Brand promotion in crisis

The crisis justifies any decisions made by management to optimize the business: the dismissal of part of the staff, cutting salaries, cutting budgets for PR and marketing. The main goal is to maintain the same level of income. However, obvious at first glance solutions are not always true. The market dictates new conditions for the game and not accepting them means losing the game before the start of the game. Reducing "non-production" costs and total savings lead to lower product quality and painfully hit the brand and image of the company. Quality is falling - customers are leaving. Market experts talk about PR trends and pose new challenges for entrepreneurs.

To lead your company through the reefs of the economic crisis with minimal loss of team and cargo is the main goal of any business owner. But the increasing pitching makes you get rid of the "ballast". And as a rule, the first solution is to reduce marketing and PR costs. “The crisis has come, which means spending on PR needs to be reduced! PR is an excessive luxury in such conditions, ”argues the majority of mid-sized entrepreneurs. However, practice shows that without the benefits that PR gives to a business, in a crisis it is easy to lose the last chance to keep your company afloat, not to mention to get the maximum profit!

The power of a word

Do not underestimate the power of PR. According to experts, one should not focus on budget cuts (although optimizing costs in a crisis, of course, will benefit the company), but increasing the effectiveness of their PR campaigns. The power of PR in such a crisis is not just proven and has once again been confirmed by experience, but has increased markedly.

“PR forms a sense of trust among clients, a desire to be involved in the activities of the company, perception of its image as emotionally close and authoritative. PR brings information through communication channels that are trusted by customers. A PR message doesn’t try to force the client to buy or do something and therefore is perceived without internal resistance, and after that the advertisement of the company's products is perceived by the client more loyally, ”says Dmitry Singeyev, analyst, business consultant.

“If you are a medium-sized company, now is the best time to engage in PR and“ conquer ”your place in the information space. In any case, develop, come up with new approaches in working with your target audiences. After all, a crisis is not only a “danger” (to lose everything), but also a “favorable opportunity” (to reach a new level), ”says Tatyana Dubrovina, a specialist in PR, leading seminars on business and interpersonal communications.

In a new way directly to the client

In the last 5 years, the PR industry, despite the problems in the global economy, has been developing by leaps and bounds. You can even talk about increasing the importance of this means of promoting a product with increasing instability. This is largely due to the rapid development of the Internet and social media. “The main trends in the field of communications balance between emotions (periods of crisis, loss of confidence, desire for more personalized communications, desire for more transparency) and pragmatism (focused strategic plans with tangible, evidence-backed results),” emphasizes Jeremy Galbraith, CEO Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA),

There are clear trends in the development of communications between companies and consumers of goods or services that will shape the work of PR managers in the next couple of years.

1. Universal soldier . Today, the role of a competent PR professional is not limited to writing press releases and sending them to journalists. Old PR tools are losing their former effectiveness, while others, on the contrary, are becoming more effective.

“Both the reaper and the Swiss ...” are about PR managers of the 21st century: communications are only one hundredth of their work. “Over the past couple of years, we have noticed a significant demand for universal wagglers who were ready to work in several areas of activity at once,” comments Angela Travis, manager of the American HR agency Ashdown Group, commenting on this trend. “Yes, they have to pay more than other employees by at least 45-50%, but they are able to carry out the work of 3-4 highly specialized managers ...” Today, the PR department is an event and a creative agency “in one bottle”. Out-of-the-box thinking and openness to the new are not only welcome, but also become mandatory.

2. Digital communications. We're talking, of course, about social media and online platforms. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, popular blogs… These are the platforms that keep millions of people constantly checking their phones, tablets, and now even smartwatches in search of fresh information, inspiration, and emotional stimulation. For PR professionals, this means the emergence of new platforms for promoting products or services, a simple and quick way to reach clients. Today, it's difficult to imagine a successful PR campaign without digital tools. Online platforms not only allow you to stay in touch with your clients but also help you track their reactions to your product or service online. "It's worth considering that the days of mindless consumption on social media are over – today there are too many identical groups filled with similar content. The only way to be interesting to your audience is to create unique or useful content without overwhelming users, who come to social media to relax from work and have a good time," advises Sergey Karpov, CEO of SP Media.

“Social networks require full and continuous engagement. And this means that your task is not just to convey information to the client, but also to maximize the capabilities of networks. How exactly? To identify those who matter to the company, to understand what they say, how it affects others and how best to involve them in your work. The key to this is the balance between emotions (dialogue) and pragmatism (measuring the size of influence), ”emphasizes Jeremy Galbraith.

3. 24 / 7. Work schedule from 9.00 to 18.00 and one hour lunch break - canceled forever! On the Internet, life does not stop for a second, which means that the work of your PR department should be structured in such a way as not to lose touch with the client. Continuous communication over time will help not only promote the product, but also protect the brand’s reputation: you must promptly respond to any negative statement addressed to you. “You should remember one important thing,” warns Ashley Rubens, an SSM specialist at CyberCoders, “every negative response that you have not noticed or considered bullshit will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars of damage to your company. Such responses, as a rule, produce an avalanche effect. They like to "postpone" the negative and like to "share" it, so your little problem grows into a real PROBLEM, of which several tens or even hundreds of thousands of people know. How to avoid this? It is important to respond promptly and even if you do not have a ready-made answer to a client’s question / complaint, an answer like “Sorry, I can’t solve your question now, but I requested the head office and we will solve this problem in the next couple of hours. We apologize to you ”- instantly brings down the severity of the situation. And the phrase “Accept as a compensation for the inconvenience a small gift” - turns the situation at 180 degrees and turns a dissatisfied customer into your loyal customer! ” In a similar rhythm of work, bloggers and freelancers will be great helpers. Over the six years of the new millennium, the number of freelance writers has increased by more than 300%. Today freelancers produce over 70 percent of online content.

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4. Clients are brand advocates. "Your brand is no longer what you tell your audience about it. It's what they say about it. The public forms its own opinions about brands and companies, and they do so as publicly as possible," says Paul Holmes, creator of the Holmes Report, the world's most authoritative annual PR research. "We know that Twitter and Facebook followers love to share information on their pages—they describe both positive and negative experiences with a particular product. In this way, they spread information about a product or brand without your help. But this doesn't mean that after receiving a positive review, your PR team rushes to report on the work done; communication is established if your team remembers to thank the client for the review, and if they are dissatisfied, ask what can be improved to ensure they like the product next time. "Love your fans," advises Mac Collier, founder of #BlogChat. Think about how to turn your customers into true fans. Provide them with all the necessary tools to promote your brand and get a ton of absolutely free PR.

5. Social listening. This is another new phrase that has emerged with the rise of online media. It perfectly illustrates the interaction between companies and their clients. Today, it's essential not only to interact with clients, but also to constantly monitor the community's reaction to your publications: what generates the most interest, and what, conversely, seems uninteresting. Clients don't want to hear about the "uniqueness of your product," "supreme quality," and "key competitive advantages"; they want to speak and be heard. Keep your ear to the ground to accurately hear where your clients are heading. "It's actually not as difficult as it seems at first glance," says Anthony Rubens, PR manager at Creative Circle. "There are now several software products that allow you to monitor client sentiment in real time." The main thing is to invest in analysts who can process the received data and understand the true mood of your customers. This approach will help improve interactions with potential users, which, in turn, will create a positive image of you in the eyes of your customers, making it easier for you to establish and maintain contact with them.

6. Brand Journalism. "Media companies are no longer the only link to information and audiences. The very definition of 'news' has changed, and this evolution has created an opportunity for PR professionals and content managers to deliver timely content that allows brands to earn additional points and become more visible and relevant," says Jeremy Galbraith. A PR professional's primary task is to find stories and tell them in ways that compel audiences not only to participate but also to share. Brand journalism is a new form of expressing thoughts and ideas. It shouldn't be confused with content marketing, which is guilty of conforming to a system, which completely destroys the uniqueness of its content. Mastering brand journalism means learning to tell meaningful, high-quality stories.

7. Lively information. The days of dull press releases are over. Today, when creating a flyer or social media post, it's essential to actively utilize multimedia. The first press release was created in the fall of 1906 by Ivy Lee, the man considered the founder of PR. For most of its history, press release writing remained relatively unchanged. However, this remained the case until the turn of the millennium. "When I started my career in PR more than a decade ago, we wrote classic press releases for the press. Boring! Today, to attract journalists' attention to an event, people increasingly use the internet—creating custom landing pages, posting provocative YouTube videos…" says Lindsay Gropper, Vice President of BLASTmedia. According to British PR manager Jeff Esposito, three types of press releases will emerge and gain a foothold in the market over the next five years: "video," "social" (shorter and more concise, designed for social media), and "informational," similar to today's press releases but packed with statistics and additional information. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And that's not far from the truth. Colorful, engaging diagrams that explain everything clearly are a must-have for a modern press release. They include a wealth of useful data and help convey the necessary information more accurately to the client. The modern generation is largely visual, and psychologists note that the attention span of young people living in large cities is declining year after year. All of this speaks volumes about the use of infographics in PR materials.

8. Efficiency and Transparency

One of the trends in PR is to calculate everything from the scope of a campaign to its effectiveness. At Burson-Marsteller, we developed an evidence base for communications with conducting research among the target audience and calculating the results. “Digital campaigns are usually easy to track, because many channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have their own analytic programs that allow you to see the coverage of campaigns in terms of views, retweets, likes, etc.,” commented John Barton, an employee of Burson-Marsteller, “But it takes us beyond the scope of simple calculations and leads to the understanding that it will change the rules of the game in the field of communications ...” In general, you should prepare for the fact that calculating everything will be difficult and the budget as always is not enough. However, it has always been so!

Russian market of PR *

Last year, Buman Media and HeadHunter conducted a study identifying the main trends in the PR profession.

So, 68% of respondents to the survey admitted that over the past few years they began to encounter social media in their work much more often than before. So, the responsibilities of 44% of respondents now include maintaining corporate pages, and 47% of respondents had to master the skills of advertising on social networks.

13% of the polled PR managers were forced to master web design skills, and 28% learned how to work with search engine optimization. 10% of PR professionals advertise on mobile devices. It is noteworthy that every third is now engaged in contextual advertising (33%), but programming among the important skills of communication specialists is in last place (6%).

The main communication channels remain online media (3,95 points from 5) and print media (3,82 points from 5), the third and fourth place with a slight difference are social networks and radio / TV. Blogs occupy an honorable fifth place in the ranking - their significance in Russia so far is not rated too high - only in the 2,64 point from 5.

More than half of the surveyed (56%) PR-specialists admitted that it has become more interesting to work in the last couple of years, and about 40% are confident that in the near future PR specialists themselves will become bloggers and journalists of their companies.

Few respondents (3%) support the opinion that this profession may completely disappear in the future. When asked if PR specialists want to continue working in the profession, 78% of respondents answered “yes”!

* according to the portal www.cossa.ru