R Public Relations Firm
How To Spread Enthusiasm With PR In An Age Of Crises
In a world filled with global challenges—from hurricanes to war, mass layoffs to economic recession, it’s easy to fall into fear and pessimism. So how do you spread enthusiasm with PR in times of crisis without doing more harm to your brand than good? In this article, we explore different tips that can help.
Tips for Spreading Enthusiasm with PR
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by negative occurrences around us, and it takes a smart brand to spread positivity amid challenges. Here are four tips to spread enthusiasm during crises:
1. Be Attentive to Your Customers
The best strategy is to talk less and listen more during crises. You can gather information about how the problem affects your target audience, possible solutions, and how you can help. Start conversations with your target audience about the effect of the crisis on their daily life via your social media. Also, monitor platforms like blogs, social media pages, forums, and others that talk about the impact of the situations and identify critical issues your brand can solve. Remember, people just want to feel heard, seen, and understood; genuine listening goes a long way.
2. Showcase Resilience through Storytelling
In times of crisis, people want positivity, inspiration, and affirmation that they can overcome any obstacle. They also want to feel understood, and the best way to connect with them is by showing your customers that you understand their pain. Creating a PR campaign highlighting stories of how your brand, an employee, or a client remained resilient in times of crisis and turned things around sets the stage for a conversation. Moreover, it inspires your customers to stay positive, triggering a ripple effect that can spread to larger circles. In turn, you might ask your customers to share their stories. This promotes user-generated content that helps build brand awareness as well.
3. Encourage the Feeling of Togetherness
The most effective PR tactics leverage genuine human connection. Spreading enthusiasm with PR works if customers feel understood and know you stand with them. Identify a critical issue in your local area that affects customers.
Once you have that figured out, you can create campaigns that trigger conversation around "this is the problem, how it affects us, and what we can do to fix it." From this, you can quickly get people to support whatever relief drive you initiate. It's easier to spread enthusiasm when your target audience is on board. People want to support a cause that helps relieve the stress of a crisis, and generating awareness and response is more seamless when we all work together.
4. Create Campaigns Around Brand Values to Show Positivity in the World
Beyond creating PR activities that showcase togetherness and help you listen or drive resilience, your campaign must align with your brand values. Every PR campaign must connect back to what your brand stands for and not just for the traffic or me too PR stunt. Initiating relief campaigns, online and print media content, or any other PR crisis strategy must showcase your brand values.
Infusing your brand values helps consumers connect with you faster and build loyalty. It lets you show that you aren't an "on paper" brand; you match your values with action. In a world riddled with deceit and crises, upholding your brand values helps to spread optimism and enthusiasm for a better future.
Examples of Powerful PR Campaigns that Spread Enthusiasm During Crisis
Many brands have supported consumers and/or upheld their brand values in times of crisis. If you plan to spread enthusiasm with PR, here’s some inspiration for your next campaign.
1. Airbnb for Ukraine
To support victims of the Ukraine invasion, Airbnb started a campaign that offered short-term housing to refugees. This campaign triggered enormous support with individuals booking Airbnb and canceling at the last minute without requesting a refund. This method serves as a donation drive to provide shelter for refugees.
2. Apple, “Creativity Goes On” Campaign
In the heart of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, Apple created a PR campaign called "Creativity Goes On" to remind us to remain hopeful. The campaign inspired joy during the lockdown with Apple sharing tools and tips consumers need to stay connected with family. It also showcased creative projects and an educational learning series to help people who may be overwhelmed by the pandemic. The campaign was effective because it created a feeling of being heard and provided solutions to help consumers navigate the trying time.
3. Tescos #EveryLittleHelps
During the lockdown in 2020, many public businesses had to shut down completely, especially in the hospitality industry. So when bars, pubs, and restaurants began opening in mid-April, Tesco did something remarkable. They created a campaign that urged customers to shop from their local pubs instead of Tesco. This campaign showed Tesco's commitment to local communities, thus showcasing its brand values.
Partner with a Professional PR Agency
There will always be crises, but we can amplify the positive instead of the negative. Using PR, companies can create positive messages that build consumer connection and loyalty and showcase brand values. When implemented strategically, you will establish your brand as a reputable entity that listens, understands, and takes action to support its customers at every turn. At RPR, we help brands create effective public relations strategies that boost brand awareness and revenue growth and spread enthusiasm. Book a free consultation to explore our public relations services today.
Benefits of Having a Social Impact Strategy in PR
In today's business landscape, building solid relationships with customers, partners, investors, and other stakeholders is crucial for success. A social impact strategy can help your company achieve this by nurturing relationships with your community and other businesses. In this article, we discuss seven benefits of social impact strategy on your company’s public relations (PR) campaign.
What is a Social Impact Strategy?
Social impact is a focus in business that involves taking on socially responsible activities to serve communities and impact the world. Companies that prioritize social impact do so by contributing to solving a local or global challenge. This could be standing for a cause or addressing pressing needs like environmental issues, gender issues, educational gaps, refugee rights, social justice, etc.
While many brands understand the importance of social impact on business, it’s also critical to learn how to communicate their steps and efforts to improve the world. When perfectly executed, a social impact strategy can benefit your business in a number of ways.
7 Benefits of Social Impact Strategy in PR
PR is primarily about improving your appeal to the public, and demonstrating a positive social impact can help you do that. Here are seven ways your PR strategy can benefit from a robust social impact strategy.
1. Helps Customers Identify With Your Values
Business isn’t just about what you sell but also what you stand for. A 2019 survey showed that 77% of customers love brands that share their values and make efforts to champion them. Thus, a social impact strategy benefits PR because it helps customers identify with your company’s mission. One company that uses a social impact strategy effectively for its PR is Nike. The sports company is known for supporting social causes and showcasing athletes and cultures globally. The brand prioritizes consumers in its storytelling, utilizing Instagram for inspirational images and videos, Facebook for larger campaigns, and Twitter for addressing concerns. Nike's campaigns encouraged social distancing during the pandemic, supported the BLM movement, and empowered girls to pursue their dreams. Their campaigns inspire people to have courage and strive for greatness.
2. Builds Customers’ Trust
Consumers are more skeptical than ever when it comes to marketing ploys from brands trying to earn their business. However, they do tend to be more likely to put their trust in companies that align with their own values. Your social impact strategy allows you to ‘put your money where your mouth is,’ so to speak, through PR published in the media showing the good your company has done. This is earned media, not paid advertising, and is much more credible to consumers, which makes it easier to earn their trust and loyalty.
3. Harnesses the Power of Your Positive Influence
Knowing how your company inspires change in the world can help you fine-tune your branding messages. PR is not only about knowing what to say to the public but also how and when to say it. Your social impact strategy is the means by which you determine this as it’s your plan to affect change—the who, what, when, where, how, and why. With these things identified, it’s much easier to craft effective PR.
4. Attracts Investment Opportunities
Showcasing your company’s efforts to improve the world will help get investors’ attention. The positive recognition will also encourage them to invest in your company and feel confident doing so.
5. Helps Retain the Best Talent
Employees are the backbone of every successful company, and just like consumers, they are more attracted to companies that share their values. A company that enacts change will likely attract top employees who share its values and vision. Having employees that support your social impact will improve their commitment and productivity within your organization.
6. Increases Revenue
While PR is more of a top-of-the-funnel activity than marketing, its ultimate goal is to attract potential customers. However, being able to publicize your social impact means customers who align with your values will be more willing to buy from you.
7. Brand Reputation
One of the primary advantages of being a socially conscious company is that it increases your brand awareness and improves your reputation. Social impact is about helping others and contributing to a better world, so this should be the core of your strategy. If your company cares about making a social impact, you can create a meaningful change that improves other people’s lives. Eventually, creating a visible change will enhance your media recognition and make people see you positively.
Hire a PR Expert
Brands need to cultivate a strong relationship between their social impact strategy and PR strategy, but you’ll require a unique skill set to do this well. It would help if you had PR professionals who could effectively communicate your social impact strategies in a newsworthy way rather than a sales pitch.
At RPR Firm, we have a team of PR professionals with the skills and experience to help you benefit from your social impact by communicating the work you’re doing. Our company has more than 11 years of experience helping brands further their mission to make a change. Schedule a free consultation with us today.
What to Consider if You Are Thinking of Starting a New Business: A PR Agency Perspective
Did you know that 30.6% of businesses fail in the first two years, 49.7% fail after five years, and only 65.5% stay active for up to 10 years? Investopedia identified poor internet presence and marketing as the top reasons for this failure. As a prospective business owner, investing in a solid promotional mix strategy that involves PR campaigns will help you gain public attention, build brand awareness and communicate product relevance effectively. However, consider a few things before setting up your business or investing in a PR campaign. These include target audience, messaging, when to start, strategies to implement, hiring in-house or agency PR services, and tools for successful PR campaigns. Being a professional PR agency, this article will answer these questions to help you get the best results.
Your Target Audience
The target audience is the first building block for a business considering PR strategy in its marketing mix. Every product or service is designed to solve a problem for a specific demographic, and knowing your target audience guides that direction regarding messaging. As such, effective PR for a new business relies heavily on clearly defined target audience personas.
You should understand your target audience like you do a friend. Important information includes what they like, what content distribution channel they frequent, what relevant topics they interact with, and other demographic details. For example, if you have demographics that skew older in your target audience, newspaper, and TV PR campaigns might be more effective than social media platforms like TikTok or online news publications. Note that the who will guide the what, when, and how for a practical PR approach.
Your Messaging and Positioning
In PR, positioning, and messaging refer to how you describe your unique value. Humans are complex beings, and every business niche has at least one or two competitors. If you want to start a business that gets attention online, becomes the talk of the town, and appeals to customers' inner desires, then your messaging and positioning must be ironclad. You must consider all factors, including the customer's voice, prohibited phrases, how they want to be addressed, your brand tone, and, most importantly, your brand story. You will build lasting relationships or a loyal customer base with a story that emphasizes what the target audience wants, their inner desire, pain, and aspirations.
When to Start Running PR Campaigns
The question about when to run your first campaign has no specific answers. Why? Public relations is a tool for creating attention for your products, services, etc., and different businesses have varying business goals. However, as a new business, it's best to start running a campaign just before or immediately after you launch. You want to introduce your business to the market early, so your customers can follow your journey and develop an emotional connection to the brand.
Your PR Strategy
A PR strategy defines the method you adopt to launch a successful campaign. A well-defined strategy is highly organized and highlights all campaign elements. As a new business owner, some of the tactics that make up your PR strategy may include the following:
- Press releases to build brand awareness and generate backlinks.
- Interviews with local TV stations and media outlets to trigger brand conversation and visibility.
- Engage in community and industry events as speakers, panelists, or participants to build PR relationships with important stakeholders and promote products.
- Social media to create buzz and improve brand awareness and customer engagement.
- Partner with influencers to boost brand trust rating and drive sales.
- Publicity stunts to generate attention and get the conversation going about your upcoming product launch.
In-house Versus PR Agency
Hiring professionals matters when starting a new business that integrates PR strategy into your promotional mix. There are a few things to consider regarding in-house versus PR agencies, like budget, expertise, and goals.
A PR agency is usually less capital-intensive than an in-house PR person or team. Besides the cost, hiring an agency offers better results for new businesses as they have more experience in the industry and established relationships with media personnel. While in-house PR might take time to test different approaches, an agency can implement the best tactics immediately and get good results.
PR Management and Measurement Tools
Whether you create your PR campaign in-house or hire a PR agency, it's best to have real-time tools to track campaign performance. Here's a list of the best PR tools to consider.
- Muck Rack
- Anewstip
- HARO
- Brand24
- Google Alerts
- Brandwatch
Getting Started with PR for a New Business
Starting a business that integrates PR strategy into the promotional marketing mix without considering key factors is risky. You must arm yourself with information about significant PR elements, ready to hit the ground running from day one. Consider factors like target audience, brand messaging, positioning, when to start, and the best strategies and tools. Once you have these covered, you are one step closer to creating an effective PR campaign that creates buzz for your business and drives profitable actions. Need help with getting started? Schedule a call with our professional PR team to see how we can help your new business or product with strategic PR activities.