Corporate Communications

Finding a PR Firm with Experience Relevant to You

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One of the first questions everyone asks a potential PR agency is, “do you have experience in (my industry)?” Hiring a PR firm with experience relevant to you is a multifaceted process, and fundamentally, it’s one no one really enjoys. Part of the reason no one enjoys it is every PR agency is slightly different, and it can be hard to determine which is most valuable to your company. But engaging with a PR firm based on their experience is really like letting the tail wag the dog. The question you really want to ask is, “What’s your experience with companies with the same business goals?“. This is especially true in emerging industries and nascent markets. What’s the use of hiring a boutique PR agency with experience in your industry if they do not know how to get you to the next level, whether that’s additional funding, an M/A event, or an IPO event? What you really want is to hire a PR firm with experience in taking you to that next level and help you accomplish your business goals.

There are two or three reasons why ambitious and fast-growing startups initiate PR, and they are all vital business objectives. Ultimately, PR is almost always at the junction of a critical turning point for companies of all stages, from startup to hypergrowth to IPO. And the reason for that is simple: there’s no better asset than a strong, trusted, and well-known brand; brand value can add tens of millions to valuations.

 

Next Level: Additional Funding

Do investors care about PR? They do, but for different reasons than you might think. Investors want companies that think big, but increasingly do so responsibly. One reason PR is a good investment is you can activate your PR for years after you receive it. A steady stream of PR makes it much easier for a company to grow,  and PR provides social proof that helps a company secure traction, and also become an industry leader. Think about the startup founders who have used PR brilliantly to become one of the top providers in their verticals. From Marc Benioff of Salesforce to Richard Branson at Virgin, startup founders who leverage marketing and PR inspire confidence when their thinking is bold and audacious – PR puts audacious thinking on display like no other marketing medium. Finding a PR firm with experience with companies seeking investment could not be more important.

 

The Right Partners: Mergers and Acquisitions

PR paves the path for mergers and acquisitions; it gives potential buyers and partners an opportunity to learn more about the business in a good way. Plus, PR exposes your brand to more buyers than you could ever find on your own. And the more people you’re exposed to, the more likely you are to find the right partner. Plus, companies at the top of a vertical command a premium.

Whether you need B2B PR or a B2C PR  will impact your PR agency choices, particularly if your goal is M/A, but again, that will largely depend on your strategy. Are you using PR to bolster consumer enthusiasm and growth around the product in order to attract more potential buyers, or are you looking for investors who are very specifically looking for opportunities within a particular segment? These are two very different strategies.

Count Down: Pre-IPO PR

Pre IPO is another PR strategy all altogether, and it’s important to have a PR firm that understands the ramp-up and regulatory conditions of an IPO. Whether you need B2B tech PR agency  or a consumer tech pr agency, you need a PR agency that has been through the ropes of an IPO. A PR agency with Pre-IPO experience helps you set the stage during those critical 24-36 months before your IPO. While you’ll want an investor relations agency to develop your road show and connect you with the right bankers, your PR team should be working in tandem  for positive public relations that analysts will want to see. Since PR is a ramp, not a straight line, plan on investing in PR a minimum of 16 months before your IPO – the longer, the better the pay-off. Involve your PR agency with your investor relations firm well in advance so they can build trust and collaboration and work as a team.

Crisis: PR Experts Needed

If you’re in crisis, and you don’t already have a PR firm or a crisis management plan, then you definitely need a PR agency with experience in crisis communications. Crisis management is very specific to your situation, and the stakeholders will frequently determine the who you choose as a PR team. If you’re challenge is regulatory, a PR team with experience in the regulatory environment is critical, as is a PR team who can evaluate the situation quickly, and act fast. An experienced crisis communications expert will be able to guide you through the process over the course of days, weeks and even months – because getting through the crisis is one thing, but repairing your reputation, to get things back on track, is another.

PR is a serious endeavor with serious potential to change a company’s future. Ensuring you find a firm that has experience in exactly what you need means finding an agency who has moved the needle and elevated companies from one phase of growth to the next. Ultimately, finding a PR firm with experience relevant to you starts with knowing where you want to end up.

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Content Marketing for PR

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Content marketing involves sharing any material online, such as videos, infographics, and social media posts, that don’t directly promote a brand but create awareness and enhance visibility regarding the products and services of a company, also known as owned content.

Using content marketing for PR is a modern way of owning your reputation and it is an important strategy to attract and engage a targeted audience by making a brand seem more relevant through articles, blogs, podcasts, videos, and other media. Content marketing ensures that a company establishes its expertise and credibility while also promoting awareness about the brand so that when a potential consumer wants to buy a specific service or product, that particular company is at the forefront of their mind.

Owned content is a key strategy for fast-growing brands. No matter how small or large scaled a company is, or whether a consumer brand or a B2B company, keeping its content marketing game updated and effective is the key to attracting and engaging more customers for their business. In this beginner’s guide, you will learn how to create a compelling and successful content marketing strategy for your brand to reach your targeted audience and boost your sales.

What Do You Mean by Content Marketing?

Content marketing focuses on boosting trust in companies’ relationships with their followers. By distributing various content creatively, content marketing ensures that a company attracts more customers, retains the existing ones, and builds loyalty and trust among its audience so that a brand can appear authoritative and influential.

So what exactly is content marketing? It produces and distributes valuable and relevant content like articles, blogs, social media posts, emails, newsletters, videos, and other media forms to attract existing and new customers.

When a company has mastered its game of content marketing, there’s no stopping it from generating profits from positive customer actions.

Content marketing is composed of two elements. First is content creation; pieces of written, spoken, or visually described materials that are engaging and convey a company’s goals to the right people. The second is content distribution. This part of content marketing concerns sharing strategic content through websites, emails, and social media.

Different companies have different content marketing strategies. Some famous companies like Spotify, Airbnb, Slack, and Wendy’s have social media teams that plan strategically to promote their content to customers and interact with them. Other organizations, like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, etc., use B2B white papers for marketing purposes.

New industry and technology trends also influence content marketing plans. But as long as a company knows its core messages and ideas and how to create material that people will receive positively, it can adapt and evolve its marketing strategies accordingly.

In short, here are some ways in which successful content marketing can help a company or business;

  • Improves your reputation in a consistent manner.
  • Increases brand visibility and allows the company message to reach the right audience.
  • Promotes a brand organically and naturally.
  • Attracts potential new customers and engages existing customers.
  • Increase conversions and boost revenues,
  • Establishes a company as an industry leader.

What Are the Benefits of Content Marketing for PR?

PR is the management of your reputation, and owned content is your calling card. Consistent and high-quality content marketing is essential for companies to connect with their audience and to develop trust and reliability in their relationship.

Future Market Insights expects the US’s content creation market to grow with a CAGR of approximately 11.9%. Content creation and distribution have now become a top priority of the marketing department of every company and business, as there are many reasons why a consistent and engaging content marketing strategy can enhance the growth and success of a business.

Creates a Positive User Experience

Successful content marketing ensures that new and existing customers are satisfied with the ideas and messages promoted by a company. If they find your content engaging, unique, positive, and beneficial for them, they will come back for more as your customers will start trusting your brand and find it reliable and authentic. This approach is again helpful to the company as it retains the old customers and approaches new customers with a positive brand impression.

Helps Brands Gain Popularity on Social Media

According to the Pew Research Center, around seven in ten people in America use social media to engage with news, share information and connect, and for entertainment purposes. Creating trendy content on social media will not only garner more brand awareness but also help increase conversions and promote the products and services of a company in a natural way.

Content Marketing Creates Trust Within the Audience

When a company answers a complaint or query presented by its customers, they create value and change the public’s perception of the brand. Best content marketing strategies ensure that the relevant content shows up at the right time and place, thus interacting positively with the customers who will realize that your company’s advice and recommendations are reliable and accurate.

Content Marketing Improves Conversions

Using blogs, videos, or newsletters to bring in traffic, including a CTA, which can guide the audience regarding their actions, are examples of different content marketing plans. When your audience receives the correct answer to their question, their positive response will influence your conversions. When people view your content, it is more likely that they will purchase a product or service from your website, thus generating better leads for a company’s sales team.

Content Marketing and SEO

The consistency and high quality of content marketing also ensure better search engine optimization for your company’s websites. Suppose your content is helping your business gain more brand awareness and build trust with its audience. In that case, the content will rank higher on search engine results, thus positioning the company as authoritative and reliable from the public’s viewpoint.

What Are the Different Kinds of Content Marketing?

Content marketing sometimes uses outbound and inbound marketing strategies to present their content to the target audience.

Inbound marketing feels more organic and natural as the content creates a narrative or tells a story that is relevant and engaging to the audience. Outbound marketing is less effective in creating a positive user experience than the audience usually likes a link that interrupts their content.

So what are the different types of content marketing?

 

1. Social Media Owned Media

Everyone should know the importance of the power of social media, especially when technology has become cheaper than ever and accessing news is faster and easier. Social media is essential in content marketing because it allows companies to reach a greater audience in less time and provides multiple opportunities to present content in various ways, like live streams, stories, photos, and videos. Many businesses invest lots of money to promote their brands through content creation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

2. Website Content Marketing

Website content marketing refers to the content you publish via web pages. Website content marketing is one of the best content marketing strategies as it can create a strong brand presence online, thus allowing it to rank higher in search engine results. This approach enhances brand visibility, ensuring that your company’s website and content pop up in the right places and in front of the right audience, thus generating better leads and conversions.

3. Blogging in Owned Media

Blog content marketing uses blogs to engage potential customers by sharing a creative and relevant narrative that can achieve customer trust and loyalty. Blogs are regularly updated web pages on a website that contains content written in a conversational or informal style. Blogs can also include inbound or outbound links and social share buttons that can further contribute to promoting a website.

4. Digital Marketing / Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics are content that presents information or data through visual representations like charts or diagrams. Infographics display this information in a format that is easy to understand and uses short statements and words, clear images, and simple context to communicate a company’s message clearly and effectively. Infographics are a great form of content marketing to tone down a complex, research-intensive, or educational topic so that more audience members can understand it.

5. Podcasts as Content Marketing Strategy

Podcasts are digital audio files available as series, episodes, or installments so subscribers can listen to each audio when the host releases it.

The number of podcast listeners worldwide is increasing yearly, so many companies and businesses are now sharing their podcasts to share a topic of their choice with their desired audience. With the right creativity and content marketing strategies, podcasts can help brands communicate their expertise and thought leadership regarding a specific topic.

6. Paid Ad Promotion

Paid ad content allows companies to reach a broad audience and place themselves on social media, banners, loading pages, and sponsored content where they want to be seen by their customers. Another method of content marketing is a paid ad promotion, in which specific content is created and distributed for the advertising and advertisement of a brand. This method uses PPC ads, paid social content marketing campaigns, and sponsored placement of these ads.

7. Video Content Marketing

Videos are also important content to raise a brand’s profile online. Companies usually post videos on YouTube or social media platforms, but companies can also publish in the form of courses, webinars, or live videos.

Video content marketing helps companies boost conversions as audiences find videos more reliable and authentic. It means that if a company promotes its products and services through a tutorial and promotional videos, they allow its audience to learn more about its brand in depth.

What Are Some Impressive Examples of Content Marketing?

1. Alo

Alo is a luxury activewear brand that uses social media marketing strategies to generate sales and revenue for its products. When you look at their Instagram account, not only will you see the different Yoga products that the brand presents, but you will also notice that the brand tries to resonate with its audience by letting them know that they can not only wear their clothes in a gym studio but also while going for a walk in the park. They use top models like Gigi Hadid or Kendall Jenner to showcase their clothes while staying genuine and authentic by creating awareness about physical activeness and a Yoga community online.

2. Taco Bell

Taco Bell also uses clever social media content marketing strategies to target teenagers and adults aged 18 to 34. Their best content marketing approach is to reply with witty remarks and comebacks in response to customers’ feedback, especially on Twitter.

Taco Bell uses fun and engaging, and sometimes bold ideas to capture the attention of its new and existing customers. In this way, people are encouraged to try out their products and then leave feedback on their social media platforms, thus generating more visibility for the brand.

3. Spotify

Spotify uses data generated by millions of listeners on their apps to create their annual “wrapped” content marketing campaigns. It is a brilliant idea to use in-depth analysis of the songs and music that shape the lives of their consumers and then create a playlist for them that displays the most played songs of the year. This strategy is fun and engaging for Spotify’s users and gives artists a statistical examination of their year’s top songs.

Conclusion

Creating clever and unique content marketing campaigns can take time and effort, even for experienced digital marketers. However, with practice and creativity, any company can achieve successful content marketing and reach its targeted audience through different digital media channels.

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3 Reasons Every CEO Needs a Ghostwriter

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What do Jack Welch, Stephen R. Covey, and Richard Branson all have in common? Well, besides being some of the best-known business leaders in the world, they’ve all used ghostwriters. Hmmm…could there be a connection between those two things? Almost certainly. Why? Because executives have a lot on their plate, and to stay ahead and run competitive companies, they need to stay at the 100,000-foot level. This elevated perspective often makes executives great thinkers but poor writers. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s expected. As many as 60% of nonfiction books are supported by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters articulate the grand ideas of thought leaders. So what does a ghostwriter do for you and how can executives use a ghostwriter? Consider these 3 reasons every CEO needs a ghostwriter.

CEOs: Publish or Perish

It used to be that only academics were expected to publish ideas, and CEOs were exempt from that expectation; today, CEOs truly need a ghostwriter to fulfill content expectations.

Despite the dearth of content out there, stakeholders from your board, investors, and even customers expect CEOs to lead, and part of leadership today is sharing original thoughts. Now, notice this does not mean that you must post on Instagram every day, and it doesn’t even mean you need to post on LinkedIn every day. It does mean that you must create thoughtful, original content regularly. Good news, a ghostwriter can help you with that. Ghostwriters have two very particular skills: listening and extracting. For ghostwriters to be successful, they sometimes need to ask probing questions and articulate the idea in the originator’s voice. So help your ghostwriter help you. Sit down with them and share ideas, let them see inside your point of view, and your ghostwriter will come up with a consistent stream of ideas from a few hours together.

Watch What You Say: Platform and PR

As a thought leader, publish your ideas consistently. Sometimes that may be on a platform you can control – like your corporate website or even Medium. Which platform you choose will depend on your thought leadership strategy. For example, if the CEO’s job is to secure investment, then Medium.com is a great place to publish, it’s still a Silicon Valley content darling, even after all these years. But if the executive wants to be seen as hip but accessible, perhaps as part of a larger corporate branding initiative, then a Substack newsletter might be more appropriate. If the CEO is creating commentary on something currently in the news, then a contribution to an industry vertical or a national newspaper could be in order. It’s important that the platform strategy be part of the ghostwriter’s process so they can take into account not only the CEO’s voice, but the culturally accepted tone within the platform or outlet.

A ghostwriter can help a CEO decide on platform and tone – just another reason every CEO needs a ghostwriter.

 

Fill Up the Trust Bucket

It’s no secret that CEOs have a spotlight on them like never, as do their companies, this a truly compelling reason why an executive should use a ghostwriter. Over the years, we’ve seen thousands of CEO apologies on almost as many platforms. Not all apologies are created equally and not all crisis responses are the same, each situation is truly different. But, for a CEO who is comfortable with a ghostwriter, an apology can be a much easier, and faster process. Like anything, when there is a relationship, the ghostwriter can be a critical partner to the CEO, and the PR agency tasked with developing a response or apology. Having a trusted ghostwriter not only helps in a crisis, but they may also help reduced the severity of the crisis because the CEO’s thought leadership has lead to increased trust in the CEO and the brand. And nowhere is trust more important than an unpredicted crisis.

 

At Avaans PR, we offer thought leadership programs as part of our bespoke PR programs, but also as a stand-alone option with our thought leadership PR program. We offer this as a stand-alone program because we know every CEO needs a ghostwriter and a strong PR strategy for thought leadership.

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3 Pitfalls to Purpose Driven Communication

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Recently, Google polled 3,000 Americans to find out how they responded to sustainability messaging. As more brands make efforts to become more sustainable or even start any sort of purpose-driven communications,  these four tips will help you communicate purpose-driven messaging effectively. 

Today’s consumers are smarter about messaging. Millennials, the first digitally native generation, are grown-ups, and have their own kids. Gen X (now called Zoomers), see right through greenwashing. They can smell inauthenticity and they actively bristle at brands leveraging purpose-driven messaging to improve their own reputations. And they are right to be skeptical. According to a Google study global survey of top-level executives 59% admitted to overstating — or inaccurately representing — their sustainability activities. Whoa. That’s not a trust-first strategy at all.

So how can well-meaning brands celebrate purpose-driven messaging like sustainability, and awareness days like Earth Day, without alienating their customers?

Communicate Sustainable Efforts with Plain Language

Purpose-driven messaging is nuanced, but sustainability messaging is quite difficult because sometimes an effort to be sustainable has unintended, non-sustainable results. Yet, it’s important to be clear and honest when discussing your company’s efforts.

One way to do this is to share your sustainability goals and roadmap and be candid about your yearly progress. An annual purpose-driven progress report that is open and available on your website allows your customers to come on the journey with you. And explaining how to you took action and the implications helps consumers understand the complications.

Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I had a client who created disposable compostable plates and utensils. Before we could even get into messaging, I had to take a mini science lesson because compostable can be problematic due to chemicals used to breakdown items like this, yet using products like this is still better than using plastic that ends up in the landfill, right?

Everyone agreed that anything misleading would destroy trust. We landed on a simple outcome everyone can understand: less plastic is better. And this was a fantastic choice because everyone can clearly understand that we have a plastic problem, and it creates an awareness of a bigger issue that the brand is trying to tackle.  Today if I had that client, we would dig deeper and be even more transparent, but this was 2009, and we were barely scratching the surface of how complicated “sustainable” really is to achieve.

Simple is better. Honest is better. Transparent is better. 

 

Celebrate The Accessible

What creates change? From a sustainable messaging standpoint, we’re past awareness. In 2009, Harvard Business Review study found cost is one key reason people don’t adopt sustainable practices. Things like EVs and solar panels are financially inaccessible, to say nothing of the fact that the nations 44 million renters can’t do either of these things.

But what is one thing everyone can do? Reuse. That’s something to celebrate, and it’s accessible to millions of people. Folgers recently did a commercial about reusing its glass jars; I like this because I think it’s on-point to their consumer. The ad incorporated a touch of nostalgia which was effective too. On the flip side, in a recent AdAge podcast, some creatives slightly skewered the video by asking, “What about the plastic lid?” which I think misses the point. The point is: when you remind your customers of the accessible ways they can make a difference, it empowers them.

Focus on small, actionable, concrete actions that you can celebrate alongside your customers. 

Dire Threats Aren’t Effective

“When asked to describe “actions or attitudes that could make people feel bad about their impact on the environment,” many U.S. survey respondents pointed to images of landscapes ruined by trash, fires, or pollution, while some pointed to images of animal suffering.”

Not only does messaging like this put the consumer in a terrible position, it’s disempowering. This kind of messaging is increasingly ineffective because consumers have had it with feeling bad about a gigantic problem that they, as an individual, can’t personally solve alone. And why is the burden even on the consumer all the time anyway? What is the business doing internally?

Instead, focus on positive outcomes. Before and after pictures of rooftop gardens, clean parks, these are all uplifting images that send a positive, impactful message. 

Use Educated Consumers to Your Advantage

Sustainability has become political. It’s that simple. For example, according to Harvard Business Review:

“Republicans were less likely to buy a compact fluorescent light bulb that they knew was more energy-efficient than an incandescent bulb when it was labeled “Protect the Environment” than when that label was missing.”

Most consumers who want a sustainable bulb know incandescent bulbs are more sustainable. But instead of pointing to the environmental benefits, labeling incandescent bulbs as more energy efficient is effective for a wider range of consumers. Everyone can see the benefits of saving energy, whether for sustainability or economic benefit.

Without a plan and consideration for the pitfalls, purpose-driven communication can do more damage than good. For more recommendations, download our Purpose-Driven Guide, which provides an internal roadmap to avoiding the typical challenges of communicating purpose-driven messages.

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What is a Purpose Driven Strategy

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What is a Purpose-driven strategy? It’s the natural evolution of four converging cultural changes; the first is when social, cultural, and environmental issues became more visible and urgent, followed by consumers who expect brands to connect with nonprofits or social impact, driven by a lack of confidence in government to solve big problems, and finally, institutional investors evaluating environmental, social governance (ESG). Purpose puts a movement and impact first; the defining commitment of purpose is when it takes precedence over profits. Purpose-driven companies believe when society, the environment, and our collective well-being are doing well—businesses do better too.

Purpose-Driven Strategies have Three Key Pillars:

Employee and Systemic Engagement, Externally Virtuous, Meaty Measurable. 

These pillars of purpose require a company to be engaged in a systemic way, are independent of sales, and the impact should be both audacious and measurable. While purpose-driven strategies may give way to recruiting advantages, brand valuation, and competitive advantages, those are not the driving outcomes behind purpose. Purpose-driven PR is not the driving motivation behind purpose-driven implementations. The defining commitment of purpose is when it takes precedence over profits – when internal culture is SO strong, so empowered, that decisions at all levels are made with a purpose in mind.

These Purpose Driven Strategy distinctions are important—because consumers—AND Investors are savvier than ever: They see through cause marketing campaigns with little authenticity. They’re alert to saying one thing, but doing another -greenwashing is so common it had a name.  Distrust in governments continued to decrease, while expectations of businesses continued to increase.

Purpose-driven strategies differ from the historical ways brands engaged with movements and nonprofits.

The Difference Between Purpose-Driven and Social Impact

Although used interchangeably sometimes, purpose and social impact are different. What exactly is purpose-driven strategy? It’s a deep, sustained engagement for change by which the company recognizes its own impact, including internally, at the corporate level. Social impact is 100% external and very often involves inspiring a stakeholder community, like customers, to work together for a sustained period. For this reason, businesses usually engage in social impact in partnership with nonprofits.

The Difference Between Purpose Driven Strategies and Philanthropy

The difference between purpose-driven strategies and philanthropy is based on the level of engagement the company commits to. Traditionally philanthropy was a broad term used to describe when a business contributed to a cause – anything from a social nonprofit to funding a building or a program at a college. This giving required very little else from the company outside of the donation. Companies often use philanthropy to attract other monied investors or achieve other strategic goals, but on the surface, having a philanthropic donation very often aligns with a marketing campaign or a PR campaign. Philanthropy also usually had little to do with employees and customer activism or interests.

The Difference Between Purpose Driven Strategies and Corporate Giving

That gave way to CORPORATE GIVING –programs. The United Way is an outstanding example of corporate giving, this is when an organization encourages its employees to unite behind a single cause to create a greater donation scale. At this stage, companies get more involved as multiple departments such as PR, or HR to create systems and messaging around corporate giving. Companies whose employees give a lot receive recognition in the community. Corporate giving gave employees the opportunity to easily give to an organization; some corporate giving programs allow employees to choose a cause that was important to them, but in the most traditional sense, the executive team partnered with a nonprofit to create a corporate giving program.

The Difference Between Purpose Driven Strategies and Cause Marketing

CAUSE MARKETING are initiatives that tied sales to a corporate donation  – started in 1983 when Amex donated a penny to restoring the Statue of Liberty every time someone used their card—cardholders grew 45% and card usage increased by 28%. By 2013, 76% of consumers thought it was OK for brands to support good causes and make money at the same time. Before we knew it, there was a cause marketing campaign everywhere we looked, from pink ribbons to yogurt lids. Enterprises like Hersheys even had internal positions that combined marketing & corporate social responsibility.

If you’re interested in implementing purpose-driven strategies at your company, check out our free guide to implementing purpose. 

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PR Success: 3 Tips

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Plan for public relations success with these critical 3 tips

A little advance planning can make all the difference between public relations success and public relations frustration.  Public relations is increasingly important for companies and there’s nothing like a new year to give your brand and company a fresh image. PR firms are here to be your partners in success. As you pull levers for world domination next year, lean on your  PR firm so that together you’re on the same page about how you mutually define success, this is especially important for emerging industries and fast-growing brands. Here are 3 tips for working with a PR firm or formulating your in-house PR plan.

1.Determine Your Measurable PR Goals for Public Relations Success

PR success comes when there’s absolute clarity about goals. Your PR goals should match your business goals; make sure your PR firm knows how you’re REALLY defining success. Don’t hide your perspective from your PR firm and expect that the results you want will magically appear.  Make sure your  PR goals align and support your activations, product launches, and partnerships.

PR and marketing goals and KPIs should be:

  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant

The two most important considerations when defining your goals is ensuring that they are measurable and ambitious enough to be significant but attainable with your budgets and efforts.

Measuring your PR and marketing efforts should include a baseline so you can track improvement. If you don’t have a baseline, you may need to evaluate how you will measure success and it may require something like an industry average or an industry survey. At Avaans, we include a number of KPIs during our monthly reviews, these KPIs are tracked the same way every month, so over time, we can really pinpoint what works and what doesn’t for each brand. We’re completely transparent with our clients about how we came to those KPIs and why they’re essential for us to track internally for cannabis PR success.

Attainability is an important KPI. If you’re shooting for the stars, make sure all your assets are in place to support that goal. Assets also include time and brainpower.

There should be KPIs for marketing and KPIs for PR that have crossover. For example, new website visitors, inbound links to your website, both of those metrics will be impacted by both PR and marketing initiatives.  Sometimes we hear people say that they don’t want to give PR and Marketing joint KPIs because they feel it reduces responsibility, but when your KPIs are aligned with your overall business goals that encourages your PR firm and marketing agency to work together to accomplish the company’s mission-ultimately it’s not about pitting one set of KPIs against one another, it’s about achieving success and measuring respective impact.

2. Define Your Target Audiences

As a PR firm that works with highly ambitious brands, we often hear goals like “We want to be featured in XYZ publication.”

When a single piece of press helps secure millions of dollars in funding, throwing all your efforts at securing that press is worth almost any PR and activation fees. That’s a great goal, so consider who your ultimate audience really is for any publication so you can set yourself up for public relations success. Many times, public relations success is defined by a share of voice within a specific audience.

Your audiences may be in the B2B space; they may be consumers, they may be investors, or partners. Be clear on who you’re trying to reach with each KPI and objectives-share your objectives with your PR firm, so they’re clear on where you REALLY want to be.

Sometimes earning national press, even when you’re only in a few markets, is strategic as the audience is potential investors or industry partners who like knowing that the brands they’re partnering with have enough clout to secure national coverage.  Alternatively, you may want to show that your brand is well received by multiple consumer types, in which case you may wish to have press in particular interest verticals.

3. Plan for Public Relations Success and Budget Your Activities

Public relations is an incredibly broad level to pull. Within your budget, you should be allocating events, sponsorships, social media, media relations, and asset/owned media development.

Chances are, in order to reach your pr and cannabis marketing goals, you’ll need to execute on some initiatives.

And, you’ll need a corresponding budget for these activities. A good marketing and public relations firm can help you allocate your budget to match your objectives.

At the very least they can tell you how to best allocate an over-all budget or at least inform you of best practices and first steps. A great example of this is events – events can be held for all sorts of objectives, from customer appreciation to media awareness. While both of those objectives MIGHT turn into earned media, it’s important you consider what it will take to earn press coverage on an event, before you spend the money on an event. Sponsorships are another area where the activation is an important marketing objective, but PR may be able to help you define some ways to use your sponsorship in a way that improves your industry image or earns you media coverage.

Need Some More Direction? Give Us a Call

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