Tag Archive for: branding

Using PR and Social Media for DTC Brands

[5 minute read]

Direct-to-consumer brands are increasingly growing in popularity and there are distinctive expectations consumers have for DTC brands in PR and Social Media. Instead of buying from a third-party retailer, customers can purchase products or services directly from the company. Successful DTC brands typically have one thing in common: a strategic and effective way to reach their target market and ensure their market will trust their brand.

Utilizing targeted public relations and social media campaigns for DTC brands can create brand awareness, reach your ideal audience, and engage with current and potential customers. However, it’s not merely about posting things on Twitter or Facebook, and suddenly your business makes more money and grows. Creating a successful digital marketing plan means knowing when and how to use consumer PR and social media for DTC.

Why Brand Awareness Is Crucial

If you have a DTC business, you need to implement a marketing strategy that focuses heavily on brand awareness. In the beginning, your main goal isn’t as much about making sales as it is about garnering attention from potential customers, so they know who you are and the types of services or products you offer. These are the people who might encounter your brand again down the road and decide they want to buy something.

Building brand awareness begins with online advertising. Your target audience should be served interesting and unforgettable ads. It’s about creating a lasting impression in the minds of potential consumers and building trust. The more ads they see from you, the more they will feel comfortable with your business. Online shoppers are more likely to trust a brand they’re familiar with than one that doesn’t seem legitimate.

Using Social Media to Engage With Customers

Once you’ve established yourself as a brand, you need to maintain that awareness throughout various digital marketing platforms. An effective way of doing that is by using social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are excellent forms of marketing to target a specific demographic or communicate with current customers.

You can increase your followers, attract new viewers, and engage with the people who are actually purchasing your product. The share feature within many social media accounts also allows users to quickly and easily spread the word about your brand to others. It’s basically like word-of-mouth advertising but via the internet.

One of the best features of social media marketing is customers’ ability to buy things through links included in the posts. If you incorporate relevant links in each post connecting to your products and services, it creates a hassle-free experience for consumers to make a purchase directly from your Instagram page or YouTube video.

Don’t Forget About Your Public Relations Plan

The right public relations strategy can inform the public about a company’s brand, build and maintain reputations, and gain credibility with a target audience. It’s not just about letting people know you exist, but also about letting them know exactly who you are. You’re trying to create an image, and the way you go about doing it can have a positive or negative impact on consumers. Public relations is more than a press release.

Some of the most common PR strategies include:

  • Brand identity

    – Choose a logo, determine how you want your website to look, pick the tone you want to convey when communicating with customers, and pick visuals to use for your social media campaigns.

  • Messaging

    – You should include a backstory about who you are and how you got started. You should also incorporate your company’s values and mission. It’s critical that your tone remains consistent throughout all PR and social media for DTC. If you regularly change the voice conveyed through your marketing, customers will have difficulty trusting you.

  • Events

    – You can host an event or sponsor one where you know your target audience will be. Potential customers will see that you’re a legitimate business and learn about the products or services you sell. You will also have the opportunity to speak with them face to face and build trust.

  • Media

    – Earned media and press releases are an excellent ways of notifying the public about the launch of your new brand, releasing a new product, or a sale or giveaway.

  • Partnership

    – Partnerships can be a significant part of promoting your business. You should stick with people and companies that are relevant to your brand. For example, if you sell hiking gear, it wouldn’t make sense to work with a restaurant. Instead, you might want to partner with a sporting goods store and stock their shelves with your product.

Combining PR and Social Media for DTC Brands

Your brand could benefit from integrating your social media marketing and public relations campaigns, since both can complement each other.

Common examples of integrating social media and PR campaigns are:

  • Influencer Outreach

    Social media influences are an excellent source for promoting someone’s brand. They typically have hundreds of thousands or millions of loyal followers who trust them and purchase the products they promote.

  • Digital Press Releases

    Traditionally, companies send press releases to journalists to convey information about their brand. However, in the digital age, you can publish your own press releases on your social media accounts, through email, or as a blog on your website.

  • Using PR Coverage in Your Social

    When you receive coverage in the media supercharge that social proof and enhanced trust building opportunity by using the coverage in your organic and paid social media. Consumers will be impressed and more willing to try your product.

  • Forging and Maintaining Relationships with Journalists

    You can use social media to create relationships with journalists in your industry that benefit your company and achieve your marketing goals. It doesn’t take much effort to gain their trust and support – if you take a genuine approach by following them on social media and sharing their posts, they might be willing to do the same for you.

Contact Avaans Media

If you’re looking for the right marketing agency to expand your digital audience, increase your return on investment, and successfully grow your business, Avaans Media can help. We have over a decade of experience creating and implementing effective PR and social media campaigns for DTC brands.

Schedule a call or complete our online form if you want to discuss your goals and determine the most effective strategy for improving your online presence.

Purpose-driven public relations means the brand proactively builds incorporates values that impact social, cultural, and environmental issues. A true purpose-driven company makes corporate choices within its purpose framework, even when it means purpose over profits.

Truthfully, public relations aren’t purpose-driven, a brand is purpose-driven. Public relations is simply a lever a purpose-driven brand can use to improve the world around them. Building a purpose-driven brand is an inside-out job. They aren’t PR campaigns or PR ideas; they are a cultural way of thinking that’s internalized by everyone in the company.

[3 minute read]

The Importance of Internalizing Purpose

There are lots of ways a brand can support its customers, community, and the globe meaningfully. Cause partnerships, and donation campaigns, are all relevant PR campaigns, but they aren’t purpose-driven. Purpose-driven companies take the long view on purpose and impact.

Internalization distinguishes purpose-driven brands. When everyone from the Board, to the CEO to the janitor walks the talk of purpose, then a brand has authentically implemented a purpose-driven brand. This also means when employees face choices, they incorporate the purpose into their decision-making. This can include employee hiring, employee programs, purchasing, and product decisions. It also means employees feel safe in making a purpose-informed choice because they know they’re acting within the company’s ethos; their choice is supported and even celebrated.

 

Should Purpose-Driven Initiatives Even Have a PR Component?

The deciding factor on this issue is the “why,” behind the initiative. Every day, businesses from Fortune 500 all the way to emerging industries are making decisions that have a social impact, and most of the time, these decisions don’t get the credit they deserve. But it’s not one decision, or one campaign, or one person who makes purpose – it’s people moving in unison making decisions that impact millions.

For example, let’s take eggs. When you go to the grocery, you face a lot of buying choices. Cage-free eggs, organic eggs, local eggs, inexpensive eggs. Many of these egg producers are balancing product, purpose, and price. Even though the organic or cage-free eggs are more expensive, it’s likely the margins on those eggs are considerably less than the mass-produced eggs. It’s also very likely that the producers of the cage-free or organic eggs are making other choices that cost more – maybe they buy the more expensive food, maybe they supplement their electricity with solar power. These are all purpose-driven decisions that are really important, but they won’t make news. What may make the news is the impact or the multiple steps they take for their purpose might make news. The people behind these choices may have interesting stories to tell. There will be PR opportunities, but they require real storytelling. Therefore, it’s important to have experienced purpose-driven PR agencies who can tell ethos and purpose stories.

Brands should have PR at the table when incorporating purpose-driven ethos, but PR should be part of the purpose, not the purpose of the purpose.

 

Are Purpose-Driven Brands Born or Made?

Both and neither. Some brands are founded in purpose, we can all name a few. Other brands grow into purpose. Both are as legitimate as their ability to stick to their ethos. It’s important for both types of purpose-driven brands to be authentic. Just because a brand is founded in purpose doesn’t mean it won’t lose its way. And just because a brand develops purpose doesn’t entirely absolve them from past actions. All brands should be very careful with their initiatives because consumers are getting fantastic at sniffing out disingenuous missions. These disingenuous missions create consumer distrust and may even run afoul of today’s cancel culture. A brand is better off doing nothing than taking on duplicitous or insincere purpose-driven initiatives.

 

If your company is considering a purpose-driven plan, please download our guide and call us. We can help you and your team navigate the exciting opportunities – and avoid the pitfalls – for purpose-driven brands.

5 Ways to Leverage Media Coverage

Leveraging media coverage is the key to maximizing PR outcomes for hyper-growth brands and emerging industries.

 

This post originally appeared in Authority Magazine

Welcome to another installment of our PR Strategy Series, where you can learn directly from top industry experts on how you can leverage media attention to grow your business.

I’m your host, Kage Spatz — here to help entrepreneurs, coaches, and service providers save more time, build more trust, and serve more customers. Today I had the pleasure of talking with Tara Coomans.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I did a lot of different marketing and PR roles before I started this agency, and I think that’s what makes my strategies and perspectives so valuable; I really do see things in a 360 degree way. When I was 26 years old, I started my first agency, it was an event marketing agency, from there I went into publishing and co-owned a few magazines, and then after working in sponsorship promotions for brand and nonprofit partnerships, I started my own communication and PR agency. My background really allowed me to work with a broad range of clients and appreciate the benefits of integrating marketing and PR levers.

When I first started this agency, social media was just taking off and we specialized in guiding companies, brands, government agencies, and nonprofits in integrating social media into their overall communication, so social media is really integral to Avaans’ PR roots as is integration with other marketing initiatives. Today, Avaans Media excels at integrated communication strategies with a special emphasis on earned media.

In your opinion, what separates your agency from others in the space?

I’ll share with you what we hear from our clients who have had PR firms before. They tell us we stand out as effective, strategic across channels, and able to move fast.

We really pride ourselves on our earned media success, we get multiple hits per month on an ongoing basis. We know how to get your company, your executive, your brand, in the press — and we know what to do with it once it’s there. We’re extremely proactive and we work shoulder to shoulder with our clients.

Our team is another differentiator. Our team is experienced and extremely effective and we have very little turnover. I’m also personally engaged with all our clients because we know brand consistency is the name of the game with PR. And our team really taps into their own emotional intelligence to provide outstanding strategy and positioning because we’re hyper-aware of the cultural and media mindset.

We also move incredibly fast, we pick up complicated technologies, business changes, cultural changes, or communication challenges and can very quickly determine the best course of action.

Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success up to this point?

  • Empathy-As an agency CEO, empathy is vital. I feel it makes us a better collaborator with our clients, and it’s really what allows me to keep a pulse on changing cultural conditions. I also think it’s why our team is so effective, because I truly hear and see what they’re experiencing and I work very hard to integrate their feedback. Empathy has allowed me to steer clients clear of potential pitfalls, and it’s allowed me to build a really talented team. Although empathy is something I’m proud of, we all have blind spots. Several years back, I usually addressed an email to an all-female team with “Hi Ladies,”. One of my team members told me that made her extremely uncomfortable and that she felt there was no reason to call out anyone’s gender at the top of an email. To be clear, this wasn’t a pronoun issue, but it did make me consider my own perspectives. You see, I’ve made a big point of hiring & supporting women in my agency, so I was proud when we had an all-female team. But her perspective brought something else to light: the way we address teams, especially those of us in leadership roles, can be perceived as one of elevation or diminishment, depending on the person’s own experiences. We now call our internal team the “A-Team,” and it seems to work better for us.
  • Know When To Say No — Another thing I’ve learned over the years is the type of client we work best with. We work really well with people who are invested in success and will be part of our village to raise a brand. We work best with clients who want actually to move the needle; that’s why we excel in fast-growing industries and with ambitious brands. Knowing when to say no has been pivotal to our growth. Our team is excellent and professional, but nothing takes the winds out of someone’s sails faster than knowing their advice, work, and recommendations are falling on completely deaf ears. It leads to less than desirable results and it weighs down my team too. I can’t have that, because it affects everything. I’ve gotten really good at identifying clients who are a good fit for us, as a result our work is outstanding, our team members are happy, and our day-to-day existence, while it can be stressful, is satisfying because we know we’re making a difference. I will say, this is a constant battle. I’ve developed an internal plan on managing these situations so I have guidance for myself and the team the next time we have a less than ideal client fit.
  • Resilience-Resilience is probably my superpower. As an entrepreneur, I’ve been through 3 major national crises (9/11, 2008, and the COVID pandemic). Not only have I survived them, but our clients also. I’ve developed plans and strategies for hyper-growth within and in the aftermath of these situations. I’m incredibly proud of that. That doesn’t mean I’ve never experienced failure, because like anyone, I’ve failed, but, I always look for the lesson learned and then move on.

What 3 media strategies are typically most effective in generating more business for a national brand?

National brands should be thinking about PR all the time. PR should have a seat at the table for any national or nationally ambitious brand. From partnerships to product development to 360 campaigns and internal initiatives, to leveraging media coverage, there are so many great ways for national brands to stand out with PR insights. And national brands need to be more and more focused on authenticity and the importance of internal communications too.

  • INTEGRATE — Integrating programs together so they activate one another is a great example. We worked with a client a few years back to bring PR into their events programs. For one of their major events they sponsored the press box, although this was a paid sponsorship, it was a true media relations move, particularly for their target audience. This elevated the brand’s exposure to the press in a positive way since the press box was a refuge and always had food, phone chargers, and private space for interviews. The Avaans team was onsite to ensure the press opportunities flowed and in the end, the ROI was truly remarkable –and sustained itself well past the actual event. It was a great activation of PR and paid sponsorship.
  • OWN YOUR CONTENT, OWN YOUR REPUTATION — Owned content is another fantastic PR opportunity. National brands really need to make sure their PR and SEO teams are working together and that owned content bridges those two worlds. This includes any kind of owned content from websites to videos. A few years ago, we did a Clio-nominated video for a CPG client and we scoured the script to make sure that the content was not only a beautiful example of storytelling but also engaged keywords that were aligned with the brand. The video was a masterpiece of storytelling and branding, but I’m also really proud of the behind-the-scenes work that ensures the video would attract traffic to the website because of the way it was scripted.
  • PR DURING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT — I think something else important for national brands, is to consider PR during product development. It’s such a great opportunity to really consider how the product will stand out. PR can also help product development with insights into customer and culture trends and state of mind. There are PR opportunities during the design and testing phase that are really exciting. Something as simple as color choices on a consumer product: does the color pop off a page? Something like what the product will be named, many times a PR person can provide insights into things like that.

We’ve worked with clients to develop press-worthy products and we’ve used PR to help develop the product itself. We worked with a client years ago who was beta testing a platform aimed at parents. We developed a community of parents in social media to provide feedback and insight. We were engaging this community in a sustained way — not just in a focus group setting.

In the end, some of the feedback ended up radically improving the product and especially the messaging. Most exciting for the brand was the number of these parents who were defacto influencers during launch, they were the company’s earliest brand ambassadors and really made a huge impact at launch.

Would your PR strategy change much if a client is selling a physical product or has a service-based solution? B2C versus B2B? If so, please share an example or two that might demonstrate any differences.

Sure, there are big differences, including different expectations from the target audience. For example, a B2C brand might want to earn press in national consumer lifestyle outlets, but for B2B, it might be more relevant to focus on industry outlets. With consumer PR, having big reach numbers is important, but for a B2B outlet, it’s about aligning with quality over quantity. Also, how you leverage your media coverage will be different.

We have a technology client with a retail B2C product line and a B2B product line. One of the benefits for the brand is our B2B and B2C efforts are aligned, even though our PR strategies were different for each. The B2C side was heavy on earned media coverage, the B2B side was heavier on owned content, data, and trust-building within the industry and potential customers, which meant aligning with industry-specific opportunities.

There was is an added benefit for the B2B product line though: B2C PR added trust and awareness for the brand overall. When we secured a Today Show review of one of the B2C products, the B2B team used that an opportunity to start or re-engage conversations they were having, and the B2B side was able to piggyback off the trust of one of America’s most trusted morning shows.

For Direct to Consumer (DTC) products, it’s important to remember the media landscape is changing and lots of publications are radically changing the way they do product reviews.

For one, Google is changing the way they view these types are articles, so savvy publishers are looking to dig a little deeper into the products and the reviews, so be prepared with a thorough FAQ that’s specific to press when you send product samples.

Along these same lines, I highly recommend an affiliate program, ad revenues continue to decline and major publishers are prioritizing products that offer affiliate links. When your brand gets a review, be sure to share the article with the affiliate link.

If a business is already investing monthly in PR, what other marketing strategies would you recommend they invest in that best compliments that work to bring in the most amount of business?

This really depends on what else they’re doing and who their audience is. Broadly, I would say take a deep look at your owned media for enhanced trust and reinforcing your brand; see what’s working and integrate those insights into leveraging your media coverage.

Hypergrowth companies sometimes underestimate the benefit of these two strategic objectives in PR and owned media’s role in these objectives.

If someone has already been covered in the media, what are the best next steps after that? What are your “5 Ways To Leverage that Media Coverage To Dramatically Grow Your Business”?

  1. CELEBRATE WINS — Make sure your employees know about your press coverage, and celebrate it internally. CEOs can use it as an opportunity to remind the company that you’re a team and celebrate your efforts. You don’t need to ask your employees to share the press, if you’re creating a great culture, they’ll do that already. But it’s important to use press coverage as an opportunity to congratulate your internal team on a job well done and to reinforce your brand’s growing influence. Share your press with customers and clients too. Everyone likes to know that they’ve made the right choice and earned media reinforces that choice. It’s also an awesome opportunity for customers and clients to share it with someone else and say “this is the product/service I was telling you about.” Don’t be shy about empowering your existing clients with good news worth sharing. Make sure you’re pitch decks are updated regularly with your top 3 pieces of content. Your earned media and press is useful for biz development or capital raises. If you’re unsure which to select, as your PR firm, they’ll talk it through with you and point out what’s most relevant for your objectives.
  2. REPURPOSE YOUR EARNED COVERAGE — One of the beauties of earned media is it has a long lifespan. Be sure you’re highlighting your press coverage in ads and on your website. This is appreciated by the outlet and also increases the social proof to new audiences. While we’re at it, celebrate your earned media with your email list too. Resurface earned media when it’s relevant or right in social, in email, and in newsletters.
  3. USE YOUR PR FOR INDUSTRY ADVANTAGE — When you receive positive press think about doors it can open for you. Great brands always take PR seriously, this is especially true for companies using technologies like AI or drones, or other emerging industries or hyper-growth companies like fintech, blockchain, or cannabis. For emerging industries, it’s really important to focus heavily on trust-building initiatives. Emerging industries need to keep in mind that even people who aren’t their customers are early stakeholders in things like regulation. If you’re in an industry that’s likely to be or already is highly regulated, and you’ve received a business profile in a great publication, that’s a great opportunity for the CEO to introduce themselves to local political figures and representatives and start a dialogue about the industry or the business.

One more before we go: If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I’d love for us to celebrate and reward kindness more. There are millions of small acts of kindness daily, everything from holding open a door for a stranger to writing letters of recommendations.

If I could do anything it would be develop a true kindness economy. I envision tracking kindnesses in a way that people could see the ripple effects of their kindness.

Thank you for sharing your story and so many valuable insights with us today!

-This article originally appeared on Authority Magazine.

[3 minutes]

Some have said that the fastest-growing sector in cannabis is cannabis technology. While cannabis technology companies often serve very specific regulatory needs and enter the marketplace in a tech-mature world (as opposed to those during the initial dot-com era), cannabis tech companies with hyper-growth ambitions can learn from the tech company failures of the past.

Think Ahead, But Not Too Far

Many emerging industry companies have gone bust because they were simply too progressive. From the dot-com era, WebVan and Kozmo were two delivery companies with considerable capital that both went bust, only to see companies like Amazon eventually optimize the services they both introduced. Not every first mover gets first-mover advantage. There’s a lot to be said for meeting the customer or client where they’re at.

But moving people ahead is completely possible. Cannabis tech companies can think through the future of their business by planning past a regulatory world and creating brand loyalty well before any necessary pivots.

Setting an agenda to change the narrative and create demand is a long-term play, but consumers DO change behaviors and in the wake of COVID, there is still an opportunity to maximize the massive mind-shift happening. Cannabis itself is an outstanding example of changing the narrative. In fact, changing the narrative is an excellent competitive strategy and a way to differentiate yourself.

How Cannabis Tech Can Prepare for Bigger and Better Funded

As cannabis becomes a bigger part of the economy in more states, there will be more entrances into the marketplace.

Cannabis tech only has to look at what happened to the CBD space after the Farm Act passed to see a more recent cannabis example of this. From a tech perspective, a good example of this is the Pebble Smart Watch, which raised $10.3 million on Kickstarter (the most successful Kickstarter ever at the time). But of course, they struggled to compete with competitors like Apple Watch.

B2B cannabis tech companies are vulnerable to this as Silicon Valley continues to double down on cannabis tech from companies and founders with no experience in cannabis, but more funding. Dutchie is an example of this. Dutchie’s model is less cannabis and more tech as they model their services to something more akin to GrubHub. Silicon Valley likes companies that reinvent proven scale models.

Cannabis tech companies, whether they serve B2B or B2C should leverage both advertising and PR, together to secure market share AND trust simultaneously. Align your cannabis advertising and PR campaigns and messaging. Don’t isolate your advertising data from PR. Together they can be stronger. Branding dominance and brand value is the way to secure marketplace valuation; had Pebble done that, they would have stood a better chance of survival or at the very least gotten closer to the original offer of $740 million (which they got in 2015), as opposed to the sell to Fitbit for less than $40 million in 2016.

Cannabis technology companies should also be prepared to tell stories that aren’t technology-oriented. Whether those be founder stories, or purpose, there is also more to talk about, so prepare yourself and get those corporate stories in place.

And when there are lulls in cannabis tech VC funding, that’s a great time to prepare for the future and focus your energies on the most important initiatives to help you stand out when the funding cycle returns.

Watch Consumer Tech Trends

Media consumption on the biggest social media platforms may well have peaked already. 2021 was the first year Facebook reported a decline in users. So what’s happening to those consumers? They certainly haven’t left the internet, they’ve simply shifted platforms.

Consumer communication with a cannabis niche or cannabis advertising platforms can learn so many lessons from the failures of social media platforms, in particular Facebook. These platforms need to evaluable the trust equation and invest in it immediately. Whether the customer is B2B or B2C, there is a broader techlash going on.

Leveraging the trust of third-party media outlets is imperative now. And unlike plant-touching brands, cannabis tech companies have a wide-open playing field about the media outlets who will write about them. We always say that “trust is an inside out job,” and that means PR can only clean up so much if you’re abusing trust; if you’re the Theanos of cannabis tech, PR won’t be your biggest spend.

 

Cannabis tech is sure to be a competitive and thriving sector with massive ups and downs, but those who reach hyper-growth will have taken a page out of the successes and failures of past Silicon Valley darlings.  Check out our PR Case Studies and Results for more ideas about how to stand out in cannabis tech.

CPG product launch media coverage is vital to successful CPG product launches. A product launch is an important event for any company – and even more so for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Successful product launches can result in increased market share, brand awareness, and sales. And while there are many different ways to execute a product launch, using public relations (PR) is often a smart strategy. Here are three great ways to use PR for a CPG product launch.

One key strategy regardless of how you product launch: for consumer products, it’s exceptionally important that your consumer product launch media coverage and marketing stand out in the competitive environment for consumer attention. 

 

  1. Secure Early CPG Product Launch Media Coverage & Stay Consistent

For any new CPG, consumer trust is a prerequisite for great sales. Consumer PR leads in trust, so it’s important that consumer packaged goods companies secure early coverage to build consumer trust, awareness, and excitement for their cpg product launch PR. 

Traditional tactics would include samples and a press release. A more modern PR approach is a well-developed, and SEO-optimized media sample kit and specific information a journalist needs to write a winning review of the new product. If you’re pitching digital outlets or podcasts that aren’t generated months in advance, another approach is pitching consumer reporters on-trend stories that will include your product as an example. Securing coverage in the early stages of a product launch will help to set the tone for the campaign and generate excitement among consumers and retailers.

Plan on aggressive PR focusing on earned media throughout the first year. If you’re satisfied with market share after the first year, you may consider moving to more brand awareness PR vs. earned media CPG PR

 

  1. Execute A Distinctive Social Media Strategy

Social media is a key channel for consumer packaged goods companies to reach their target audience. Think about how your target demographic uses social media, especially their interests. From there, think of content your target audience would particularly appreciate and where the content will work best. For example, you may have a video for Facebook and YouTube because the content is best suited to the ways your customers use those platforms. On the other hand, you may do something different from Instagram and TikTok. It’s truly time for CPG companies to think beyond the traditional influencer campaign. Be creative. For example, Bounty towels recently hired influencers to put Bounty in the background of their videos – this is a twist on product placements. P.S. be sure you stay out of hot water with the FCC and be sure to disclose the relationship. Always consider how your content can create newsworthy buzz to get extra mileage and earned media. Contests and giveaways can also be incorporated to generate consumer interest around the product launch.

 

  1. CPG Product Launch Media Coverage Boost: Leverage Paid Media

Consumer packaged goods companies should consider leveraging paid media to support their product launch. Again, think creatively and be sure your campaigns align. For an extra dash of newsworthiness, consider incorporating your purpose, or another extension of your brand. Consider paid media outside of traditional print, TV, and radio, and dig deep into target markets with paid placements in locations that specifically resonate.  Paid media helps you quickly and generate awareness for your product launch, and when paired with high-trust PR tactics, paid media can be the conversion point that drives additional sales. 

 

While there are many other strategies and tactics that consumer packaged goods companies can use to support a product launch, these three strategies are a good place to start. By executing a solid consumer packaged goods PR strategy and supporting it with paid media, consumer packaged goods companies will be well-equipped to win the consumer product launch battle.

Since our inception, we’ve been helping consumer packaged goods companies win the launch of their new products. In that time, we have learned many critical elements to a successful consumer packaged goods PR campaign. While there are many strategies and tactics, here are three simple things you can do for your next CPG product launch

Read more about our previous work here.

Whether for CPG or consumer tech, a solid consumer PR strategy allows your business to enjoy a larger audience and increased exposure. Read on to learn more about consumer PR, what consumer PR professionals do, and why consumer PR is important in the business world.

What Is Consumer PR?

Public relations refers to how a business maintains relations with its stakeholders, including investors, media, government, other businesses in the industry, and consumers. In this blog, we will specifically talk about consumer PR because every business stakeholder is ultimately a part of the consumer market, whether it’s employees, investors, or the media.

Consumer public relations defines how brands build connections with the public, or more precisely, their target audience. It is all about building positive impressions about your brands, products, and services by disseminating relevant and engaging information to the public with an emphasis on your unique selling points. Consumer PR agencies stay up to date on the everchanging media environment impacting consumers including consumer tech PR, and consumer product PR and build consumer PR campaigns that may include multiple tactics. 

Consumer PR – Then & Now

Consumer PR is not a new concept. It has been around for a long time now, although it wasn’t something that businesses purposely considered in earlier times.

The lack of technology meant building and maintaining consumer relations wasn’t as complex or detailed back then. Most of it was just about nicely dealing with the customers face-to-face. Then came the surge of technology, opening up multiple channels for businesses to communicate with their target audience.

At first, business organizations raised brand awareness by placing ads in newspapers, television, and radio. The rapid technological advancement in recent years has further exposed consumers to more advanced and instant ways of consuming media, like social media platforms, websites, and more.

Although companies now have more opportunities to get their message out to the public, it also means the noise and competition in the business world has reached an all-time high. Every brand must have the proper consumer PR strategies to achieve mass exposure and publicity.

Characteristics of Modern Consumer PR

Here are a few prominent characteristics of modern consumer PR dynamics:

Emphasis on Omni-channel Marketing: More is needed for businesses to connect with their target audience through just one or two marketing channels. From interacting with the audience on Twitter to making videos on YouTube, brands must adopt many ways to receive more exposure and build a larger customer base.

Importance of Story-Telling: Earlier, businesses could get away with using only hard-sell strategies because the competition in most industries wasn’t that high. Since consumers now have more choices, they don’t like brands pushing their products on them. This is why brands should back their products with a compelling story and unique insights that make the audience emotionally connect to the target audience

More Focus on Target Audience Interactions: Regular interaction with current and potential customers has always been important, but it is more critical than ever. The competition has increased, and you must keep in touch with the audience to stay on their radar. The more you communicate with your audience, the more they trust your brand. But remember to keep the communication swift, transparent, and meaningful.

Consumer PR Agency

Building and sustaining positive relationships with consumers is an ongoing process. It not only takes up significant time, money, and effort but also requires strong interpersonal and communication skills. Therefore, most companies prefer hiring a consumer PR agency rather than handling consumer PR tasks themselves, especially since consumer lifestyle changes are happening every month and it can be hard to keep track for fast-growing companies. 

Consumer PR agencies help brands build and maintain a consistently positive public image through various activities. More precisely, they interact with a brand’s audience on different platforms, post content on the right platform at the right time, organize or sponsor events, and collect good reviews from third parties.

Another crucial function of these agencies is to filter messages to make sure nothing inappropriate or irrelevant is shared. They also track audience interactions to see how the current public strategies work and what needs improvement. 

The Difference Between Public Relations and Marketing

Consumer public relations sounds very similar to marketing. Although both approaches focus on conveying the brand message to consumers, the difference lies in their objectives.

While the outcome of consumer PR agency activities is to build and maintain a brand’s positive reputation amongst the public, marketing is more inclined towards increasing the revenue for a business.

Both marketing and consumer PR are equally crucial for businesses to generate a high return on investment in this modern era. Every business should use a blend of marketing and PR strategies to connect with its target audience.

An important point to remember here is that the message conveyed through both consumer PR and marketing should be consistent. Brand messages aligned across all channels strongly impact consumers, making them more inclined to try your products and services.

Why Is Consumer PR Important?

Let’s look at the benefits of consumer PR.

Increases Brand Awareness

The core function of consumer PR tactics is to inform people about a brand, ultimately widening its consumer base. It involves sharing innovative and thought-provoking brand messages over multiple channels to garner more attention. Your consumer PR agency should be able to articulate expected PR KPIs .

Builds a Strong Brand Image

Consumer PR not only focuses on creating brand awareness but also helps you reinforce a positive image in the market. With a strong brand image, you can enjoy higher engagements, increased sales, and significant growth in market share.

Promotes Credibility

Consumers trust a brand better if they know how it operates. This is where consumer PR can help. Consumer PR professionals strive to create positive talk about a brand amongst the public in different ways: publishing leadership pieces, building influencer connections, and implementing networking strategies. Your credibility soars high once the positive messages about your brand become common to the public.

If your product helps consumers with a health issue, or a with small children, or helps them navigate a particularly challenge phase of life – building trust with your customers couldn’t be more important.

Helps Manage Reputation

Reputation refers to how people perceive your brand based on what they see and hear about it. It can be positive or negative and change. Reputation management is one of the main functions of consumer PR strategies for consumer PR professionals.

Businesses may often find themselves in unfavorable situations, like negative reviews from a dissatisfied customer or legal problems arising from a misinterpreted advertisement. Consumer PR helps them avoid such problems and repair the damage through media connections and press releases.

Strengthens Your Online Presence

A robust online presence is key to success in today’s era. As a part of consumer PR strategy, a brand can use social media and other digital platforms to talk to its customers, resolve conflicts, and monitor their changing interests.

Consumer PR experts can build a plan to stay active on online platforms to grow relations with all groups of consumers.

Becomes a Source of Added Value 

Your consumer PR strategy can be a significant differentiating factor between you and your competitors, helping your brand shine as an industry leader. It can add value to your business in several ways: by helping you personalize your brand, increasing its visibility, and strengthening the company profile.

Generates Quality Leads

The functions of Consumer PR strategies are not just restricted to reputation management and raising brand awareness. They can also be targeted towards more advanced goals like lead generation and conversions. Posting content on the right platforms, using compelling CTAs, incorporating social proofs to your profiles (reviews and ratings) – all such efforts make more people interested and willing to try out your products and services.

How to Establish a Consumer PR Strategy?

Identify Goals

The first step is to identify the end goal of all your consumer PR activities. It will guide your efforts and help you decide on the appropriate measures for tracking progress. You can aim to achieve increased brand awareness, enhance customer loyalty, build investor confidence, etc.

Choosing a single goal isn’t necessary; you can select a mix of different goals and make separate plans to achieve them. Remember to keep referring to your objective list to ensure you are on the right track.

Focus on Target Audience

The next step is to focus on your target audience. Decide who you want to target at the moment and in the future. You can also target more than one or two groups if you have enough resources to cater to their needs. Research and list all relevant information about your audience groups, like preferences, qualities, demographics, and other activities. This will help you develop messages tailored to their specific requirements.

Analyze Competition

At this point, you should also analyze what other businesses in the industry are doing to grow and maintain their relationships with consumers. You can browse their websites as well as social media profiles and posts to see what works for them and what doesn’t.

Use the Right Consumer PR Content

List down the key messages you want to convey to the public, and later, think about which tactics you want to implement.

Remember that those PR tactics may not work effectively if you have nothing valuable to share. Nobody will be interested in what you say if it’s not appealing enough.

Some effective consumer PR tools and opportunities are corporate news, an upcoming event, an e-newsletter, or an in-depth article on thought-provoking topics. Don’t forget to add a unique angle to your content, explaining why the audience should care about your brand.

Learn to Pitch the Right Way

Once you have the content ready, pitch it to different platforms through appropriate communication methods. People don’t often have enough time to read or go through lengthy content, so make sure both your content and pitch are concise.

When you pitch other platforms to publish your brand story, introduce yourself briefly, give a short review of your message, and mention why it would interest their viewers.

Examples of Effective Consumer PR Strategies

  • You can support a social cause to build an emotional connection with your audience. Many people agree they are more likely to buy a brand that contributes to society in some way than one that doesn’t. It can be anything, from giving away coats to the needy in winter or donating to the education sector.

 

  • Personalize your brand by interacting with customers on different platforms. They will definitely be willing to buy from you more often if you interact positively with them. You can personalize emails, products, and services for specific audience groups to make them feel more valued.

 

  • Become a thought leader in your industry by leveling up your research and content creation game. Provide consumers with valuable insights on industry trends and events, offer informative courses and presentations on engaging topics, and publish thought-provoking articles backed by facts and figures. Becoming an expert within the industry will help you strengthen your credibility amongst the audience.

 

  • Contribution to the community matters a lot when it comes to setting a strong foothold in the industry. You can donate time, products, facilities, and money in different ways to help with the community development process. For example, you can serve on a community board, volunteer at a homeless shelter, take part in local festivals and parades, and other activities.

Methods and Performance Indicators of Consumer PR Campaigns

Consumer PR experts can use different methods to get their message out to the public, such as:

  • Videos
  • Events
  • Content 
  • Collaborations with Influencers
  • Seasonal News

Here are a few common factors that show the performance of your consumer PR campaigns:

  • Likes, Comments, and Shares on Social Media
  • Views and Shares of Content
  • Referrals to Website from Content
  • The Number of Leads and Conversions on the Website
  • Mentions on Social Media

Final Words

To make your consumer PR strategy work best for you, you can combine different approaches and produce a PR calendar that includes all PR activities you plan to incorporate in the coming weeks or months.

Don’t want to go through the hassle? Hire a consumer PR agency specializing in multiple consumer PR tactics like event planning, social media management, content creation, and more.

Feel free to get in touch with us if you want to know more about consumer PR.