Public Relations Tips to Grow Your Business Online

Any brand that wants to grow and establish online authority needs good public relations, PR strategy. PR strategy is distinct from normal business promos and it should be used with utmost sense of responsibility otherwise it can backfire real time. Even at that, if well used, it is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your brand awareness and ultimately increase sales to grow your business. A good PR strategy helps to get out there, mostly the positive aspects of your brand as distinct from products promotion. The more consumers hear positive things about your brand, the more they become aware of the brand. That way, they subconsciously start to build trust in the brand. That is good for business.

Every business owner can use some PR strategies to grow their business. Here are some tips from marketing experts and PR gurus.

Always Create Good Content

In PR, experts say content is of extreme importance. It can make or mar any brand if not properly handled. What influences most consumers is how your content helps to position your brand as a subject matter expert in its industry or niche. If you habitually craft high quality and fact-based press releases with succinct solutions, that helps to position your brand as an expert on your subject matter. In the eyes and minds of consumers, that helps to position your brand as a trusted and trustworthy source. As a consequence, you can attract more consumers, get more leads, more customers and consequently better sales despite competition.

Control Your Press Releases

Well, as they say in PR business, anything you say can be used against you. Even if it is not possible for you to control what other people are saying about your business, you can at least control what you are saying to the world.  The messaging you send out into the world is hugely important for the wellbeing of your brand. If you have a good PR strategy, you are in full control of what gets sent out. This is in addition to having the sole responsibility to decide how and through what channels the message gets out. That confers on you the real power to build trust as the rightful source of authentic and authoritative information about your brand. That is great for business no doubt.

Keep Up with Trends on Social Media

Yes indeed! Social media is now where nearly everyone around the world appears to be. Having a good PR social media strategy is therefore good for business. In addition to honest communication, keeping up with trends and having a strong presence on social media is now the in-thing for PR experts. Aside the huge exposure brands enjoy on social media, sending out PR info on social media is highly effective and usually spreads fast and wide. You can directly target audiences with your press releases and that enables you to expand your reach to a wider set of consumers and provide more timely updates. By maintaining a credible and consistent social media presence for your brand, the brand benefits tremendously.

Be Consistent

Yeah, consistency helps to build trust quickly. Even if implementing a good PR strategy may not lead to instant success, doing so consistently over the long-term will, provided you are consistent across multichannel and in published releases and updates as well. 

Be Honest

Remember that honesty is always the best policy. It is more so in PR strategies. Always make PR plans for the good times as well as the bad times. Bad times are very important because that is when you may be suddenly called upon to manage a crisis the brand is facing. If you think outside the box and you are honest, you can quickly restore trust and credibility to your brand no matter the magnitude of the crisis. So, having a comprehensive crisis communications plan is always part of a good PR strategy. As the Boys Scouts Motto says “Be Prepared.” If you are and the need for crises communications ever arise, you’ll be glad you planned and prepared for it. Trust matters a lot for any business. If your press releases keep consumers honestly informed, they don’t need to stretch or bend the truth to suit their expectations. Consumers appreciate transparency and that helps to build trust and grow your reputation. When consumers determine that your PR releases are honest, they tend to trust you better and they do better business with your brand as a result. PR gurus always advise practitioners to be straightforward with honest communications. This is because hiding the truth or playing down on it can only make matters worse for the brand if eventually the truth surfaces as it almost always does.

Marketing Tips for Brands to Cope with E-commerce Transformation

As e-commerce world is rapidly undergoing transformation, brands and marketers cannot afford to be left in the lurch. Just as more and more businesses as going online, global e-commerce is experiencing rapid changes in tandem. Brands must take steps to cope with these changes to have maximum benefits from the rapidly changing e-commerce business activities globally. For this reason, marketers now have an urgent need to prioritize e-commerce and to adapt their age-old promotion strategies for better results. That is the only viable way they can continue to reach consumers better and to drive growth for their businesses. Here are a few tips to help drive that quest.

Create Compatible Strategies

Now than never before, marketers need to locate and follow consumers better wherever they are in the world. Thanks to the internet, this is achievable without much stress. If marketers place consumer experience at the center piece of their marketing strategies, they can take advantage of the differences in digital advertising channels to reach them better. That calls for real compatibility in marketing strategies. Marketers thus require different but compatible strategies to effectively advertise across multichannel. These strategies involve how to be found by consumers already in shopping mindset and searching online and direct promos to segmented audiences to attract sales or a combination of both.

Match Branding with Performance

Promoting a brand to have a better brand authority online and growing sales are both desirable for any e-commerce business. Depending on the circumstances, some brands may even choose to prioritize one over the other. Some marketers at times prefer to focus more on performance or direct sales results while others may choose to focus on building the brand first. Both scenarios benefit the business but in different ways. When there is less competition, it is better to build the brand first and expect to reap the rewards much later. To cope with the transformations in e-commerce business worldwide, it is advisable to match branding with performance. Marketers can blend branding and performance strategies to reap the dual benefits of both.

Create Multichannel Roles for Your Team

If you have a marketing team, it is not enough to train them well. Giving them a good focus in addition is also desirable.  It is better to have multichannel roles for your marketing team than to have them focused only on mini roles of the entire marketing infrastructure. Now that e-commerce businesses are transforming rapidly, it is the right time for marketers to rethink their digital marketing methods and media choices. In addition to rethinking their internal organizations, they can effectively work with traditional multichannel retailers, online marketplaces and delivery partners in order to cope with the emerging e-commerce environment. Brands that can do this well in the emerging e-commerce market will be able to build valuable lifelong customer relationships and grow their brands as a result.

 
Focus on ROI

In any marketing campaign, the bottom line is always the Return on Investment, ROI. Even with the transformations in e-commerce business, this remains true. It is only through good ROI that brands can conclusively prove the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. It is smart marketing therefore for marketers to focus on and tie every ad spend to sales outcomes and measure ROI instead of merely relying on softer metrics. However, Key Performance Indicators, KPIs can also be looked at differently to get the overall performance picture of the business.

Be Nimble in Your Marketing Strategy

When things are changing rapidly in e-commerce business environment, it is good to adjust and change your marketing strategies too. That enables your business to cope well. It calls for brands to have nimbler marketing strategies by making necessary adjustments to their marketing plans on the go. It allows brands to easily move advertising resources from offline channels to online channels and vice versa depending on the circumstances they find themselves at any material time. Business communication channels, messaging methods, marketing methods, supply chains, products handling and delivery methods, all require real flexibility to cope with any times and circumstances no matter how they turn out.