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8th March 2022 - By: alda09x024

PR Tips & Tricks: Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

PR written on a sticky note

Throughout March you’ll be able to count on Nifty’s PR pros for some tips and tricks on landing more coverage, resonating with audiences and building businesses’ reputations. First up, we have some business-to-consumer (B2C) tips to share…

Following up

There is no point in sending out a press release to long list of journalists and letting that be the end of it – you will most likely end up with zero coverage. Traditionally, the best way of doing this has been to pick up the phone, as you are much less likely to be ignored and you can gauge what else your piece may need in order to gain coverage.

As with many other professions, you’ll find a lot of journalists to be working from home even in spite of the easing of Covid restrictions. You might therefore find it harder to get hold of them over the phone, and you should look at finding the social media platform they are most likely to engage with you on.

Whichever way you find best for getting in touch with your target journalists, going about it proactively will allow you to engage in positive dialogue with them, helping to build a relationship and increase the likelihood of them running content you provide them with in the future.

Sophisticated tools for B2C PR

The above point about diversifying the way you follow up with journalists might sound as if you’ve got more work on your plate. However, PR tools and journalist databases are so sophisticated nowadays that you can easily get across the range of platforms journalists use and even get some great insights around the types of content they share and engage with. There’s a lot of benefits of investing in the right platform – our personal favourite is Agility PR, but we’d also recommend tools like Roxhill and Gorkana for your B2C PR needs.

Tone of Voice

Each business has its own personality and character. As such, it is important to get this across in any way you’re representing the business. It can be very easy to lose track of this when working across a variety of different B2C clients, and can be easy to fall into the trap of writing in a generic professional tone. If you can really put the personality of the brand across, you stand a better chance of immersing the journalist into your story and getting them to bite.

Version Control

It’s in your interest to get a grip of this before you learn the hard way. Press releases often have to cross numerous people’s desks and be edited multiple times before a final version is sent out to the media. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that you can easily identify and access the correct version. Changes made to a press release may appear minor, but could result in a significant change in the message that is being put across. Therefore, an earlier version can mean an entirely different story being told and result in a very unhappy client.

Integration – the Niftyverse!

If your audience reads a piece in the press about your business, product or service, you want them to be able to find you easily afterwards, whether that’s on search engines or on social media. After all, what’s the point in a PR push if your target audience ends up on a competitor website after a Google search?

The messaging of your PR content should align with that of your other marketing activities. For example, your website should be optimised for keywords relating to the coverage in order to help drive traffic. If existing pages on the site don’t lend themselves to those keywords, consider repurposing press releases you’ve produced into keyword-rich blog content.

You should also look to capitalise on the power of social media in this case. Sharing this content on socials, complete with relevant hashtags and copy that is written to evoke emotion and instigate conversation, will help to get in front of a wider audience.

If you want to find out how your PR activities can fit in the Niftyverse, get in touch with Nifty today!