Startups and multinational corporations understand the importance of marketing, which is why they spend a lot of money on ad campaigns, creative teams, and expensive consultants. Without a proper marketing plan, you’d have no way of promoting your products and attract paying customers. You might have the best products in the world, but if no one knows about it, your brand is as good as dead.
While you can always hire a digital marketing agency to handle your marketing and PR, they often don’t come cheap, especially if you’re a small-business owner running a tight ship. Fortunately, you can adopt a few strategies that will help you get a leg up on your competition.
Public relations is all about getting the word out and framing your business in the best possible light. Here are a few pointers to get you started:
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Use email marketing
Email marketing allows you direct access to the people that matter: journalists, followers of your brand, and most importantly, your customers. A well-crafted press release might get you some marketing mileage, but it’s not the most effective way to get information into the hands of your target audience. If you have a new product or announcement, an email blast is a cheap and easy way to inform your followers.
But you need to be smart about how you send emails. The average email inbox is filled with junk, so you need to make sure your email stands out. Experiment with different subject lines and write engaging content. If you’re starting, a monthly newsletter is a good place to start. Don’t send an email every single day unless you want people to unsubscribe.
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Embrace social media
Social media has transformed the way brands work online. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed brands to connect directly with a wide audience. You can push a message and promote your company without having to go through traditional channels. Meanwhile, people can directly engage with your brand, provide feedback, and ask relevant questions.
Maintaining a social media presence is an economical way of boosting brand presence and expanding your potential customer base. You can utilize other tools to improve your visibility, so feel free to experiment with different methods and strategies.
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Start a blog
Blogs seem like a relic of a bygone era, but they’re still an effective tool for getting the message out to your core audience. For starters, starting your own blog allows you to promote your products and services and make announcements. You can also write about topics relevant to your business and allow other bloggers to write for you. As your blog grows in popularity, you can reach more people in the cyberspace.
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Engage with people
Most brands today have a presence on Twitter, a social microblogging website. With the right tools, you can control the conversation. For instance, you can set up to search for certain keywords and phrases that are relevant to your brand. You’ll know right away if someone is talking about you, and you can directly engage with them.
In the olden days, you had to issue a press release and hope that the press will run your statements. Today, you can cut out the middle man and issue statements directly to your followers. You know that your followers are interested in what you have to say, so anything you release will have an immediate impact.
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Build relationships
Your work doesn’t end once someone has covered your statement. Good public relations is round-the-clock work, and you need to maintain a good relationship with the mover and shakers in your industry. Even if you have good news to share, if you don’t have a good relationship with the one sharing it, they could paint your brand in a negative light.
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Be authentic
Many people assume that PR involves whitewashing over the facts. However, keeping things real is more beneficial for your business. Many brands have complicated histories, and it isn’t your job to ignore everything that happened. Your work must reflect the changes that have happened moving forward.
A final word
Following these PR pointers can transform the way your brand connects with people. Don’t forget that your public relations plan should foster relationships to ensure strong support for your business in the future.
