4 Top PR Ideas for the Fast Food Industry with Practical Examples

The food industry is dominated by brands that can excite customers' taste buds, from McDonald's and Burger King to Subway and Taco Bell. However, with the growing number of food businesses with an estimated CAGR growth of 10.76% from 2022 to 2029, serving tantalizing food alone won't keep you in the game. Besides the growing competition and consumers' craving for exceptional customer services, you also have to deal with the crisis in the food business. Harnessing the power of public relations to create memorable experiences for your customers, forge strong connections, and deftly navigate any crisis that comes your way can help you do just that. Check out our list of the best PR ideas for the food business with examples of how successful brands have used them to drive quality results. 

1. Build Hype with an Experiential Marketing Strategy

Experiential marketing, also called engagement marketing, is a strategy that aims to build lasting connections with consumers by forging practical and immersive experiences. This strategy allows you to deliver how consumers would love to experience their favorite meals, snacks, etc. 

Imagine participating in preparing your favorite meal, living in a doughnut-themed city, or getting a personalized chocolate bar. These are all possible PR campaign activities that can help you build hype for a new product or relaunch your restaurant. Taco Bell's Hotel "The Bell" launch is an example of experiential marketing at its best. The PR campaign combined the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and the brand's impressive fanbase to create buzz and give customers an exclusive experience. The hotel has a Taco Bell-themed setup, like sauce packet-shaped pillows, and salons with taco-themed manicures and pedicures. The campaign sparked media buzz and quickly built hype for the hotel's launch. Unsurprisingly, all rooms sold out within 30 minutes of opening for bookings!

2. Engage New Audiences with Influencer Partnership

Have you bought a drink or visited a restaurant because your favorite celebrity mentioned it in a video? If you answered yes, you have experienced the power of influencer marketing first-hand. Although cooking great meals and delivering unique experiences is impressive, it drives little results without a massive distribution medium. Leveraging influencer partnerships can turbocharge your reach, effortlessly breaking down barriers and getting your message out there.

Unlike advertising to an unknown audience, partnering with an influencer gives you an automatic vote of confidence. People are more likely to engage, visit your food business, and trust you when their favorite celebrity endorses or associates with it. For example, in September 2020, McDonald's partnered with Travis Scott to create a memorable meal as part of a PR campaign. The partnership succeeded, leading to 5% YOY growth in McDonald's Q3 sales. It also created buzz on social media, thanks to the contribution of the rapper's artwork, merchandise, and social media content.

3. Build a Connection with Social Activism

Adopting a social activism strategy that aligns with your brand's core values and audience challenges helps to build a connection. Furthermore, research has shown that 34% of consumers say standing for a cause that affects them boosts a brand's credibility. It shows the consumers that you identify as part of their community and are committed to improving it. Social activism events like fundraisers, tours, and many more can also serve as a channel to build awareness for new products or your brand. 

You can also adopt collaboration to reach a wider audience like Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream brand. The brand partnered with Tesla Motors, a clean energy vehicle producer, to launch a climate change tour called "Save Our Swirled." The partnership had many activities, including ice cream delivery made with Tesla-branded vehicles to customers in California. This method is successful as it allows you to humanize your brand, deliver on your promises, and show that you are reliable. 

4. Combine Technology with Food to Deliver a Unique Experience

The technology industry has grown exponentially lately, with AR/VR and AI taking center stage. This growth also opens unique opportunities for the food industry to create memorable experiences. AR dishes, virtual culinary journeys, virtual menus, and dining have been part of a campaign aimed at giving consumers more than a tasty meal. The Le Petit Chef 3D Animated Culinary Journey is an excellent example of how technology and food can combine as a PR strategy. 

Furthermore, the culinary journey hosted in Thailand by Park Hyatt featured a tiny virtual chef that traveled the world at a table in front of guests. The dining experience showed the chef muttering to himself as he traveled from France to China and back, creating a menu from the dishes he found along the way. This method gives the consumers an entertaining experience allowing them to explore new locations, menus, and cultures while enjoying their meals.

Hire a Professional PR Agency to Create Effective Campaigns

In today's fast-paced environment, creating an effective PR campaign depends on the connection it builds with your audience. One of the best ways to strengthen this connection is by creating a food experience that triggers an emotional reaction. However, if your campaign doesn't capture your target customer's attention and fails to show you care or offer them something to talk about, you will most likely get poor results. Strategies that adopt experiential marketing, technology, and social activism will help you build this connection, and you can customize the approach to your brand's unique needs. Book your personalized consultation today, and let us help you make your mark in the food industry!

by R Public Relations Firm

How to Stand Out Through PR in 2023: 5 Effective Tips

In the fast-paced public relations (PR) world, capturing attention has become an art—a delicate dance of creativity and connection. Consumers are more suspicious of information online due to the widespread fake news, and authenticity is now an essential element of good PR. Therefore, to stand out in 2023 and navigate the ever-evolving PR landscape, you will need more than fancy press releases or well-advertised corporate social responsibility projects. Subsequently, today's PR landscape is shifting away from broad PR activities to implementing personalized PR, embracing digital tools, and adopting collaboration strategies. This article explores some PR tactics that will help you stand out in 2023. 

1. Integrate Storytelling into PR Activities

Storytelling in PR is a vital strategy that helps you build authentic connections with customers and media. Unlike bland press releases with product terminologies and features, storytelling engages the audience's imagination. Research has also shown that storytelling lights up certain parts of the brain that other types of information cannot. So not only does it allow the consumer to see themselves experiencing the transformation your products deliver, but it also builds a connection. 

Therefore, instead of creating traditional press releases and product campaigns, you can infuse storytelling to take your audience and the media through the product creation journey. Incorporating storytelling allows you to share personal insights, convey emotions, and show the real motivation to make the product. Top-rated brands like Apple and Skype have mastered the PR storytelling approach, which has given them a strong brand reputation both online and offline. 

For example, Skye's Stay Together campaign used storytelling to show the media how their platform facilitates connectivity and maintains human relationships even when they are miles apart. The PR campaign shared how a Ugandan man stayed connected with the family he left behind when the war forced him to relocate to America to start a new life. This approach created an emphatic narrative that gave the brand good PR while showing the extreme possibilities that consumers can achieve with the tool.

2. Embrace Influencer Partnerships

Influencer partnerships have been a significant driver in successful PR marketing strategies. Collaboration allows you to reach a wider audience and build a strong brand reputation. Influencers have built a loyal following that trusts their recommendations. Thus, partnering with them serves as a vote of confidence, boosting brand awareness and increasing sales conversion. 

Working together with influencers also enables you to integrate unique and creative elements into your PR campaigns. This approach highlights the influencer's genuine persona while ensuring it aligns with your brand's principles. Although influencer marketing has long been a marketing strategy for big brands, the advent of social media platforms like TikTok makes it easy for brands of all sizes to benefit from its impact. 

There are various categories of influencers in which you can partner. However, you must ensure they reach your target audience and demonstrate high online engagement. An example of influencer marketing is Dunkin Donuts' partnership with Tiktok influencer Charli D'Amelio which generated a 57% spike in app downloads and tons of sales. You can use a tool like Modash to find influencers in your niche and get information about their activity before contacting them for collaboration. 

3. Monitor and Respond to Trends

It's clear that the media landscape is continuously evolving. The advent of new tools and platforms has made it startlingly easy for the spread of fake news and disinformation or even launch of campaigns aimed at tarnishing your business's reputation. All it could take is a single Instagram post.

Monitoring the industry trends, information, and brand mentions across all channels helps you stay one step ahead of a crisis. Also, creating a crisis response plan is essential so you are prepared for anything. This approach allows you to take advantage of trends that align with your business goals before they lose their traffic relevance. You can use tools like Google Alerts to monitor mentions of specific keywords or brand names and respond to any queries attached to them fast before it escalates. 

4. Adopt AI in PR to Streamline Your PR Processes

The AI revolution has been leading change and business growth across different industries. In PR, the possibilities for AI are unlimited as it has been implemented across all stages of the strategy process. For example, you can use AI tools to streamline PR processes, collate data, and set up analytics for better decision-making and influencer discovery. Moreover, AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and identify audience engagement patterns. Subsequently, you can use these insights to create better campaigns, anticipate emerging trends, and enhance PR strategies.

5. Partner with Professional Firm for PR 2023

Collaboration in PR isn't restricted to influencers; your PR team needs to be at their best at all times. Even if you have an in-house team, you can partner with PR experts in 2023 to deliver specific strategy implementations that your team might not be skilled in producing. Partnering with a PR firm also gives you access to industry insight from years of experience working with different clients. This support will give you an advantage over the competition as you have a wider pool of knowledge and creativity. For example, a PR firm usually has wider industry contacts or specific expertise in crisis management.

Standout Through PR in 2023 with Personalized Services 

PR is a unique field that requires a unique approach. You must be attentive to the needs of your audience, the media, and your industry to stay one step ahead. While it's possible to get results by implementing more traditional methods, it might not be sustainable in 2023. Adopting a storytelling approach, implementing influencer marketing strategies, investing in AI tools, monitoring PR, and partnering with experts will help you stand out in 2023. Are you ready to implement an effective PR strategy that gives you a competitive advantage? Schedule a call with our professional PR consultants for personalized service.

by R Public Relations Firm

4 Effective Ways to Improve Your PR Team’s Productivity

The fast-paced nature of public relations, coupled with multiple variables to consider, often leads to stress and reduced employee productivity. Besides the everyday demands of the PR role, other factors like inefficient processes, employee dissatisfaction, and poor communication can lower a PR team's productivity. Ultimately, this results in poor PR campaign performance and revenue loss. 

Having built a PR agency with over a decade of deploying effective campaigns, a vital place to start building a productive team is setting clear goals. However, that's just a tiny part of the process. This article will explore four practical tips to help improve your PR team's productivity, why it's important, and the elements of a productive PR team.

Why Productive PR Teams Are Essential for Growth

PR teams play a crucial role in the growth process of any business. They are at the forefront of building a good reputation and awareness for your brand using different creative assets. The role of PR teams requires creativity and focus at all times. However, if a team is unproductive, it's unlikely to deliver fully innovative solutions consistently, thus limiting the potential impact of public relations on your business. 

Building a productive PR team contributes to happy employees who are proud of their achievements and eager to deliver fast results. In the long run, you will experience better PR campaign performance, save costs on fixing avoidable mistakes, and improve your internal company culture. 

What Are the Critical Elements of Productive PR Teams?

Improving your PR team's productivity is a function of multiple elements. Some key features businesses with a productive PR team may have in common include:

• Clear goals and objectives
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities
• Effective communication processes
• Ability to track results
• Healthy collaboration practices
• Adopting technology to automate routine tasks
• A healthy work culture

What Are Four Effective Ways to Improve Your PR Team’s Productivity?

Low team productivity usually results from different factors that activate stressors in team members. If you are building a PR team from scratch, starting on the right note is essential. On the other hand, if your team has lost its steam, it's time to reevaluate your processes. Here is a list of four practical steps to improve your PR team's productivity. 

1. Set SMART Goals and Objectives

The low productivity in PR teams often results from a lack of focus and direction. When your PR team works on everything and nothing simultaneously without clear milestones, it can lead to burnout. Setting SMART goals helps to direct focus on the right PR activities. It will also help your PR team members to identify where their skills will be most helpful in contributing creative ideas. Subsequently, this will improve team collaboration, foster better engagement, and boost PR productivity. 

2. Streamline Workflow Processes with Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities

According to a Gallup article, unclear roles are one of the leading causes of employee burnout, resulting in low productivity. When your PR team doesn't have clearly defined roles, you miss out on a chance to maximize the full potential of each employee. It also affects project delivery efficiency, resulting in longer revision periods and disorganized workflows. To create clear roles, you must first understand the strengths and weaknesses of each PR team member. Then based on your PR activities, you can identify where they will best fit before assigning specific tasks to each member. This process will allow PR teams to focus on completing assigned tasks, identifying support tools they need, and improving their creativity rather than juggling unrelated tasks.

3. Leverage Technology for Automation

Technology and automation have come a long way, with PR tools reaping the benefits of these innovations. Often, routine tasks that could be automated end up consuming time and causing low productivity. With PR tools like Cision, BuzzSumo, and Google Analytics, PR teams can streamline analytics, report generation, and other tasks. You can save up to 40% of time lost to task switching when you automate repeat tasks and adopt technology for other complex activities. 

4. Implement a Rewards and Incentives Program

For a PR team to be productive, you must have good levels of employee engagement. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that employee engagement has declined, with only 32% of part- and full-time employees actively engaged in their organizations. This results from poor team recognition and achievement rewards, amongst others. Adopting a rewards and incentives system will allow you to recognize your PR team's achievements. With the possibility of increasing productivity by 14%, adopting an incentive program for the PR team is a win-win. 

Getting Started with Building PR Productivity

Productivity is one of the cornerstones of successful teams and business growth. A PR team’s critical role in improving brand awareness, maintaining reputation, and supporting marketing performance makes it an important element to prioritize. If your team isn't performing at high capacity, it might be a case of burnout or poor employee engagement. 

Boosting your PR team's productivity isn't just about improving performance—it's about fostering a workplace culture that values creativity, efficiency, and dedication. Start transforming your PR team today and see the difference it makes to your brand's reputation and growth. Need expert advice? Schedule a call with our professional PR consultants, and let's transform your PR productivity together.

by R Public Relations Firm

Boost Audience Engagement & Sales with Effective PR

Audience engagement is essential for the success of your business, and one of the ways you can boost engagement is through PR. In this article, we discuss what audience engagement means and some PR tips to increase it regardless of your industry.

What is Audience Engagement?

In PR, audience engagement means getting your existing and prospective customers to interact positively with your brand, as engaged audiences are likely to drive sales and increase your revenue. It refers to the degree of customer involvement and loyalty to your brand. Note that engagement is often a result of the cognitive and emotional experiences people have with your brand. 

Audience engagement is often measured through activities such as social media shares, comments, and likes. You can also track your website's engagement through organic traffic, retention rate, and number of clicks. 

7 Tips to Drive Audience Engagement Through PR Campaigns

If you are working on a PR campaign, driving engagement should be one of your primary goals. Here are some PR tips for driving audience engagement.

1. Develop a Memorable and Consistent Brand Voice

Your brand voice can influence how your audience interacts with you, so it’s essential to develop a voice that people will find memorable. Also, the right brand voice will humanize your brand and compel your audience to engage more with you. It may take time to nail a strong brand voice, but creating audience personas can help you determine what’s most relevant to them. Unlike tone of voice, your brand voice must be consistent, and customers must be able to identify you through it. 

2. Create Positive, Educational, and Engaging Content

Content is helpful for many reasons, and if implemented effectively, it could drive up to 55% more traffic to your website. Also, PR campaigns and content that people find relatable will get more engagement and spark more conversation. Therefore, ensure that your content educates your audience, provides solutions to their problems, and positions you as a thought leader. 

What’s more, a study by Berger and Milkman found that articles are more likely to go viral if they evoke a positive emotion. So, make sure to consider this in your PR strategy when creating content to help increase engagement.

3. Incorporate Visuals to Increase Shares and Engagement

Content with visuals, such as pictures, videos, and infographics, is more engaging than campaigns with text alone. For example, visual content like infographics usually gets 40x more shares than other forms of content, while marketers employing video content experience a 49% faster revenue growth than those who don't. Also, be very creative with the content you share on social media. For instance, you can leverage engaging features, including stories, polls, stickers, live videos, polls, reels, and questions and answers to boost audience engagement. 

4. Collaborate with Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

Many influencers have a large following on social media, and one of the ways to boost your audience engagement through PR is by getting them to say positive things about your brand. In fact, 92% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is effective. You can partner with an influencer in multiple ways, including promoting your social media page, reviewing your product, or recommending your brand. Your audience will be excited to engage with your brand if they see that you are associated with an influencer they like. 

5. Initiate and Maintain Conversations with Your Audience

If you want your audience to engage, you must create content that asks them to do so. Also, ensure you don't confuse readers by using multiple call-to-actions (CTAs). According to a report, emails with a single CTA increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%. When you upload videos and pictures on social media, ask your audience open-ended questions to elicit responses. Also, engage your customers by holding games, contests, and quizzes. Moreover, it’s recommended to chat and reply to your customers when they drop comments or engage with you. Use PR tactics like social listening to keep track of when customers mention your brand so you can respond. 

6. Encourage and Share User-Generated Content (UGC)

Word-of-mouth marketing, on average, contributes to $6 trillion in global spending annually and accounts for 13% of total sales. User-generated content (UGC) is a form of word-of-mouth marketing that involves resharing content your audience created about your brand. This will increase the number of people that engage with your content and encourage other customers to share images featuring your brand. You can increase the UGC you receive by telling customers to share pictures with your products or creating a branded hashtag they can use when they upload images featuring your brand. 

7. Monitor and Optimize Engagement Metrics

The basic engagement metrics on social media are likes, shares, comments, and views. Your website's engagement metrics include unique visitors, average visit duration, and bounce rate. Always monitor these metrics to understand your engagement level better and identify PR strategies you can implement to improve. However, be mindful of vanity metrics; only prioritize metrics that align with your PR campaign objectives. 

Get Help Increasing Audience Engagement Through PR

Running PR campaigns requires a lot of effort, and it may be difficult to handle if you do not have much experience. We at RPR firm have the experience, expertise, and strategies to drive PR campaigns that will boost audience engagement and sales. 

Looking to drive audience engagement, increase brand awareness, or boost your reputation? Then schedule a consultation with us today and let our experts at RPR handle your PR campaigns for you. 

by R Public Relations Firm

7 Ways to Increase Press Coverage

Think of managing a business like writing a book: you could create a masterpiece, but without publishing it, all you have is missed potential. Spreading the word and making your brand visible are similar. Just as publishing is crucial for sharing a book's content, obtaining press coverage is equally vital for raising awareness about your brand and its offerings. However, launching a PR campaign is one thing; ensuring it gets sufficient press coverage is quite another. This article provides seven tips to increase your press release coverage without breaking the bank. 

Importance of Increasing Press Coverage

Securing press coverage from top-tier publishers is more challenging than ever. According to recent data, 43% of top-rated publishers receive between five and 50 pitches per week, while 57% receive between 50 and 500 pitches weekly. With such a high volume of pitches vying for attention, it's crucial to develop a well-crafted and targeted message that stands out from the crowd to get press coverage. By understanding the competitive landscape, you can refine your PR strategy and increase your chances of success when reaching out to influential publishers.

Tips to Increase Press Coverage for Your Brand

Getting press coverage sounds easy on paper, but in reality, getting the attention of a third party is hard work. So here are some tips on how to do so more effectively.

1. Leverage Social Media

To get free publicity from the media, you need to get their attention first. There is no better way than social media since 92% of marketers use it. This proactive strategy involves developing engaging content, investing in brand identity, and creating buzz around your business to get on the radar of journalists. 

2. Pitch Yourself to a Third Party

In addition to making it easier for a journalist or influencer to discover you on social media, you can also be proactive in reaching out. Media outlets can’t cover what they don’t know, so it’s imperative to go out of your way to spark an interest. Send relevant press releases, message influencers to partner with them, and pitch your stories to a media outlet. 

Start by researching influencers, bloggers, and journalists in your industry. Next, identify those who will be a good fit for your brand and pitch your brand or stories to them. Reaching out to these third parties can increase your exposure and is more effective than waiting for them to find you. 

Also, note that media coverage doesn’t have to be a press release or story. You can send your product to influencers or bloggers in exchange for an honest review on their platforms. 

3. Don’t Be Reluctant to Follow Up

You might not always receive a response after pitching to a journalist or influencer, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the lead. On the contrary, to increase the chances of your pitch being noticed and securing a collaboration, we recommend following up on your pitch. A friendly reminder of the relevance and timeliness of your pitch to that journalist and/or their publication can make a significant difference in getting a response and moving forward with your PR efforts.

4. Use Services like ‘Help a Reporter Out’ (HARO)

Another way to get press coverage is by using services like Help a Reporter Out (HARO), where journalists can find leads for good stories. Brands can leverage this platform by answering relevant queries from journalists and pitching their press releases/stories to them. If a journalist likes your answer, your company will get a mention/backlink, thus increasing your brand awareness. 

5. Bring Value to Your Community

One of the best ways to get publicity is by piggybacking on strategies likely to catch people’s attention. An excellent approach is to bring value to your community by supporting charitable causes and spreading awareness about relevant social causes. When you connect to a cause larger than your brand, you can find a better story angle for your press coverage.

6. Focus on Building Relationships

Spending massively on campaigns isn’t necessarily the best way to increase press coverage; instead, it’s building solid relationships with people. So be sure to foster strong relationships with your customers, employees, and journalists. You’ll have more success pitching stories to journalists with whom you've already established a rapport. Instead of waiting until you need press coverage, start forming strategic relationships with journalists early on. Engage with brands of interest on social media, appreciate their work, and leave insightful comments on their posts. Likes and shares are good, but meaningful comments get better attention. Again it all works together to increase brand awareness which makes you more newsworthy.

7. Hire PR Professionals

Brands can decide to devote a large chunk of their time to getting press coverage or work with a PR agency to do the work for them. We recommend the latter because agencies usually have leads and connections with popular media houses. This makes it easier for them to help your brand obtain favorable press coverage. 

Work With a PR Expert to Increase Press Coverage

Press coverage is crucial for every organization, especially small businesses without the budget to launch grand campaigns. At RPR firm, we specialize in helping small businesses increase their press coverage by boosting brand awareness and improving their reputation. Want to know how our PR specialists can help you increase your press coverage? Then, schedule a free consultation with us today! 

by R Public Relations Firm

5 Best Ways to Improve Your Brand's PR

Navigating the world of public relations can be daunting, especially when balancing empathy, marketing, and brand values. In this in-depth guide, we share our top five strategies for enhancing your brand's PR and must-have components for an effective PR strategy drawing from our extensive experience working with diverse brands.

Elements of a Good PR Strategy

As a professional PR agency with over a decade of experience working with more than 50 brands in different industries, we have studied and created successful public relations campaigns extensively. If you are planning your next PR strategy, here are some elements to prioritize:

1. Show Empathy but Uphold Brand Values

You want to ensure that you communicate messages relevant to your audience's needs and identify with their struggle but maintain authenticity at all times. There must be a message of truth, which builds connection more than fancy press releases or positioning statements.

2. Have a Long-Term Strategy and Measurable Goals

The fastest way to fail in PR is to dive in without clear goals or a plan. A clearly defined PR goal specifies what to focus on, while your brand PR strategy breaks down the steps to achieve the goals and measure results. When you balance realistic goals and actionable strategy, you’re much more likely to succeed.

3. Find a Balance between Providing Value and Selling a Solution

A core goal of public relations strategy is brand awareness. However, it's also a good tool for generating sales. But if your PR campaign over-prioritizes sales, you could lose the target audience's attention. On the other hand, if it focuses more on value, you will build connections but might get fewer sales conversions. Therefore, it’s important to strike a balance between the two in PR activities. 

Ways to Improve Your Brand's PR

Are your PR activities performing as well as they could be? Do you need to boost the results with new ideas and strategies? Here are some good PR strategies you can adopt to improve your brand's PR.

1. Listen to Your Customers

PR helps you connect with your target audience, and you must listen to what they are saying. Communication is a two-way activity, and listening will help you identify gaps in your strategy. You can find out what you are doing correctly, the areas to adjust, service challenges, product update requests, critical issues that affect your target audience, and many more. 

Sometimes, your poor performance in PR activities isn't an internal issue, such as a lack of expertise or tools. Rather, it's an external issue like a lack of effective communication with the target audience. By creating a PR survey, poll, or customer interview, you can listen better to your target audience and get direct answers.

2. Adopt an Omnichannel PR Strategy

Public relations isn't one-size-fits-all. While it might be easier to manage one channel, it might prevent you from reaching a larger audience. An omnichannel strategy is more effective as it considers all possible platforms your target audience visits for information. 

For example, a company might have consumers who use Twitter only, Instagram and Twitter, Facebook only, email and forums, or traditional media like TV and magazines. Creating a PR plan that provides content and a distribution plan for each channel will help you meet your target audience where they are, thereby improving your probability for success. 

3. Invest in Effective Customer Experience

Creating a press release to announce your product launch will help create awareness for your business but might not be as effective as the buzz from word-of-mouth marketing. How can you trigger word-of-mouth advertising without paying influencers? The answer is simple: deliver a quality customer experience. 

Wowing the customer in each brand experience will result in positive reviews, increased word-of-mouth recommendations, and help you generate customer success stories quickly. All of these assets will help boost your brand strategy at a lower cost than when you first convince the target audience of your credibility before connecting with them.

4. Invest in Data-Driven Public Relations Strategy

As mentioned earlier, measurable goals and realistic plans are essential for good PR performance. However, you won’t drive real impact if you don't track these PR goals. Fortunately, there are many PR tools that you can use to measure performance which will guide the launch of future PR campaigns. For example, you can use Google Analytics to track audience behavior across multiple platforms and BuzzSumo for brand mentions and identifying trending topics for your PR campaign. Data, combined with human expertise, will give you a competitive edge and help you make better PR strategy decisions.

5. Hire PR Professionals

Public relations involves many moving parts that require careful implementation, and hiring  PR professionals, whether in-house or agency, gives you the confidence to deploy effective strategies. You cannot gamble with expertise if you want to get better results. Although hiring a result-driven PR professional might be expensive, the long-term benefits outweigh the budget strain and should always be a top priority.

Next Steps to Improve Your Brand's PR

Public perception of a brand goes a long way to determining business success. Therefore, you need a combination of tools, expertise, data, and strategies to get to maintain a positive perception. You must also ensure that your PR focuses on the target audience, maintains your brand values, and creates a balance between value and sales. You must include all of these elements to build a connection with your audience. 

At RPR, we engage in detailed customer research to identify critical issues, understand customer behavior and create effective PR strategies that integrate crisis management and brand growth. 

Are you ready to improve your brand's PR? Schedule a free consultation with us today. 

by R Public Relations Firm

External PR Agency Vs. In-house PR Manager? Our Pick

Research has shown that the global public relations (PR) market will be worth approximately $133 billion in 2023, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7% yearly.  As more businesses adopt PR, choosing between an in-house PR manager or outsourcing to an external PR agency can be tricky. While many experts suggest hiring an external RR agency, others recommend going for an in-house PR manager. Regardless of your choice, you must consider certain factors before making a decision. In this article, we break down everything you need to know about external PR versus hiring an in-house PR manager and also provide our expert verdict. 

The Role of an In-house PR Manager

An in-house public relations manager is an individual that oversees all PR activities in an organization. They are typically part of the marketing or communications team creating content, tracking PR campaign performance, and leading brand reputation management strategies.

The Role of an External PR Agency

In contrast, a PR agency is a firm that works with different organizations as an independent body. They help build a relationship between your brand and the public through developing, distributing, and monitoring PR campaigns and crisis management plans. 

What to Consider When Choosing a PR Agency or In-House PR

Whether to hire an external PR agency or an in-house manager isn’t absolute. Rather, there are different factors to consider which will guide your final decision. 

1. Cost / Budget

The cost of hiring an in-house PR manager encompasses three main areas: recruitment, monthly salary and benefits, and training.

The average yearly salary of a PR manager in the United States ranges from $66,000 to $99,000, which equals approximately $5,500 to $8,000 monthly. This amount doesn't include recruitment and training costs, which might amount to another $4,000 & $1,252, respectively. 

In contrast, the average cost of hiring a PR agency with competencies like SEO, copywriting, PR tools, outreach, and reporting is between $1,500 and $10,000 monthly, typically. At first glance, it seems to cost less to hire an in-house team. However, considering the lack of full-service expertise, you might have to employ other employees to support the PR manager. This will increase the total cost making it more expensive than outsourcing your PR to an external agency.

2. Continuity and Consistency

Many sectors have experienced a significant increase in employee resignations, causing a loss of skilled professionals and hindering productivity. Employing a public relations manager can expose your organization to potential workforce transition challenges. In case of a resignation, you must initiate a recruitment process, onboard a replacement, train them, and allow time to acclimate to the company culture. This inconsistency can make maintaining effective PR strategies difficult.

In contrast, an external PR agency has a team of experts including publicists, project managers, copywriters, link-building experts, and more. When you hire a full-service agency, you don't have to worry about resignation or other employee issues. Even if a team member resigns, another member will be assigned to your account immediately, which supports continuity and consistency. 

3. Accessibility and Control

An external PR agency works with many clients making it harder to jump on a quick call or quickly run quickly get something published by tomorrow. This limitation creates an opportunity gap because taking advantage of certain information quickly can be challenging at times. However, working with an in-house manager gives you more access and control over PR activities. You can walk down to the hall and share your big idea or adjust a campaign based on new information without waiting in line. 

4. Access to an Extensive Library of PR Tools

In-house PR teams may not have access to all the tools available to deliver effective results. This might be due to budget constraints or limited expertise. In contrast, an external PR agency will have a full suite of PR tools like analytics, tracking, outreach, and reporting to facilitate data-driven strategy implementation. When creating a winning strategy, you don't want to leave any stones unturned; an agency armed with the right tools ensures that all areas are covered for maximum results. 

5. Access to PR Opportunities

Since most PR agencies work with clients in different industries, they have access to possible partners or collaborators. This cuts the time invested in outreach and other activities. For example, you need to implement an influencer marketing strategy, and your PR agency happens to manage an influencer on your list. That connection can save you time and costs on research, outreach, and meetings and just enable you to get in the door, to begin with. On the other hand, an individual PR manager may have more limited access and connections. 

6. Expertise and Experience

PR agencies work with many companies in different industries, which gives them a broad spectrum of experience. Also, agencies understand that the stakes are high; therefore, they invest in hiring the best talent, most of whom are experts in the industry.  With their unique skills and experience, they can create solutions and collaborate to solve complex issues. In contrast, a PR manager working alone might only have limited experience with certain tools and strategies from one industry. 

In-house PR Manager vs. External PR Agency: Our Pick

We believe hiring an external PR agency is the best option for most situations. These include when you need expertise, want to generate fast and effective results, require more creative strategies, and lots more. In contrast,  if you want someone more fully invested in company culture, to have total control over PR activities, and cannot afford an agency, it might be best to invest in an in-house PR manager. 

Regardless of what you decide, you always have the option to engage a PR agency for specialized projects beyond your team's primary area of expertise or creativity level. At RPR Firm, we have over a decade of experience managing PR campaigns for businesses in different industries. Schedule a free consultation with us today to see how our professional PR services can help you improve your brand's growth.

by R Public Relations Firm

The Impact of Press Release in 2023

Companies have used press releases as a tool to deliver updates about product launches, mergers, and other news for decades. However, in today's digital media landscape, press releases serve a far more critical purpose. Including press releases in your public relations (PR) strategy can help you build brand awareness and credibility and manage the narrative in times of crisis. So how does a press release impact business in 2023, and why is it still relevant? Read on to find out.

Why is a Press Release Important in PR Strategy Today?

In today’s competitive marketplace, you need more than a great product to succeed. A press release offers an effective way to communicate with your customers, build credibility, and help to control the narrative on controversial information. Here’s how press releases can impact your brand.

1. Build Brand Awareness

Today, one of the most important currencies in business is attention. The number of customers you can reach determines the sales you generate and how fast you build a formidable company. However, many competitors are also vying for your target audience's attention. Research from Cision has shown that 68% of businesses experienced improved visibility from publishing press releases, making it a good strategy for building visibility. 

A press release is typically written by a company and distributed to journalists and news outlets with a good reputation and coverage in your industry. When this content is published, you can reach a wider audience than your regular followers on social media or website visitors. Occasionally, your news can go viral, which creates a bigger buzz for your launch, merger, or announcement of groundbreaking technology. 

In addition, if your press release integrates the best SEO strategies, you will show up on search engine results for specific keywords, contributing to visibility and awareness for your brand. This is very important for small business owners and startups competing against more prominent brands as it helps them to gain more attention with a cost-effective approach.

2. Build Brand Credibility

Trust plays a vital role in how consumers interact with businesses today. A recent Edelman report shows that 81% of consumers will only buy from a brand they trust. With a press release, you can communicate your brand's value and good works and if it shows up in a reputable publication, you will gain even more trust. Why? Your consumers trust these publications to deliver verified news and credible brands. This is good for startups who want to gain market authority for their new product. 

3. Establish Brands Authority

Press releases also help you to establish your brand as a thought leader. According to Cision's State of Press Release report, 36% of business owners who used press releases said it reinforced their market position as a thought leader. Edelman also reports that 48% of decision-makers say thought leadership can influence purchasing decisions. For startups and small businesses, establishing yourself as an expert helps to build authority in your industry. It’s also another way to gain customers' trust as they believe you can solve their problems and deliver on your promise. 

4. Control the Narrative

Recently, deep fake technology has become a major driver for misleading information. It uses artificial intelligence to create videos that mimic the voice and faces of celebrities in an almost undetectable way. Besides the typical controversies a business might find itself in, deep fake technology increases the need for good reputation management. That's where the press release comes into the picture as a tool to control the narrative. For example, a deep fake video surfacing online with a top company executive making unsubstantiated claims can tank your stocks or business. You can quickly get ahead of this by publishing a press release to address the issue, take control, and leverage the publicity to promote your brand. This approach will prevent your business from losing partners and customers. 

Getting Started Making Impact with Your Press Releases

Today, press releases for businesses do so much more than share news. They impact your brand’s visibility, credibility, authority, and overall reputation. If you aren't adopting this cost-effective public relations tool, you are missing out on the opportunity for growth. 

To get started, you need a professional team with a proven track record of delivering effective press releases as part of a PR strategy for businesses. At RPR Firm, press releases are a cornerstone of the public relations strategies we create for our clients and include SEO and link-building to make them even more effective. Schedule a free consultation with us today to see how we can help you grow your business.  

by R Public Relations Firm

Can PR Improve Organizational Reputation?

Building a positive organizational reputation is not done in a day; it takes years of effort, patience, and investment in effective strategies. On the other hand, it may only take one mistake for years of good reputation to crumble. Public relations (PR) is the key to a reputation management strategy to help you maintain a good relationship with the public. 

At its core,  PR  helps to shape how people perceive your brand, which results in better sales performance and helps to build a community of loyal customers. In this article, we discuss organizational reputation and the PR tactics to improve yours. 

What is Organizational Reputation?

Organizational reputation describes how consumers, employees, and investors perceive your brand. If you have done something questionable or associated with unethical practices, people will become reluctant to do business with you. A good reputation builds consumers' trust, and the stronger your brand reputation, the more people will want to do business with you. 

How Does PR Improve Brand Reputation?

PR involves planned efforts and strategies to establish and maintain a positive relationship between an organization and its audience. PR can help improve brand reputation in the following ways:

1. Build a Solid Brand Identity

In business,  brand identity focuses on the selling proposition and key characteristics of your company. A good PR strategy can help develop a compelling brand identity for your business, and this will improve your reputation. When you maintain a solid brand identity through PR activities, your audience will associate positive things with your brand. 

2. Generate Public Interest

Adopting PR as part of your content marketing strategy helps build brand awareness and a positive company reputation. Whether through press releases, social media content, blog posts, or executive bylines, PR can help generate great buzz for your company. 

3. Build Customers’ Trust

A significant part of reputation management is getting the trust of your customers, and there is no better way to do that than PR. Implementing PR tactics like thought leadership helps you capture the audience’s attention, build a good relationship with them, and give them reasons to trust your brand. 

6 PR Tactics to Improve Organizational Reputation

Whether you are in the middle of a PR crisis or want to earn the support of the public, these PR tips can improve your brand reputation: 

1. Monitor Your Reputation

You can't improve a reputation if you don’t know what the public thinks of your brand. An excellent PR tactic is to monitor what people say about you. Is there a lot of positive feedback? Do you have negative reviews? Learn from your feedback to enhance your company’s services. You can monitor what people say through social media and PR tools like Google Alerts and Mentions. 

2. Publicly Address Negative Reviews

A study by Reviewtracker revealed that 45% of consumers are more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews. This shows you care about your customers’ satisfaction and offers an opportunity to build interaction. When responding to negative reviews, you must empathize with the customer, accept fault, suggest possible solutions, and inform them of steps you are taking to fix the problem. Following this process will help you show other prospects that you are a reliable business and boost your brand reputation.   

3. Be Loud About Your Achievements

Sharing news about milestones, achievements, endorsements, certifications, or customer success stories creates a ripple effect. For starters, consumers like to associate with the best brands as it assures them of quality service delivery. For example, if a reputable local magazine mentions your brand as the ‘best company of the year,’ it will reduce customers' objections during their research process. Therefore, sharing information about your achievements helps to build your reputation organically.  

4. Have Responsive Customer Service

According to Microsoft, 58% of customers will stay away from a brand with poor service. Also,  research by Zippia found that 72% of customers who had a good customer experience will share that with six or more people, which is good for brand reputation. A good customer service experience will help you build an emotional connection with customers turning them into brand ambassadors. This is profitable for startups looking to drive word-of-mouth marketing to reach a wider audience and generate more sales.   

5. Invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)  is a PR tactic that involves making a social impact by participating in socially responsible activities for the greater good of the public. A good social impact strategy helps to humanize your brand and shows that you care about issues that affect your customers. These initiatives will also get media coverage which will help to create awareness and build a positive reputation among your target audience. 

6. Have an Efficient Communication Team

In case of a PR crisis, one of the best ways to deal with it is by crafting a message to address the issue immediately. You might need a professional communication team to do this. A professional PR team will help you create a crisis management plan, track brand mentions, and manage PR activities. Furthermore, with a crisis management plan in place, you can quickly respond to any issues without spending hours confused and escalating the situation due to poor communication. Don’t wait for a crisis to hit before you get the services of PR experts. 

Build Organizational Reputation with Profesional PR Firm

Building a strong reputation opens your company up to great opportunities for growth. Besides the obvious benefits like building brand loyalty and awareness, it can also help you increase sales. However, you need a professional team and PR tools to achieve your business goals through public relations. 

At RPR Firm, we have more than 11 years of experience helping brands improve their reputation and build solid relationships with their audience. Are you considering working with a full-service PR team to boost your brand reputation? Schedule a free consultation with us today. 

by R Public Relations Firm