Digital transformation has changed the entire realm of modern businesses. The disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, and the internet of things (IoTs) have majorly impacted how nations, industries, and corporations function, and consequently businesses also need to articulate their PR strategies to thrive amidst this disruptive wave of digital transformation.
Digital transformation has a profound impact on the way people communicate and consequently, your PR strategies have to keep abreast of them.
Digital transformation employs dynamic digital technology to solve real-world problems to expedite several manual and digital processes.
The methodology by which organizations, companies, and individuals communicate with the public and several media platforms is called public relations (PR).
To thrive in the era of digital transformation and the dynamic world of online marketing, PR professionals should change their approach to millennial marketing and should employ the latest digital tools to rethink their PR strategies from audiences' perspectives and to offer result-oriented solutions to engage multiplicities of audiences, communities and thought leaders online.
Digital transformation has conditioned us to live in a content-rich world driven by the Internet of Things (IoTs) and marketing-minded PR professionals need to realize the new values, influence, and outcomes and should leverage new media channels and forums to take their stories to market.
By using the latest online tools not only the firms will be able to:
1. improve their online visibility but will also be able to,
2. optimize their word-of-mouth awareness.
PR professionals may transcend their limitedness in where and how they direct their knowledge, penmanship, and perception management skills.
Marketers in the modern age need to understand that in order to articulate their PR strategies to thrive and grow in an era of digital transformation, they need to look beyond their niche and competitive benchmarking.
They can learn from other marketers from different niches, industries, and even from different types of organizations.
For example, non-profit organizations can learn from corporations and vice-versa.
In fact, being inspired by successful ideas outside the industries works better than mindlessly emulating your competitors, when they themselves might be in a state of oblivion about their PR strategies.
Some of the best Digital PR Strategies
In this blog post, we will examine the disruptive impact of digital transformation on your PR strategies and perform a visionary and rigorous analysis of how you can articulate your PR strategies.
Let's look at some modern PR strategies and how their successful implementation can help you boost your marketing endeavors. Let's delve in.
- Research and Reach Your Persona
You should understand your buyers and crafting your ideal buyer persona based on:
a) demographic,
b) firmographic,
c) technographic,
d) psychographics and
e) intent data of the prospects, as well as,
f) the information gathered from past browsing behaviors of the prospects and customers
The above steps are the most important ones for marketers before they can think further about strategizing their marketing or PR strategies.
Once you have defined your persona you can reach them directly through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Marketing and PR have converged conceptually when it comes to online marketing.
Think about this: Does it really matter whether a prospect is researching your product category by using search engines, or by landing directly on your website URL or by means of a news release that your company sent or by a magazine article or post on your blog.
Well, it doesn't. Great content, whether created originally as a part of a PR strategy or marketing plan, always entices users and motivates them to perform a desired set of actions.
By deploying pieces of content you can flaunt your subject-matter-expertise and attract prospects and customers by providing them with the information that addresses their pain-points and that they want to consume.
- Focus On Your Content Strategy and the Mechanics of Delivering that Content
Much like any other marketing strategy content marketing starts with a goal setting.
You should know why you're creating the content and inspire users to take action through your pieces of content.
The content marketers should be able to articulate who their buyers are and what problems they want you to solve.
An effective web marketing and PR strategy that delivers compelling content to the buyers inspires them to take action. You should always start with clearly defined business goals.
Your content should be able to brand your organization as thought leaders in the market.
Having a great business website, blogs, and video series tell the world that you are smart. Web content is also an effective tool to shape the online reputation of your organization.
Blogs, news articles, podcasts, viral marketing, and social media marketing are indispensable parts of executing an effective marketing and PR plan. Remember that web content is of paramount importance as it helps turn more prospects into buyers.
- Social Listening and Targeting
Social media platforms allow you to share ideas, content, thoughts, and relationships online and allows you to build a relationship with your prospects as well as the customers.
You can employ social listening and user-generated content to understand what sort of content is preferred by your audience groups.
Social media also serves as an excellent platform to engage with your user groups and allows them to express their opinions online.
You can also social media to target relevant users for your business and create the look-alike audience groups.
You can use video and image sharing platforms like YouTube, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, and SlideShare to simplify the process of sharing and commenting on photos, graphics, and videos.
Review sites like Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, and Tripadvisor are places where customers rate products, services, and companies. Wikis are the websites that can be edited and updated by any user.
Digg and StumbleUpon are the social bookmarking websites that allow users to suggest content to others and vote on what is interesting.
Mobile applications with GPS-generated location services like Foursquare and Swarm provide GPS-enabled location services to allow you to understand where exactly the user is in the world.
- Participate in Online Forums
Usually, your prospects and existing customers will participate in one online forum or the other and so should you.
Consider participating in Q&A forums such as Quora. Keep an eye on the niche-specific questions being posted by your target audience groups.
Forums provide a platform for like-minded people to stay in touch. Some of the popular forums are Nikonians and collectSPACE.
The group email lists or listservs and wikis help like-minded people stay connected. Whenever a member posts on the list, a listserv sends messages out to the members of the group via email.
Similarly, wikis enable users to update, delete, or edit the content on a website.
- Use Blogging to Tell Your Story
Blogging is an effective medium to push ideas into the marketplace and to generate instant feedback.
Blogs leverage the power of search engines and are amongst the most effective ways for people to find you. They help in getting your ideas seen and refined and open new avenues for your business.
Organizations need to have authentic human blog voices to fuel their mainstream media and PR strategies.
Marketers and PR professionals need to learn to harness the power of blogging to become tremendously rich and successful.
- Use Images and Videos to Drive Action
Visual imagery can help marketers engage with their target audience groups and drive action. Employing visual imagery strikes deeper emotions chords and helps marketers in creating goodwill with customers.
If you are working with serious organizations such as B2B organizations, non-profits, and government agencies, using images, videos and podcasts becomes extremely important.
They help you in communicating with your audience base in the most effective ways.
Remember people prefer to buy from people and the use of videos and images keeps audiences intrigued and absorbed and even helps inspire action by the means of humor.
- Build A Community & Participate in Discussions
At specialist websites of all types of like-minded professionals, fans and supporters meet and discuss the intricacies of the subject that interests them.
It is important for marketers to be a part of vibrant discussions on suitable online symposia. As marketers, you should research your niche-specific forums, and participate in imbibing the community experience, whether on different social media platforms or specific websites.
- Use the Power of Podcasting
Audio content has a huge appeal. Podcasts are the audio content often delivered through iTunes.
The medium doesn't specifically require iPods.
According to Edison Research, 54% of people who listen to podcasts state that they are more likely to consider the brands they hear the ads from on podcasts, and according to Statista, podcast ad spending is projected to reach $354 million in the year 2020.
Podcasts are effective for your PR promotions and can be listened to by using a variety of devices such as MP3 players, on most smartphones or on directly from your computers.
Creating podcasts helps you in acquiring new customers and helps you to get your information into the market.
Podcasts help in your product positioning. Instead of hyping about their products or services, the marketers can project their brands as adequately equipped for doing business.
- Monitor Your Blogosphere and Content and Make them Go Viral
One of the greatest things about the web is that when an idea is presented, it has the potential to go viral.
Your viral blog or any form of content on social media can propel your brand or company to fame and fortune for free.
When people know your story on a bigger scale, more actions are driven - often more purchase decisions are made.
Most of the viral phenomenon start unpredictably but you can use the following strategies to stimulate the viral marketing rave:
1. Create something interesting and unique that will be widely read online. Talk about the ideas; however, don't hype your products or services.
2. Don't opt for product-centric advertising, instead create content that is snackable and easily shareable, no coercion is needed.
3. Provide as much free and informational content on the web as possible. Remember not always your stereotypical business ROI calculators will be useful, sometimes you will have to lose control.
4. If you want your ideas to go viral you need to be involved in online communities that actively share.
5. Address the pain-points of your audiences and create other triggers that encourage people to share their pieces of content.
6. If there's a piece of explosive news, make it go "viral".
Creating a viral content strategy also ensures that your content automatically ranks higher on the search engines as your ideas will be read and shared more.
- Have a Website Rich in Content
As marketers, all the media that you use to reach buyers including blogs, podcasts, news releases, and everything else should have the same appeal and voice to tell unified brand stories to your buyers.
An integrated and interdisciplinary approach and employing a diversified content strategy. Apart from having an appealing website outlook, marketers also need to focus on SEO optimization strategies including cool software plug-ins on HTML, XML, and optimizing the server technology.
A content-rich website optimizes the online personality of your brand to delight, entertain, and most importantly inform each one of your buyers. Additionally, you can make the most of your content-rich website by:
- Participating in communities and online forums benefit from political advocacy on the web
- Adjust the nitty-gritty of your content strategy, make it SEO-friendly and agile and do employ competitive benchmarking
- Manage your content strategy and processes well and do timely audits
- Employ a dynamic content strategy to display real-time content on the blog
- Showcase your happy customers and encourage them to leave reviews and create user-generated content
- Employ a visual content strategy and use photos and videos in your content
Wrapping Things Up
In an era of digital transformation, real-time and agile technologies are on a boom.
Marketing and public relations have also transmuted to be largely real-time as anyone can share their news and information with the world as they unfold, in real-time. All that is required for you is to be a little attentive. You can be a part of several stories as they unfold in real-time.
You can grab the eyes of the web instantly and don't have to wait for your efforts to materialize.
Remember in a real-time business environment employing the above marketing and PR strategies will give you a competitive advantage. Developing a real-time mindset and understanding that speed and agility are the ultimate differentiators is important.
Also, developing a strategic marketing and PR plan requires shifting the focus from your products or services to the pain-points and areas of interest of your buyers.
Understand your buyers and align your marketing goals with them. Getting your departmental goals to sync with your audience preferences will help you optimize your PR strategies and scale-up your bottom-line endeavors.