How to Drive Business Sales From Public Relations ?

There has been a continuous debate if PR can drive sales? Though a lot of people disagreed with the claim of sales acceleration with the help of PR campaigns, in reality, a well-planned and executed Public Relations strategy can help a business reach more customers and generates higher traffic to a website. Hence, the equation can be put as Planned PR Strategy = Higher traffic + More Leads

Now, the question that arises is how to implement the plan to drive sales? Remember that your reputation in the market is something that attracts more customers to your business. Only a strong brand identity can leave a long-lasting impression in the minds of the consumers. After all, it’s your obligation to make sure that your customers never forget you. But, how to do that?

Here are few PR tips for enhancing the customer conversion rate & driving business objectives:

Social Media - Indeed! 

It is vital to the creation of a robust marketing campaign. Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and the list of social media sites continue along with delivering the power of reaching a vast group of people. Bang on! Social media contributes to building a brand’s credibility and helps to achieve fan’s loyalty. Also, it is a reliable solution to stay connected with the target audience and keep a track on the demand trends in the market. In fact, it is a great strategy that can drive sales like never before as sellers can produce a product according to the buyer's requirement and help maintain equilibrium between demand and supply. Also, PR is not only about building perception among audiences, but to keep their interest intact. For example - If an organization keeps on managing their updates on social sites, customers feel confident of the company’s existence. It helps them build a bond between both the parties and boosts seller’s goodwill. Even the customers develop a sense of security while dealing with their choice of vendors. Just stay connected with your clients and keep them informed about your recent developments in your field of expertise and see the magic happen.

Tell Your Expertise

Being visible on search engines is just one part of a coin. The other condition that must be taken into account is the need for the concerns to propagate about their expertise. Again media and content take the lead in this regard. Customers feel interested in a particular brand only if they have knowledge about their products or services and whether the concerned brand can fulfil their need. There are so many dealers of kids skin care products in the market, but Johnson & Johnson is the only name that comes to mind when a mother is asked to buy these stuff for her child. It’s because she is aware of their expertise and trust them when it comes to judging them on the quality front.

Brand Building - Without a doubt, building a brand is tough in today’s competitive market, but the irony is that it’s not that difficult either. We are living in a media-dominated society where a piece of content, image, and video takes just a few hours to go viral and if you want to sell more, you will have to build a unique identity for your brand. Company’s logo is considered as the image of a brand and connecting with one’s target audience through company’s image is pretty convenient. It helps in creating awareness for a brand and hence, enhances the sales of the enterprise. From a perspective of Public Relations, knowing your audience and their choice is key to developing a strong marketing foundation. Also, acquiring an image of being honest and credible sellers adds to your goodwill and further encourages people to be your loyal customers.

Co-create Gated Content with experts to drive relevant business leads

Focus on creating a good content which can be useful for your target audience. The consumer will fill the form & download the content which can be used as prospect leads. With public relations, startups can co-create the gated content with bloggers, thought leaders & industry experts to bring more insights & credibility.

Example:

• A guide to managing your finances - good for fin-tech startup
• Guide to buy a best mobile phone - good for e-commerce/consumer electronic startups

Advertising the Brand’s Purpose 

If a company can successfully promote its mission, half the race gets won here. Here is an example of TOMS shoes, a company that came up with a campaign called “Improving lives”. They donated about 10 million shoes to the needy children till the year 2013, the year when they hit the mark of seven years in the industry. People knew that they help poor kids and happily paid good prices for their shoes. Apparently, they propagated about their campaign through content marketing and social media. They applied a fantastic PR campaign to build their brand and earned many customers. If you can do something that can bring your company’s image to a limelight (indeed a positive image), you can drive more sales for your product.

Example of a campaign that drove the business result 

A recent PR & viral marketing campaign that we executed for an Indian Tea Company, TE-A-ME teas, received 9900% increase in website organic traffic & 1100% increase in international business enquiries. This is a perfect example of how public relations can help in driving sales & solve business objectives. The campaign also received most creative PR Stunt Award in PR Awards 2017. 

Content Marketing via owned assets

Focusing on the strategy of three E’s, i.e., Engage, Entertain and Educate contribute to generating higher traffic to a website. An engaging blog that is informative and entertaining to read adds up to your brand’s credibility. A lot of you must have a feeling that blogging is quite simple, but friends, a blog that hits it right is a key to rule the world of content. Blogs and articles connect an enterprise to their potential buyers and the one with a complete analysis of the character of a company devise a long-lasting relationship between the purchaser and the seller. Blogging is an important aspect of Public Relations that has been designed specifically to keep the consumers informed, and only relevant content is a key to enticing buyers.

Building and nurturing Brand Ambassadors 

You must be aware that most of the people look for customer reviews before making an online purchase. They make use of community forums, review sites for doing an online research; while, they ask for friend’s recommendations in person for doing an offline research. A PR campaign targeting forums and social media help to converse with customers so that they speak the story of your product’s quality. These social influencers become your brand ambassadors and publicize for you indirectly. Daniel Wellington, a Swedish watchmaker, hooked up with thousands of influencers on Instagram who posted the images of his watches with a caption that mentioned the inclusion of a discount code for 15% off on DW watches and it worked marvellously and persuaded a lot of people to buy these watches.

Loyalty to brands can be created and strengthened, but it may not take enough time to diminish as well. It is necessary to consider the likes, tastes and preferences of the potential buyers to keep the graph accelerating. Only a viable PR campaign designed to understand the need of the target audience can help to cope with the existing competition in the market.