PR AGENCY DIARIES: ‘SLEIGH’ 2024 & PR YOUR BUSINESS TO SUCCESS
As 2023 draws to a close, it's nigh time to set some new year’s resolutions for your business that will get the jump on your competitors and make 2024 sing. And because we’re feeling a bit silly this season, we’ve drawn inspo from our favourite Christmas carols to guide you towards a successful and fruitful year and grow your business with the help of PR.
"Deck the Halls" – Ditch the same ol’ same ol’ and commit to decking your PR strategy with some real creativity:
Resolution: Switch up your strategy for generating compelling ideas. Embrace creativity and innovative thinking in all aspects of your PR campaigns.
Just as you’re decorating your home with a bit of Christmas sparkle this season, your PR efforts should be adorned with imaginative and fresh ideas too. If you feel like the ideas coming out of your comms department are lack-lustre or a rinse-and-repeat of last year’s ‘average at best’ campaigns, get it in the diary to talk turkey and challenge the team to come up with out-of-the-box solutions. Ask – “if there were absolutely no boundaries, what could we do to wow our audience?” and work back from there. Interrogate who they actually think the audience is, and perhaps ask if they can think through other perspectives to find a new one (or extend on the same old).
Working with an external PR agency can give just the right amount of distance from the weeds to find new angles, fresh perspectives, and exciting opportunities that your team may never have considered. Use your experience and deep knowledge of your brands to articulate your communications challenge and objectives and then trust the pros to sprinkle the magic dust.
"Jingle Bells" - Ring in consistent messaging:
Resolution: Maintain consistent messaging across all communication channels.
Think you’ve got your comms on lock but your social looks like a scrambled mess? Or social grid looks top notch but no one’s taking any notice? Just as the old banger "Jingle Bells" rings harmoniously, your brand messaging should echo consistently across all communication channels – especially your earned media (PR) and social. You want your PR plays, social media feed, influencer campaigns and paid media all singing from the same song sheet and it’s not hard to do with a bit of planning and clever thinking.
Make it your Jan job to lay out the marketing calendar and see what you’ve got covered off and what’s missing. An in-store promo you thought was small-fry might just have legs for something bigger across multiple channels so plot out the possibilities and make sure every channel is chiming in.
"Silent Night" - Listen and respond to your audience:
Resolution: Take stock of what you’re doing to listen attentively to your audience's feedback
In the calmness of a "Silent Night”, it's essential to listen to what your audience is saying about your brand and your PR efforts. Social listening tools and active monitoring of mentions, reviews, and comments will provide valuable insights into your audience's sentiments and perceptions. A survey or a focus group can also be really eye-opening and tell you things about your brand you didn’t realise or recognise.
But, listening to your audience is only half of the Christmas mince pie. It’s what you do with that insight that really counts. A single comment on a social media post might give you a valuable jumping off point to create a key message for a campaign or even the premise of a whole new concept.
If your brand activity is getting negative feedback, make sure you listen carefully and revise your strategy before it snowballs and take note of these helpful tips so you don’t crock in a crisis.
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" - Spread your jolly good news, but make it count:
Resolution: Trust the pros to craft angles that cut through and create media strategies that convert
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is all about spreading joy and goodwill, and your PR campaigns should do just that, but it’s not simply a matter of banging out some “we’re thrilled to announce…” quotes in a press release and blasting it out to all and sundry.
Good PR professionals will tell you honestly if your story is newsworthy or not, and advise you on the angles that will make their media contacts take notice. They’ll write your press releases in a way that journalists appreciate (and good ones won’t be peppered with brand slogans and boring info). Your job is to fact-check the details and give as much information as you can in your brief for the comms team to weave it into an eye-catching headline.
Anyone who’s conducted a decent PR campaign will know that press releases don’t get picked up by everyone (and to be honest, sometimes we don’t even use it to get the best results) and there needs to be a strategy so that your news is appearing in the right place, at the right time, and in the right tone. You want to avoid a ‘spray and pray’ approach and instead be deliberate and targeted with your PR efforts.
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" - Focus on building meaningful connections with the right people:
Resolution: Prioritise building authentic relationships with influencers that make sense and cents.
Just as love takes centre stage during the holiday season, so should nurturing your relationships with key influencers that actually reach your target audience. Believe it or not, but there isn’t one party list to rule them all. New Zealand, and Auckland in particular, is far too much of a melting pot to have the same people invited to every PR event, and the same people pushing the products each campaign.
It’s much more effective to customise your target lists, personalise your outreach efforts and engage in meaningful conversations that make total sense (read: if you’re trying to target Gen Z and you’re not Gen Z, it’s a very good thing you don’t know anyone on the influencer list, and in the same vein, if people over 50 are the most likely to be buying your products, make sure it’s not all 20-somethings plugging your brand).
Too often we see people base their influencer campaigns around the social media accounts they personally follow. While there might be some gems in your follow list, you should be looking at who’s the bang on fit and has the analytics to back it up. Are the majority of their followers based in New Zealand? Is their engagement impressive or are they better for content creation only rather than conversions?
Chalk it up on the to-do list to mix up your influencer target lists and give your strategy an overhaul.
Plug some time in the calendar now to take stock of your comms efforts and see what needs to be switched up for 2024. And if you could do with some external nous (most do). We’re swallowing our own pill and adding some sugar and spice to our own as we speak.
