Looking for ways to expand your reach, increase your bottom line, and improve company cash flow? Public relations (PR) and digital marketing are two of the most effective tools businesses can use to widen their audience pool. Unfortunately, some companies have yet to implement these into their business structure to improve growth. As society adopts a more digital way of doing business, the need for digital marketing and PR also grows.
How PR and Digital Marketing Can Grow Your Small Business
To remain relevant in the industry, you need to be adaptive to the changes of an ever-growing world. Here are five (5) surprising ways PR and digital marketing can grow your small business.
Preserve Brand Consistency
Branding is more than just your logo or the colors that you use on your collaterals. It’s also the voice with which you write content for your clients. A brand is an entire personality that you need to keep intact, so your customers can easily recognize you from the competition.
Inconsistency is inarguably the most common issue when it comes to branding. When brand inconsistencies happen, it becomes much harder for audiences to recognize your company, service, or product. Public relations can help your business remain congruous to your brand and mission.
PR teams are experts at this task. It’s their job to make sure that your reputation as a brand and company remains untarnished. Furthermore, they help your company develop a more robust customer health score — one that reflects your goals and mission as a business.
Widen Audience Network
One of the best things about digital marketing is the ease at which companies can market their services and products to thousands of potential customers with just a single post. All you need to do is find the right platform, create the perfect persona for your business, and you’re basically ready to go!
Previously, marketing involves various tools and equipment to get around. However, with the advent of technology and the internet, it’s perfectly possible to do digital marketing on a smartphone. You can do everything with digital marketing and PR — from responding to customer questions to confirming client orders.
Another great thing about digital marketing is that you don’t even need to do all the marketing yourself. When a customer like your service or product, it’s natural for them to want to share their experience with their friends, family, or colleagues. Digital marketing and social media make it easier for your customers to communicate their experiences with other potential customers.
Modify Marketing Strategies
It’s not uncommon for some marketing strategies to succeed and others to fail horribly. Not every idea strikes gold; so, when that happens, you need PR to navigate the issue and come up with the best solution to get the business back on track. PR teams perform data analytics to evaluate which strategies work and which don’t. They decide whether to keep the methods intact or to modify them to better fit evolving conditions of the market.
When used effectively with digital marketing, businesses are also able to create more effective marketing campaigns. Businesses can target their customers better and generate better leads. Furthermore, it makes it easier for your customers to foster a deeper understanding of your brand and mission.
Reduce Marketing Expenses
Digital marketing can reduce a company’s expenses by A LOT. This is because sharing marketing content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is completely free. Meaning businesses need not spend thousands of dollars on printed marketing collaterals e.g., flyers, posters, banners, etc.
Digitalizing marketing efforts also help Improve waste management by reducing paper waste that results from printing marketing collaterals. Thus, digital marketing is also a great way for companies to reduce their carbon footprint.
With the help of PR, marketers can also create a steady stream of relevant content that both existing and potential customers can use. This is because PR teams are experts at creating marketable content and stories that marketers can share with their company’s audiences. As a result, customers will feel more invested in your business and be more inclined to recommend you to other people.
Improve Customer Experience
Nowadays, customers are more motivated to buy experiences rather than products. If you want to keep your customers coming back, providing them with an unforgettable and unique experience is key. However, that isn’t always easy.
As more and more businesses flock to the markets, industries can easily become saturated with businesses selling the same products or services. Creating experiences that are unique to your business alone can be challenging. This is why you’ll need the help of a high-quality and experienced PR team by your side.
PR teams are experts at creating distinct narratives that customers can enjoy. And with the help of a professional digital marketing team, you can easily advertise this narrative to the right people, using the right platforms, in the shortest amount of time possible.
Create quizzes and surveys about your services to get a better idea of how your customers view them. Evaluate how your customers write about your work and gather as much information as you can about what you can improve and maintain. Once you have everything you need, create a plan for execution with your PR team, development team, and marketing team. Together, you can work on a solution that can make your customer’s experience a much better and happier one.
Final Thoughts
PR and digital marketing both play a massive role in the development of a small business. Besides expanding a business’ reach, both PR and digital marketing can also help cement a brand’s identity in the minds of its target customers. With great digital marketing and PR, not only can you share information about what makes your company worthwhile for clients, but you can also create platforms where both of you can get to know each other on a more personal level. All this can help increase your bottom line and make your business more profitable in the long run.
