Your business wants to expand its presence to the masses, to the target customer group you want to conquer? PR – Public relations , or public relations will be the key to helping customers increase awareness of your brand.
So what is PR? What methods are there to improve the image of the brand through PR? The following article will provide you with the most complete guide to PR.
Concept: Communication – What is PR?
PR – (abbreviation of the phrase Public Relations – Public Relations ) is the management of public relations to create and maintain the image and reputation of the company. PR contributes greatly to the success of the organization when it attracts the public’s attention to the brand, is valuable in changing customer behavior, increasing conversion rates, contributing to increase market share and revenue. for company. In addition, PR also increases brand recognition, creates a lasting identification effect for marketing communications, etc.
According to Frank Jefkins (Author of PR – Frameworks):
“PR includes all planned forms of communication, both inside and outside the organization, between an organization and its publics for the achievement of specific goals related to mutual understanding. “
PR – there is a significant similarity to the way a business spreads its image through the brand. Instead of focusing on the logo and tangible aspects such as the brand, PR focuses on communication and developing the brand’s reputation, which is more intangible, to bring the company’s brand closer to the public. than.
The role of PR in the organization
According to Abraham Lincoln – the 16th President of the United States once affirmed “Public affection is everything. With this affection, we cannot fail; Without this sentiment, we cannot succeed.”
Public Relations with its efforts towards the public when playing the following great roles:
- Build a good relationship with the public about the image, culture and identity of the brand through PR marketing
- Establish rapport, maintain positive relationships with stakeholders
- PR impacts and positively affects the views and favorable views, strengthening the target public’s beliefs about the company and organization.
Main activities in Public Relations
Community Relations and Social Responsibility (CSR)
Charity and participation in community activities is a typical CSR activity in communication campaigns. Charity shows the responsibility of the business to the community, is the fastest way to help the public to sympathize with the business.
However, if it is charity, it should come from the heart. If it is too ostentatious, it will immediately make public relations activities counterproductive.
Branding
Public relations is an indispensable marketing tool in the process of building and positioning a brand . It has the ability to help a new brand quickly become known, or it can even change the way an old brand is viewed.
Relationship with customers
Most businesses need an overview of PR to build relationships with target customers . Because customers are the public group that directly generates revenue for businesses.
Relations with the Press
PR is closely related to Journalism. The press needs information from PR through events, forums, press conferences and vice versa. Therefore, public relations people need to have a wide relationship with many journalists, reporters, mass media agencies.
Relations with public authorities
In the general knowledge of PR, relations with public authorities are called lobbying activities (Lobby). This technique has the role of improving the relationship between businesses and relevant government agencies, departments and organizations. At the same time, it ensures the interests of enterprises in all areas of state management.
Internal communications
Movements of fun, engaging employees in the company, building corporate culture are also part of PR. It’s called internal communication .
Event organization
Event organization is an indispensable activity in PR campaigns . Whether internal communication, PR for the government or for businesses, events are needed. This is also an effective tactic in attracting media attention.
Crisis management
When marketing plans are not on the right track, even leaving bad consequences, seriously affecting the image of the business, PR activities will be the solution to bring businesses out of these scandals.
However, the general knowledge of Public Relations – Crisis handling is very complex, requiring strategic vision, ingenuity and agility of PR people.
Distinguish PR from other communication concepts
Distinguish PR from Journalism
PR generates information for the Press. In other words, PR people will help journalists access information from businesses. Therefore, the press plays the role of a transmission channel.
Public relations activities represent a certain agency or organization while the Press is a mass media, not representing any organization.
Distinguish PR from Marketing
Marketing targets customers and focuses on profits and revenue. While PR is geared towards the public, it can be a non-profit activity that builds public goodwill and creates mutually beneficial relationships.
In fact, the concept of Marketing is extremely broad and PR knowledge is a part of it.
Distinguish PR from Advertising
All Ads are paid and are often exaggerated and therefore unreliable. If advertising is about talking about yourself, PR is about making other people talk about you. Therefore, PR activities are much more objective than advertising.
On the other hand, if advertising can adjust the budget and Target to improve results, the end result of PR is very difficult to control. Without an overview of PR and solid knowledge, it will very easily lead to counterproductive effects, even leading to a communication crisis that is difficult to overcome.
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What is Inbound PR?
Inbound PR is the future of PR activities. It combines the power of both PR (through content), and customer engagement (inbound).
Inbound PR works very well, because you will be the first to find out which PR activities are working well, and which need to be eliminated.
For example, if your business has a lot of difficulties in obtaining backlinks from partner sites, the inbound PR method will help you identify this difficulty and decide whether to continue using them in the future.
In summary, inbound PR is an effective method to develop brand awareness, build a target audience and convert that audience into future customers using your products or services.
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What do businesses need to do to develop PR strategies?
So, what specific strategies need to be built in order for businesses to have an effective PR – Public Relations plan?
Main activities of the PR profession
Performing small daily tasks is a very important thing for PR managers in business. They need to focus on activities such as:
- Write press releases related to the day-to-day operations of the business.
- Create work assignments to subordinate departments.
- Regularly conduct training and education for junior staff.
- Speaking at corporate events / major industry events.
- Research and analyze metrics to promote the effectiveness of content through Owned Media and Paid Media channels.
- Participate in industry events, or trade shows to promote the brand’s presence to the public.
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Skills required of a PR manager
Like other jobs, a good PR manager needs to have a lot of complementary skills. To be able to thrive in a harsh media environment, you need to have the following qualities:
1. Good communication skills
Remember, public relations is an activity that focuses on building and developing a brand’s image. Therefore, a good PR manager spends a lot of time giving presentations and introducing to the world about the products and services they will offer to the public.
2. Good writing skills
In the media industry, PR managers not only have direct contact with the public, they also have to use their writing skills to convey the message that the business wants to send to customers.
Managers in the field of PR are responsible for writing press releases, communicating information relevant to the business. A good writing skill will help the public clearly understand what message the business wants to convey to them.
This skill is especially useful in today’s online age, when businesses use a variety of tools to expand their influence, such as blogs, websites or social networking platforms.
3. Creativity
Like marketing, creativity is also a quality that a PR manager must have.
A PR manager must be someone who knows better than anyone how to create an effective strategy for the business to stand out from all competitors.
4. Good research skills
PR is a social media activity, the public can completely discuss and spread aspects related to your brand that you have no way of controlling them. A good PR manager will quickly find and seize opportunities from the spread of customer information to the brand.
Therefore, the PR manager has to do a lot of research and market surveys to determine the most suitable PR strategy for the brand.
Objectives of PR campaigns
Proposing goals helps businesses measure the effectiveness of PR campaigns.
Below is a list of issues that businesses need to consider when determining goals, in order to optimize the effectiveness of PR campaigns.
1. Brand Mentions
Brand mentions is the extent to which the public refers to issues related to the business’s brand, through pervasive communication channels. They are often built from articles that cover your business, from sources of information that you do not own (nor control).
These pieces of information are very helpful in increasing customer awareness of your brand, but they are quite difficult to track and access.
However, you need to pay attention to each comment related to your brand. Remember, only when those comments have a positive assessment of the brand, your business’s PR strategies are considered successful and need to be further expanded.
If any negative information appears, you need to take specific actions to prevent problems that may arise in the future.
2. Backlinks support SEO
Through backlinks, your business not only attracts the attention of new customers who just know your business and visit your website for the first time, it also helps you to improve your rankings in the web. list of search results on Google.
3. Traffic to the website
If your customers find your brand through social media channels, that’s a sign of an effective PR campaign.
Once you run a PR campaign, you should research the number of visitors to your website, find out where they are coming from, and make appropriate adjustments to the campaign.
4. New customers
While the amount of new customers that come directly from your PR is not easy to measure, it is still a metric that businesses should keep an eye on to investigate.
You can find out the number of new customers from:
- Survey your customers after making a purchase (via surveys), and find out where they come to your business from.
- Use the Google Analytics tool to find out what their buying method is.
Of course, if the PR campaign can attract many new customers, that’s a very good sign. But if it’s the opposite, you shouldn’t be too worried, because the goal of PR is inherently still to increase brand awareness, convey the message of the business and build a brand image.
The process of planning and implementing a methodical PR campaign
Situation analysis
You can use the SWOT model to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing your business. This analysis will give you an overview of PR and determine where your PR plan should start.
Define goals and objectives
You may not know, purpose and goal are two different concepts.
- Purpose is the ultimate goal of a PR campaign.
- Objectives are specific steps that need to be achieved in order to achieve the goal
Thus, the goal is the process and the goal is the destination. There are many goals, but only one purpose. You need to clearly distinguish these two concepts to plan the best PR campaign.
Identify the target audience
The target public of PR can be: customers, employees, partners, competitors, investors, media agencies, governments and local authorities.
Strategy
The strategy is to define the media message , channel and all the ideas that will be implemented in the PR campaign. These are the big items that businesses need to deploy to achieve their goals.
Tactic
Tactics are specific things that need to be done to implement the strategies just outlined. A strategy will include a lot of different tactics.
Schedule
How long will the PR campaign be implemented? What specific tasks need to be done in each stage of the campaign? Timetable by week, by month and dealine of each job… All will be outlined in detail in the schedule board.
Budget
The entire budget for implementing a PR campaign needs to be planned right from the planning stage. Businesses need to determine the total budget for PR to balance the budget in each tactic.
Don’t forget to factor in labor and variable costs, and set aside 10% of your total budget for contingencies.
Evaluate
Finally, the stage of measuring the results based on specific criteria. This process will help you determine the overall results of the PR, whether the campaign achieves the goals originally set out or not.
The evaluation step should be performed several times throughout the implementation of the PR marketing campaign . For example, after organizing an event or after each strategy, you also need to evaluate to make appropriate adjustments for the overall campaign.
summary
PR is a job that requires you to invest a lot of effort and effort to implement. It is also not a job that can bring immediate results to the business. But with solid strategies, and powerful support tools, your brand will definitely come closer to the public.
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