Public relations is an industry currently almost unrecognisable from what has existed in the past. Many companies have not yet caught up to the changes that have happened in the industry.
Despite all the changes, the industry will certainly continue to be valuable to businesses in the future. They will shape how businesses are launched and how they grow among many other facets of a business.
The more you look into the nature of PR companies, the more apparent it becomes that there are new movements in PR that will shape the future of the industry.
The following are some of the new PR movements:
Data
Modern public relations is being largely driven by data. It is a movement that will continue into the foreseeable future of the industry.
Public relations is mostly about telling stories to the public. If you want to tell compelling stories that actually shape public opinion, then you need to collect and scrutinise as much data as you can.
The internet has ensured that there is so much data available about any topic, institution, or individual. Moreover, it is accessible at the touch of a button. Every company has its own fate in its hands depending on how well they use data to tell stories.
The use of data to define public relationships is becoming ever more crucial. It is especially so for start-ups that start off with a blank PR slate.
These startups need to understand the importance of every piece of data they accrue. Moreover, they need to understand how to use the data in a way that will ensure compelling stories for their target market, journalists, and the public at large.
New companies are leading this PR movement since they can collect a mountain of data from Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms. The data can then be analysed and used to inform the next public relations strategies and actions.
Pitching
In the past decade, the internet and subsequently email systems have become ubiquitous all over the world. The result is that people receive too many emails today for them to sort conclusively through all of them.
In the past, mass emails could be effective because journalists, writers, and public relations professionals received very few emails. However, today you can only pitch effectively to the public if you study each person in your email list individually.
You cannot get away with pitching strategies that would have previously worked such as mass emailing. Moreover, emails are so prevalent that your audience would know the pitching mistakes you would make since people are getting so many emails nowadays.
As we have seen, public relations is more data-driven than ever before. Therefore, pitching in modern public relations has to be done carefully after a ton of research.
Pitching is especially important for new companies that have to make the public aware of their presence. Those startups that are pitching themselves based on solid research, as opposed to generic pitches sent in mass emails, are becoming successful.
Personalization of pitches is a trend that will continue into the foreseeable future. With the right PR team, you can create messages that will speak to each and every member of your audience.
Analytics
In the past, even recently, marketing was thought to largely be a creative endeavour where only qualitative details were important. All it took was dazzling images that would mesmerise the public and get their attention.
However, a new movement in public relations is the use of numbers particularly those related to analytics. The rise of tools such as Google Analytics have presented PR companies with a lot of numerical information that can be put to excellent use.
It is no longer enough to have a compelling YouTube video or a beautiful ad on TV for great PR. It is much more difficult for the public to trust such messages hence the need for numbers.
The popular saying is that “numbers don’t lie” and it is certainly true when it comes to marketing. It seems to be the best way to discriminate between right and wrong information when it comes to PR.
Any company that wants to have a successful public relations campaign has to welcome numbers and analytics in general. Even companies whose main goal is to have a social impact have to collect and analyse data.
If you can display analytics in easily understandable metrics, then you are almost assured of great public relations. People are interested in stories that are actually supported by numbers.
Influencers
The internet has effectively made the entire planet into a global village. Modern PR is determined by many more elements than the mainstream media.
In the past, the press was largely responsible for the public perception of any organisation. However, some individuals can now impact the lives of millions of people on their own. They are called influencers.
There are several people today who are not only popular and followed by millions or thousands of people, but they are also trusted. If they are considered credible, then many people will hang on to their every word and believe what they say about a particular entity.
Influencers have a tremendous impact on the public perception of companies and other organisations. They have especially had an impact on the marketing of various products and services.
The new movement in public relations will see the impact of social media influencers reduce in the future. The main reason is that it is very difficult for companies to figure out the return on investment of using influencers.
Some businesses are already deciding to completely shun the use of influencers. Each company will have to decide whether these influencers provide enough value to retain them.
More than Publicity
Publicity for every organisation is important because they will be interacting with the public. However, publicity will not ensure customer loyalty or that your business is profitable in the long run. The team behind Alfred London mentioned that more and more companies are realising that publicity can only take you so far. When you contact a PR agency, you should ask about the endgame of the campaign. Publicity should only be the beginning.
The end goal of a public relations campaign or strategy should go far beyond affecting public perception. It should be all about customer satisfaction as that will make for a more successful business in the long run.
It does not matter how good public perception of your company is, you have to satisfy your customers. If they are not satisfied with your product or service, they will move on to a competitor in a matter of weeks.
A company, particularly a startup should prove that their product provides their customers with value. It should at the very least solve the problem or offer the solution it claims.
Publicity only works if you can assure your customers of value.
Content
The content that you generate today will have a significant impact on public relations. It is hence crucial for every company to have a content strategy.
A company should definitely focus on the quality of products or services. However, having a content creation and marketing strategy to match it. Those that do will undoubtedly outperform the competition.
It used to be a mammoth task to get your target market to even notice your brand. With the advent of social media, everything changed. Platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp now have billions of users.
Companies can now use these platforms for brand awareness with a previously impossible reach. If your brand is noticeable on social media, then even traditional media outlets will also take notice.
If you want your brand to be noticed on social media, the best way is to prioritise content creation and marketing. In fact, that is what we essentially describe as modern public relations and will seemingly continue to do.
Social media is especially useful for public relations because of its interactive capacity. You can affect public perception on both a mass and individual level.
Profitability
It has become apparently clear in the recent past that receiving big publicity in both traditional and new media does not mean big numbers. Many startups since 2018 have offered sufficient proof of this.
Despite many new businesses receiving a lot of media attention, they were unable to receive enough capital from investors. The publications that praised these companies diminished their reputation after their failures became public.
A new movement in PR will be driven by profitability. There will be more PR companies that will be interested in whether start-ups can convert the attention in the media into actual profits.
Every non-charitable company in the world exists to make a profit or is at least a main part of their agenda. Therefore, profitability will be seminal in determining the type and level of PR a company is able to do.
It is a movement that is mainly being driven by investors who are seemingly tired of investing in companies with great PR but no profits. Every new business will have to prove it is worth its salt before receiving millions of dollars in capital.
Cheaper PR
If you have seen Mad Men, the TV series, then you know that public relations and marketing were previously a very prestigious field. Only the best companies could afford to pay for such services.
However, with developments in technology, PR has become cheaper and cheaper. Therefore, a movement you will see in PR is the increasingly reducing cost.
Moreover, companies are now able to do their PR with a small staff. Therefore, the role of public relations agencies is increasingly being diminished in business.
Granted, there are PR companies that will still offer value to businesses to justify their existence. However, these companies will become rarer the more we proceed into the future.
Many PR firms all over the world have significantly downsized in the past five years. Others bought smaller PR companies in order to reduce the competition. These are trends that you can expect to continue in the foreseeable future.
What a PR agency had to do for a company twenty years ago is drastically different today. The main reason is the do-it-yourself platforms that have largely changed how business is conducted online.
Social media in particular has changed the field of public relations especially as it pertains to the flow of information. Companies can now utilize social media to do their own public relations without spending a tidy sum.
New Media
If it was not already apparent, many companies are currently doing more digital business than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic in particular has instigated a significant boost in online business.
The same will happen for PR agencies all over the world. The reason is that they will have to go to where the vast majority of people are online.
Therefore, you should expect more public relations to happen digitally in the future. It is a development that has been driven by many factors mainly by more people spending more time online.
There will be an increasing movement towards doing public relations on newer types of media. For example, only a small fraction of people listened to podcasts just ten years ago. Today over half of the American population regularly listen to podcasts.
If there are any new platforms created in the near future, you can expect that public relations will increasingly be conducted on these sites. Just as social media is increasingly being used for public relations as opposed to traditional media, there will be new platforms that will take some attention away from other media.
Public relation is a field that has existed and will continue to exist. However, the nature of public relations is bound to change significantly in the future. The ways outlined above are some of the new and ongoing movements in the field of public relations.
Public relations will become easier for companies but probably worse for PR agencies. However, there will be PR agencies that will prove to still be valuable. You cannot predict exactly what will happen in the future, but the points above should help you be prepared.
