The marketing world is constantly changing, and the environment we operate in today is entirely different from what we were working in even just two or three years ago.
The field of marketing communications doesn’t have quite the same fast, flashy developments that are emerging in many fields of digital marketing. But it’s still evolving at a steady pace, driven by constantly-shifting consumer habits and expectations. The brands that fail to keep up are at risk of fading into irrelevance.
How well is your business executing on these increasingly critical PR and communications trends? If you’re falling short; it might be time to consider a PR executive search!
1. Influencer Relationship Management
Many traditional communications channels like mass media, celebrity endorsements and product placement are quickly taking a backseat to an explosion of wildly popular “influencers.”
An influencer can be nearly anyone with a widely-heard voice and respected opinion, like a hot radio DJ or talk show host. But today the most popular and effective influencers tend to be online: bloggers, YouTube stars, podcast hosts, social media entertainers, etc. These individuals may not always have the largest audience; but they often carry a lot of respect and sway within a very targeted niche.
Earning the attention, favor and trust of influencers either organically or through paid means is an incredibly effective (and usually very cost efficient) way to get your brand and products associated with whatever thoughtful insights, hilarious comments, valuable information, or unique personality quirks that make them popular. But engaging and interacting with influencers requires a unique strategy; they’re frequently not experienced public figures with agents or established systems for brand partnerships. Often they’re just busy professionals who run a podcast in their spare time, or young bloggers that aren’t even old enough to have a career yet.
Creating and nurturing relationships with these kinds of personalities requires a delicate touch and a thorough understanding of an influencer’s audience, niche, and content.
Many PR and brand marketing executives are realizing this and recruiting digital marketers specifically to manage their influencer marketing campaigns and relationships.
The world of influencer relationships is still immature and wide open to proactive brands. But the longer you wait, the harder (and more expensive) it will be to get the attention of the right influencers that engage your target audiences.
2. Online Reputation Management
When people Google your business, what do they see on the front page?
For most organizations, the first result will hopefully be the company home page (if it’s not, you have bigger problems to deal with). But unfortunately the rest of the SERP is often filled with less-flattering content, like negative news coverage, a Yelp page packed with unfavorable comments, or a Facebook wall littered with customer complaints.
Over 80% of buyers do research online before making a purchase decision. Rest assured they’re not only reading about your products; they’re also evaluating your brand.
Unsurprisingly, they’re more likely to buy if they like what they see. But if they encounter unflattering content, reviews, and news associated with your business they’re likely to look elsewhere.
Good online reputation management doesn’t mean just covering up any non-positive mentions of your business and products online. It means putting yourself in a position to avoid that negative attention, proactively generating positive stories and press to balance out unfavorable content, and responding appropriately to criticism and complaints. A deft PR leader brought in with a public relations executive search can even turn negative experiences into powerful, positive press.
3. Tracking and Analyzing Your Communications Initiatives
There was a time, not long ago, when businesses didn’t really expect to know how impactful their PR and external communications efforts were. They’d just issue some announcements, publish some press releases, maybe have a press conference, and hope for the best.
Today you should expect much more from your communications team. The PR industry alone will be a more than $13 billion dollar industry this year, yet many business and marketing leaders will have no idea whether those investments are paying off.
If you’re not tracking the impact of your communications, you’re probably wasting your time. An exact, hard dollar ROI value might not always be possible. But you should at least be able to have a good idea of basic KPIs like brand awareness and favorability, social engagement, quality traffic driven, etc.
Just as importantly, you should see active efforts to test new communications tactics and improve your strategy over time.
Need some help measuring your communications success and building analytics systems? Work with a good marketing analytics agency or bring in some analytics staffing.
4. Internalizing and Streamlining Communications Teams
Matters of public relations and communications have often traditionally been handed off to specialized agencies. However, in today’s fast-paced media environment many brands are finding more success insourcing their communications teams, bringing in new leadership through communications executive search, and cutting out the middle man.
A communications opportunity–or crisis–can appear and spread in the blink of an eye. Your brand’s window to respond to them in the most effective way is often very short.
But when you need to be fast, agency channels slows things down with an extra layer of internal processes, approvals and gatekeepers. And as important as a time-sensitive opportunity might be for you, there’s no guarantee your agency will have the interest or ability to prioritize it over their obligations for other clients.
That’s why it’s best to be prepared with aggressive marketing communications and PR recruitment to stock your business with a team that’s intimately familiar with your brand voice and strategy and can act directly under the direction of your communications executive.
Third party partnerships still have a place in the world of marketing communications as buzz generators or connections to valuable media relationships (though a PR executive search might be needed to find a leader who can choose the right agencies). But it’s probably wise to ween your business off reliance on someone else for your own communications strategy.
Source: B2C
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