Importance of digital PR in brand promotion

Public relations is one of the important tools to reach audiences and build credibility amongst them using a variety of tactics. Brands put forward their narrative and bank on it to grow their business across horizons. At the recently held e4m PR and Corp Comm 40under40 Summit, a panel of experts discussed the importance of digital PR in brand promotion. The experts spoke about various nuances of public relations when it comes to dealing with online audiences

The panel had Anand Prakash, Senior Group Head, Adfactors PR, Akanksha Jain, Head- Public Relations, Corporate Communications, Bharatpe; Kritika Padhy, Account Director, 80 dB communications; Bhawna Gupta, Director, Client Relations, Hill+Knowlton Strategies. The session was moderated by Ruhail Amin, Sr. Editor BW Businessworld & Exchange4media.

Starting the conversation about the cluttered space of online PR and how they are cutting through the clutter, Prakash of Adfactors said, “Digital PR has made the work of PR easier. One can do a scientific outreach, you can do more earned media. Comparing to marketing, where you can not only promise, here you can actually deliver.  There are a lot of platforms where you can go to map what kind of conversation is happening around the industry, and around the client. You can do good Google analytics, where the conversation tonality and the keywords are present with the statistics. 

“You might have a different perception about your brand because you are working in a company XYZ as a corp com person or a CEO but when you go and do research on the analytics, you will find a different reason for not having that kind of positioning that you deserve or you feel,” he said while speaking about the factor that can make the brand ahead of the clutter.

When asked about the challenges faced while executive PR through digital means, Jain of BharatPe said, “When it comes to challenges, there are a whole bunch of them, one being, you have two there are a lot of players out there, how do you differentiate yourself, how do you get the attention of your audience. Hence, it's important when a brand is trying to think through, its digital PR strategy to understand what it or what its audience would consume.”

“You have to also use multiple form factors in terms of content, it's not like one certain form factor works across channels. For example, YouTube does really well for our set of audience because they consume YouTube. But for a certain set of audience where your consumers are more regional, a Sharechat might do really well. Also the same set of content will not do well across channels as I said so for an employer brand, we are really leveraging LinkedIn and we're getting great traction out there but it may not do well for Twitter.”

Speaking on the importance of digital PR, Padhy of 80db Communications, said, “With the limited amount of space that traditional media offers us, now brands are focused on their target audience. If they have the right impressive element available to them, it is definitely easy to reach out to your target audience. It is very important to be sure of the type of information and the narrative that we are reaching out to the audience with.”

When asked about can brands do “out of box” things with digital PR, Gupta of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, said, “The out of box thing is all about where your consumer is, so what is the consumer consuming, how often they can see, what is the behavioral pattern. It all boils under this. So if you have your data analysis in place and you know the behavior of your consumer, you know what the consumption pattern is, you can curate your communication. What are we PR people doing, we're actually solving a communication problem, that's the Baseline. When we know the problem and we know where our consumer is, we can curate it. To answer the question of out-of-the-box, it all boils down to the fact of which tools, that you're using. I think this is where your creativity comes.”

When asked about how one can tackle crisis and what measure to to be taken in consideration, Jain said, “I think, in crisis, it's important to choose the words you want to fight and let go of some of the battles. There will be a lot of things that could come your way, which as a brand you should not say anything about, you should look at the long-term goal and the long-term vision that you have for the brand. Whatever is really damaging the reputation you will have to protect it with numbers, protect it with facts and I think that's how it works well.” Prakash and Padhy also spoke on similar lines when they said that brands should choose their battles and let go of some. 

Gupta on the other hand said, “Do not hide anything, the bigger the brand, the more is the pull. It becomes very imperative that you know your messaging, you know the situation, you know the story and you come out and talk to them. It becomes imperative that you tell your story, narrate it, engage with the customer. There's no hiding behind it. I rightly agree with what panelists said, you choose your words. Sometimes staying silent helps, sometimes saying less is more. But facing the realities always helps.”