The hit TV series Mad Men glamorized the golden age of advertising, but the sales and marketing superstars of that generation had nowhere near the tools, research, and other resources modern marketers and PR professionals have at their disposal.
Communication options are not what they used to be even ten years ago, so if your strategies are based on old thinking, you are missing out and in imminent danger of being left behind. Modern technology has not only given us social media and WiFi in our pockets allowing for near-universal, continual connections between producers and consumers, as well as brands and fans, we also have access to the best data-crunching tools in the history of public relations. Modern data mining allows PR firms to measure metrics we never could before and craft campaigns much more focused that were thought possible a generation ago. And that’s just one of the exciting shifts in PR possibilities you should be taking advantage of right now.
Update Your Influence
The proliferation and universal adoption of social media as an information source and opinion maker has elevated the status of influencers in the field of PR. Where celebrities have almost always played a role in advertising, the extent to which people with influence can create engagement with your message has been expanded greatly in the digital age. You can actually hire celebrities to have or moderate conversations about your products or services in real time, directly with your customer base, who can then immediately go purchase that product or service, again in real time, during that conversation. If you are not taking full advantage of that opportunity, you are missing out. And “celebrity” as a concept is shifting too. Thanks to YouTube, Instagram, and other social platforms, there are countless influencers you may have never even heard of that have legions of fans rivaling any traditional media platform. So, when considering connecting with influencers, don’t forget to consider your niche.
Create New Content
It’s an old saw that nothing sells like a good story, and that hasn’t changed in the digital age. What has changed is how you can tell stories and what form those stories can take. Sure, you can still do long form stuff online, but you can also create videos, podcasts, cartoons, memes, and share your brand story in many other ways. In addition, you can use modern data mining and targeting tools to create hyper focused narratives specifically for certain groups, rather than a single ad for a mass market release.
One important step in this process is to look at what your target market is engaging with. Allow the consumer to drive the kind of content you create, because their choice is going to influence what they see online anyway. Sure, you can pay for ad placement, and there is a time for that; but the plain fact is, people online engage with what matters to them… if you don’t know what that is, you have some research to do.
-5WPR CEO Ronn Torossian
Discover more from Ronn Torossian
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