Throughout our history the race has been on to explain how best to utilise language, visual media and interpersonal relationships to push a product into the consciousness of potential customers. There have been countless efforts to shed some light on the origins of public relations (PR): was it the rhetorics of classic philosophers in Ancient Greece, or the influential work of sixteenth century cleric, writer and abolitionist John Newton?
Ever since the emergence of the internet and the Information Age (a title that is arguably losing its relevance in today’s social media environment) there’s been a wild rush of new ways to entice customers to engage with products and services.
PR, as a distinctly separate discipline from advertising, aims to cut through the noise and deliver strategic campaigns that help to explore a company’s narrative. While strategies and methods for implementation change rapidly – even more so with the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence – here are some best-practices principles that PR companies should stick to even as they’re faced with the changing landscape of the industry.
Always understand your audience first
Arguably, the single most important part of PR is understanding your audience and adapting the way you present information to suit their specific wants and needs. Representing a business can only be done well when understanding who you’re writing for and who you wish to communicate with. As Gina Nowiki explains so well, the voice of a company should be as important as the product; great PR can help the audience understand their business and identity.
“Can you see them? Is it a man or a woman? Are they dressed in a business suit or jeans and a t-shirt? Would you want to have coffee with them?
This is an interesting way of examining what your brand’s PR messaging means to your customer. Advertising to the wrong audience is worse than not advertising at all. For example, putting advertisements in the news (both papers and online) will reach a smaller and arguably older audience. According to Reuters, younger audiences tend to avoid news and often consume much more short-form content, even sometimes using it as their primary source of information.
Reformat & redress your messaging
Make sure that in your messaging there’s a clear and cohesive idea of who the brand is to keep a personal feel and ensure PR value. Your communications should be cohesive, but this doesn’t mean that a company’s voice should be inflexible. With promotional formats changing massively in recent years, making sure that all material produced can be reused across different formats – blogs, podcasts and advertisements – can extend your reach and engage a range of new and existing audiences.
Since there’s such a vast breadth of media sources, having promotional interviews, digital marketing and paid advertising can be much stronger together than just relying on one strategy. Make the most of the content you have to ensure you reach as wide an audience as possible.
Go beyond clean & linear PR
The online landscape for promotion is exceptionally complex. Even the best storytelling and writing can get buried under the volume of different companies, websites and blogs available on the internet. Trying to garner attention without understanding principles of modern digital marketing such as SEO, SERP features and backlinks (as well as the different tools used to analyse these strategies) can be extremely difficult.
PR companies need to combine more traditional and social media marketing with these new tools, including AI, as well as continue to work storytelling into campaigns to maintain the human element. According to HubSpot, “one in two writers use AI tools to boost the performance of their content”– how this will be implemented is a different question entirely.
Clean and linear PR is starting to disappear and could potentially increase the value of guerilla marketing strategies in the future. Red Bull’s record-breaking Stratos campaign is an astounding, high cost example, but many other examples are emerging in order to counter the saturation of the advertising market.
In conclusion, there’s a lot to take in with the current PR and marketing landscape. To understand it better, it’s always best to ask people who know best – like OggaDoon. Get in touch with us and we’ll help you find the right PR tools to boost your company’s image.
