10 PR and Marketing resolutions you should be making for 2018
With the new year fast approaching, December downtime is the perfect time to plan your PR and marketing strategy for the first few months. You might also decide it’s the time to inject some fresh ideas and new approaches, so we’ve put together a list of resolutions you should be making that will accelerate your campaigns for the next twelve months and beyond.
1. Refine (or embark on!) your PR journey
You might already have a PR agency, or perhaps you dabble in it internally, but a new year is a great excuse to push things to the next level. As an outsourced agency that works as your insourced team, we see first hand the transformative effect that PR has. If you don’t believe us, just ask our clients.
2. Get involved with social media
We have mentioned to you a few times that social media is no longer a nice to have in B2B, but now we’re telling you! If your competitors are doing it, you should be too. It can seem like a daunting task, but you can find everything you need to know in the social media section of our Content Hub!
3. Get your staff on board
Whether you are a tech company or a fashion company, it is absolutely crucial that your staff are involved in your marketing and PR strategy. In small businesses, it is as much the responsibility of the marketing team as it is your juniors to ensure they are creating a great forward-facing impression. Encourage them to share your content and write blog posts for your website. And if you don’t think it’s beneficial, just read this blog post.
4. Use your insights
Gone are the days when you just send out a few tweets and hope they are received well. There is a whole host of free insights out there that you can utilise to improve your strategy. From Google Trends and Analytics, to Twitter Analytics and LinkedIn insights, the data is there you’ve just got to use it.
5. Plan ahead
PR, marketing or social media, planning is everything and the key to executing a six-month campaign. There’s no point in panic planning when each quarter comes to an end. Keep in mind your six-month plan at all times so you can adjust to fit the industry conversation accordingly.
6. Streamline your social media strategy
If you’ve already got a social media plan in place – go you! But are you doing all the hard work manually? There is a whole host of free scheduling tools out there like Buffer and IFTTT that make it even easier to share content you find interesting. This saves you valuable time that you can use for planning your next campaign.
7. Widen your conversation
So you sell hardware, but you don’t want to talk about anything other than hardware? You might find your campaign running very dry, very quickly. Start bookmarking industry publications in the sectors you trade in and note down what your competitors are talking about. If you engage in wider conversations and wider industry issues, you might just open up a whole host of business opportunities.
8. Spring clean your media targets
This should be an every-six-months job as well as an annual one, but take this as a reminder to spring clean your media targets! Review your messaging and work out which publications fit that best. Check if any journalists have moved on and make sure you build relationships with new ones.
9. Inject something fresh
If you feel like you’ve been doing the same thing all year… you probably have! So time to switch things up a bit and make fresh plans to get your company in front of the right people. We’re talking events, research and media tours! It’s all well and good getting great press coverage, but sometimes old-fashioned face time is needed. We’ve written a guide to media tours and a guide to events to get you started.
10. Work collaboratively
This might be the most important resolution of them all. They say teamwork makes the dream work and when it comes to marketing and PR, it really does! If you aren’t engaging with your agency, you won’t get as much value from them. It’s important to stay engaged and provide them with feedback and ideas when they need it. Remember – collaboration, communication and content is key to a successful campaign!
