Over the last decade, the public relations industry has started to more consciously borrow some of the approaches and strategies that have been developed by other industries, especially the marketing, communication, and advertising industries.
This is important because there is evidence that coordinating a company’s public relations and marketing efforts can increase its effectiveness and efficiency.
While public relations has always been focused on improving a company’s relationships with different consumers, marketing has been focused on promoting a company’s products or services that cater to the needs or wants of the target audience.
However, with both efforts, companies are trying to identify and understand the wants, needs, interests, and expectations of their target audience.
That requires that companies figure out the best ways to communicate with the target audience, which heavily relies on research and data.
There are a number of strategies that can help both the PR and marketing efforts of any company, and all of them are aimed at improving bottom lines.
Selling Ideas
Sometimes companies don’t need to go out of their way to create promotional content that caters to audiences.
During those times, all a company needs to do is draw a parallel between a trending topic or newsworthy story that’s already being covered by media outlets, and something that the company is already doing that relates to that topic or story.
This type of practice helps companies persuade consumers that the idea behind the business is positive and should be supported. The more of these types of efforts a company can make, the more consumers will be seeing the company as a positive and valuable member of society that should be supported by more consumers.
This positive perception, at the end of the day, benefits both PR and marketing efforts.
Taking Risks
Running a business is about taking risks, and those risks are important to take when a company is looking to grow.
In fact, even just having a business survive during a difficult time such as the current pandemic, means taking risks, getting in front of the tide, and making tricky decisions.
When it comes to operating a business, the biggest risk is not to take any, and if a company waits too long to take a risk, someone else will take charge and take one.
The pandemic has opened many beneficial doors for a number of companies that were willing to take a risk instead of waiting around for the bad times to pass.
This has allowed those businesses to thrive instead of just survive, and that’s apparent in many PR and marketing efforts from a number of businesses.
Personalization
One of the fundamental elements of both public relations and marketing in recent years has been personalization.
Whoever a company is trying to communicate with, it should be applying a personal touch.
That means learning more about what the consumers want or need and then catering to those wishes through the company’s content and solutions.