Tag Archive for: cpg pr firm

We live in a world where ideas, products, and signals are happening so fast that it’s hard for the consumer to process everything. Yet, direct-to-consumer brands can continue to grow with a strategic eye on awareness and trust.  If we weren’t bombarded with over 5,000 advertisements per day, we could be more subtle.

The fact is, worldwide, the average person spends 473 minutes per day engaging with media. We also live in a post-ChatGPT world, and one still ruled by search engines and algorithms. Plus, newsrooms are shrinking (in 2021, they had fallen by 25% since 2008) as competition for ad dollars becomes less and less centralized. For this reason, DTC PR strategies need to keep up with the changing media environment and rethink earned media.

There are two ways to approach CPG PR; one is a holistic approach of communications, digital visibility, thought leadership, and product PR where metrics match key business objectives; the other is a laser-focused approach, which could be consumer product PR or thought leadership, depending on the brand strategy with more PR-focused KPIs. In an ideal world, all brands embrace a holistic point of view with a complete bespoke PR program. But, by choosing a strategic consumer PR lever, challenger consumer brands can be precise and thoughtful about their earned media. This is about the laser-focused approach, and consumer brand PR firms must expand their definition of PR to stay useful to DTC, CPG, and consumer product brands.

The Argument for Laser-Focused Media Relations

It’s a harsh world for direct-to-consumer brands to continue growing. For challenger consumer product, DTC and CPG brands – those past startup mode but not a household name – there are an overwhelming number of media options. From Instagram influencers to a dizzying array of advertising choices, the challenger brand has more choices than money. Therefore, it needs to act strategically to do two things at once to scale: build awareness and trust.

That’s one reason PR is the signature choice for consumer product PR: Trust and Awareness.

Trust is the longest game but the most crucial communication goal of any brand. Yet, trust takes a long time to build. Unlike Instagram Influencers (whose influence is waning) and paid advertisements, and the 68% of consumers who think cookie-based advertising is creepy (Marigold 2023), earned media addresses the #1 PR challenge for upstart brands: trusted reach. Whether your target audience is GenZ or a target broader, consumers must trust your brand before you edge in on the market share of competitors or create a new product category altogether, trusted reach is where the smart money goes.

So how do you build trust and awareness when your branding budget is limited? The fact is that branding is expensive, and brands with hyper-growth ambitions need a more direct form of branding.  Indeed, product reviews play a vital role in both trust and awareness, and there’s one way to super charge product trust: product reviews in trusted media outlets. Media coverage has several advantages over other brand awareness options, including stickiness. Unlike a fleeting social media post or a questionably targeted ad, product coverage, especially reviews on online media sites, is extremely sticky, lasting in search results for years.

Owning Content and Messaging with Thought Leadership

Executive visibility has never been so vital. A well-developed owned content program isn’t a blog program; it’s a program that embraces all the thought leadership opportunities available to hypergrowth brands today. From blog posts and contributions to emerging topics to the multitude of contributor opportunities to executives willing to share insights with the broader public, thought leadership is ripe with opportunities for challenger brands. This is especially true for younger audiences who distrust established and entrenched brands more than they do startup consumer brands.

Even if your audience isn’t reading those contribution sites, they add a credible and authoritative SEO link to the website and present executives as willing and open to engaging with their customers. According to the Edelman Trust Report, businesses were more trusted than the government and NGOs. But that trust is tenuous because CEO trust isn’t on solid ground, yet business leaders are seen as unifiers next to NGO leaders and teachers; that’s some pretty good company business leaders are keeping. Plus, the best way to earn trust is to be more visible.  Harvard Business Review says one of the most important ways for consumer brands to succeed includes deepening customer relationship, not just making comparisons with competitors.

Now is truly the time to embrace thought leadership because of the trusted status of businesses. From 2022 to 2023, businesses earned a 20-point bump in ethics on the Edelman Trust Report, so this is an area of opportunity for consumer brands – especially if they embrace purpose-driven PR. But even if a true purpose-driven message isn’t right for a consumer brand, there are likely aspects of ethics to which the leaders of the consumer brands can speak. And that’s important because 63% of consumers buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values.

 

Embrace Digital PR Completely with Product Reviews

Digitally savvy PR keeps their eye on the future instead of “of the moment.” Let’s be clear: for trust and authority, there are no short cuts Google sees those work around tactics and actively adjusts against them. This is not a recommendation to game the system; it’s a recommendation to embrace the system. Getting a bunch of low-grade links is actually more damaging than helpful. And the idea of an influencer is changing. A few years ago, brands rushed to implement Instagram influencer campaigns, 90% of which fell flat because they weren’t well executed influencer campaigns. And as the influencer’s trust continues to wane, brands need to understand where their target markets are and who they trust. GenZ audiences don’t trust social media but look to social media to find the news. And 49% of GenZ trust cable news and network news, while 52% trust online only news sites. These online-only news sites are a boon to consumer brand PR because they constantly work to churn out content; they always need new ideas and angles. Plus, product reviews drive eyeballs and, as an added benefit, can also be sources of revenue through affiliate programs. Creating digitally savvy content that supports hero reviews alongside gift guide inclusions is an excellent way to focus consumer product PR budgets.

How Digital PR and Earned Media Work Together

Working alongside journalists to support their objectives is and always will be the objective of media relations. Today’s savvy media relations teams understand how to help digitally savvy online news outlets so that their content surfaces on Google (and AI-driven search like Chat GPT). It goes beyond keywords into the deep algorithm that is Google’s search engine. Direct-to-consumer brands can continue to grow by leveraging Google’s search and trust algorithm for themselves. And that search engine is leaning heavily into authority and trust. There are millions of ways to signal that your brand is trustworthy, but one of the most attainable is aligning with Google’s most trusted sources, and that’s where consumer product PR can make the biggest impact.

Upstart consumer brands can become hypergrowth consumer brands by investing in very defined strategic PR initiatives. Connect with us today to learn more about our laser-focused PR programs for ambitious brands.

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. 

Ah, the early adopter. Their the people who grab on to things first, they start trends and they are influencers in their respective communities.

Whether you’re a startup, a movement or a personality, you need these early adopters. Marketing to early adopters can be slippery though, what they grab on to is almost entirely motivationally based. Toss out your traditional “Three P’s” of marketing if you want to capture this crowd, you’re going to need to think through what makes them tick.

Whether you’re building a product or starting a movement, keep your early adopters in mind. Strategies of early adopter marketing require a deep understanding of their motiviations.

Early Adopters Value Intellectual Stimulation

It doesn’t matter what your target market is, a certain segment of them are early adopters and early adopters like to be challenged and stimulated.  Puzzles and quizzes are intriguing to these people, but they get bored easily, so make sure the content matches the intelligence level.

Don’t mistake this to assume that every puzzle or quiz is intriguing to early adopters. They aren’t necessarily the “Buzzfeed” quiz takers. They like to learn and be challenged but they aren’t interested in dumbed down versions of anything. By the time something has caught mass adoption, early adopters have either “been there/done that” or are already deeply engaged in using the product.

Early Adopters Have High “FOMO.”

Because they value their role as early adopters, they never want to be “out of the loop” or miss something that’s particularly cool.

Tap into that “Fear of Missing Out” during the earliest stages. Give them ways to be cool to their community by letting them be the gateway to a broader audience and you’ll be tapping into their desires to be seen as an early adopter.

Google generally does this really well when it launches products. It does an initial invitation to known early adopters and gets everyone else clamoring to be part of it in the first phase and SEEN as an early adopter. Google definitely has marketing to early adopters down.

Early Adopters Are Attracted to Art, Emotion and Adventure

Perhaps more than any other target market, early adopters are pulled in by emotion, art and adventure.

This is one reason why Apple’s early emphasis on design caught on with early adopters, they loved the elegance of the product and interface, the art of the experience.

Remember, art, emotion and adventure can happen online and offline. This is a place where you can really get creative and have some fun. It’s also easy to identify these people based on where they go because events like TED and TEDX inherently draw early adopter personality types.

Because of this constant searching early adopters have, curiosity is a primary trigger for action. Tripping the curiosity trigger requires some thought because early adopters aren’t generally suckers for the usual mass-marketing techniques; they’re a little more sophisticated than that. You’re going to really have to think of something that genuinely makes them curious.

The “Why” Seriously Matters

Early adopters are very observant they generally see through tactics and need a reason to be inspired.  Your marketing message to early adopters needs to be centered around something inspiring.

Instead of focusing on product features, tap into the deep intellectual and emotional reservoir of early adopters and give some insight to them about why this product or movement matters. You’ll likely need to do some message testing here, but it will be worth it once you hit on the “why” that matters most.

Don’t Confuse Early Adopters for Extroverts

It’s easy to lump the two together, but research shows that messaging that targets extroverts actually repels early adopters. Early adopters like intrigue and creativity, they aren’t particularly attracted to social attention in a public way. This doesn’t mean they aren’t on social media, it just means that their triggers are different. They like to have their role as early adopters confirmed, but they also like to be the messenger of that delivery.