Branding helps to promote a business’s image by creating a recognisable design for it. It ‘brands’ the business, which helps to separate it from other businesses. Branding creates a distinctive face for an organisation and the products/services they offer through symbols, names and other design features. It helps a business to stand out, promoting their image, and further their popularity with consumers.
How PR Helps to Improve Brands
PR helps to generate authenticity, communicate the business’s story, whilst also providing a depth and character to the brand. Whilst advertising still remains a vital tool in promoting a business, public relations help to build up a successful brand that the public like and can relate to.
However, with such major recent shifts in the way people get their news, with almost everything being done online via social media platforms, which in practice allows brands to target wider audiences as well as specific, niche audiences when they need to. For example, a brand may need to target audiences in the sport, retail or fashion space (read more). However, just how relevant has PR kept itself in relation to building up a brand’s image?
Arguably, with this rise in online connectivity, PR is now more important than ever in helping to improve a brand’s image, from analysing target audiences to selecting the most relevant platforms to promote on.
The PR world is one that is constantly evolving, with new tactics and ways to boost a client’s visibility continuously being added to its proverbial tool box. There are various different ways in which PR can help with the branding of a business, developing a good image that the public will like and want to be associated with.
Target Audience
One of the main ways in which PR can help to improve a client’s brand is through identification of the target audience, which will also play a huge part in improving the experiences of your customers.
Identifying the most suitable audience for a brand through the products/services they offer plays a major role in their success. Certain types of people will be more likely to engage with a brand than others, dependent upon the products and/or services they provide. PR helps to identify the prime audience for a brand, and works at finding the best tactics to reach them.
Developing Optimised Stories
In addition to finding the target audiences, PR companies can also help to tailor their client’s stories so that they engage with this audience effectively. PR can help to develop a brand’s personality, optimising its publicity to get the attention of the most suitable audiences, and further helping to improve a brand’s popularity, and thereby image.
Selecting Communication Channels
PR can also target the best communication channels for a business to promote their brand through. Different audiences will get their news and information through different channels, for example, the younger generations will use social media platforms as a source of information more so than the older generations.
Therefore, PR can help a business to improve their brand’s image by finding the best platforms to promote them through that will reach these target audiences.
Creating Content
PR companies help a brand to create interesting content that audiences will engage in. This content not only helps audiences to engage with the brand, but also promotes a business’s authority within their field. Promoting authority within the business’s area of expertise can go to further improve a brand’s image, showing that they are incredibly knowledgeable within their field, and thereby a reputable business to get involved in.
PR helps to create this content to promote a brand’s image through various different outlets; including blogs, social media, and other platforms that will be most effective in reaching the target audience.
Any worthwhile PR campaign will most likely include some media appearances as well. Regardless of the business type, everybody wants free media exposure and that oftentimes means having to do interviews. In lieu of a spokesperson, the CEO or somebody qualified inside the company should take up media training online or offline to help.
