The combination of PR and branded content is key to creating a quality message relevant to your brand, amplifying and relaying it to a wider audience, according to many new-age PR and brand solutions agencies.
In the world of social platforms, attention spans are steadily decreasing. This has forced brands to adapt to changes at breakneck pace. Combining PR and branded content strategies can facilitate idea sharing and help measure the overall impact of campaigns.
All about branded content
Branded content can take various forms, including videos, podcasts, and articles, and brings value to consumers not just by informing, but also entertaining them.
To produce branded content that is impactful, you need to have a deeper understanding of the values that the brand shares with its customers. Once that is done, you need to create a narrative that aims to strengthen that bond. This kind of branded content will always stand out and amplify your PR and social media outreach as well.
The current market lacks agencies that bring intelligent campaigns to the table by understanding and ideating on stories to connect with the customer. Adherence to delivery timelines, effective management, execution, and monitoring of campaigns is also something that most agencies fail to deliver. However, if you can promise to bridge all those gaps in deliveries through strong network and effective communication strategies, you are in it for the long haul and will surely succeed.
What will engage your efforts?
The key here is to hire a PR firm or a branded content agency that can advise you on content development, including articles, specialized videos, animated infographics and various other new and engaging content formats. In addition to designing specialized campaigns, they should also be capable enough to work closely with you for media planning needs, print and electronic advertising, and social media campaigns for lead generation on both PPC and CPM models.
In addition to this, other important elements of effective branded content should include communication planning, media campaign creation, campaign measurement and creative development. And all these elements must be driven by data, a deep insight into consumers, and a thorough understanding of how media operates.
Also, you must take the “content is king” adage very seriously. Let your content talk to your customers. Keeping the customer informed by bringing them valuable and relevant content about your business on a consistent basis is an important strategy.
It is also essential to create stories for consumers, and not just for revenue. This will make your content more memorable. It is also extremely important to syndicate this content as much as you can. Don’t just rely on a single platform to work its magic and expect sales to skyrocket. PR isn’t dead. Use it to share that content far and wide.
What about the other way around?
While we talk about branded content to enhance PR, we must also remember that it works very well the other way around, too.
Many people say that the goal of a good PR program is to be able to build a solid reputation for any brand or company or even an individual. Some also say that PR can’t drive sales and marketing, and it is the job of branded content to do so. However, one must remember that the lines between PR and marketing are blurring every day, and the two must work together, hand in hand, to achieve the objective of ultimate brand supremacy for any company.
Do you know what an excellent PR program does? The job of a PR program is to basically lay the foundations for an even stronger marketing plan. So that when the time comes, marketing can better condition prospective buyers or consumers for sales. This will be driven through paid media, email marketing, or even heavy price promotions. Also paid media can help amplify the third-party endorsement that Public Relations can achieve through things such as product reviews, influencer posts, and feature or opinion articles.
Earned media is key
Here the importance of things like earned media can never be understated. For instance, in the stories and interviews that are created by PR. This will always and forever remain relevant. That is because earned media has the kind of credibility that nothing else does. No paid media such as ads or even owned content such as blog posts or creative social videos can beat the supremacy of earned media. That is because earned media is basically a third-party endorsement for your brand. Hence, obviously it becomes much more effective than something that your team creates and posts it on your own website or social media channels. And it is even more powerful than something like a user testimonial.
One must also remember that buyers these days are a lot more educated than their previous generational counterparts. Promoting some products that are more complicated such as software enterprise or an automated car can be more difficult than selling a basic FMCG good. Today’s buyers have access to a host of information and resources at their fingertips. Hence, to develop an effective promotional strategy you need to create multilayered stories in the form of long-form content. Here PR will help you build that narrative.
What do you think of all these ways to help PR and branded content work for each other?
