be much more attractive and impact compared to an advertisement in that same magazine. Further, companies can effectively communicate your key messages and help it get a step closer to achieving its objectives.

• PR helps companies to create a strong online present that is highly visible to their target audience. PR agencies provide businesses with support and guidance to help the market themselves online while being constantly ready to step in when a disaster occurs, or something threatens to damage the company’s image that has been building.

To put things in a nutshell, public relations encompass a variety of marketing tactics that all share a common focus: managing public perceptions. They can be a planned activity that helps to shape the way the general public views a company. In this post, we analysed six advantages of using PR in marketing strategy that would help the business to overall succeed in the long run.  They play an important role in identifying and building relationships with influential individuals and groups responsible for sharing market perceptions in the industry or product category where an organisation operates which overall benefit the organisation.

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