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Public Relations and the Compound Effect

Time is money and PR is an investment. Like our investments in the bank, ongoing press relations pay back. There is a cumulative effect when we are able to promote a brand or a product for a year or more.

Influencers – to pay or not to pay?

Advertising agencies were the first to pay influencers directly from their clients’ advertising budgets. PR agencies followed suit, since they had already forged links with influencers. This trend will continue to grow, because unpaid mentions from bloggers are difficult to get. Difficult, but not impossible, because some brands continue to perform well without ever paying influencers, as their products remain highly desirable among this group.

NATA PR MODEL NO 6 – The ultimate Tactic

After finding you key words (why people want to talk about you), writing your press release, and identifying the journalists and bloggers that you need to reach, what is your next tactic?

The next tactic, one that is too often ignored, is really quite simple: follow-ups and reminders. In other words, the sales pitch.

How many times have we heard companies tell us: “We sent them a press release but got no response: PR doesn’t work.”

What (or who) do you pay for if you’re looking for brand visibility?

Advertising and media placement agencies don’t hesitate to purchase more and more integrated content, on top of traditional advertising. However, public relations agencies can make the same budget (or a smaller one) go much further by generating free editorial content for use by the media and bloggers. Brands would therefore do well to combine the strengths of their PR and advertising agencies. This also ensures consistency in key messages and the description of a product according to what the brand wishes to promote.

Is PR a direct sales tool?

At NATA PR we enjoy working for big companies, but we are also passionate about smaller brands that can greatly benefit from our services.` Over the past year, we developed an accessible 6-month formula for SMEs, to show them the kind of results that we can achieve. These small and medium-sized companies sometimes market very innovative products that deserve to be better known by media and by their target customers.

I was surprised to see that despite exceptional results, many have completely stopped their PR activities. The reason they give: PR does not generate enough sales.

Dear SME, please consider that a brand does not become known to its target audience overnight and that 6 months is a very short time to gain the notice of media and bloggers.

Not to mention that generating pure, hard sales is not the primary role of public relations, but rather of the sales department. The main role of public relations is to publicize a product, a company or a service among media and influencers and to reach a target audience.

In today’s world you need a marketing plan with several elements of communication: and PR is one of those elements. Social media alone contribute about 13% of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PR up to 40% via articles written and published organically (free of charge) online.

We need to stop looking for instant success. The greatest successes are related to duration and consistency. And that’s what public relations offers: continuous communications to maximize visibility.

Visibility should not be confused with direct sales. Sometimes they are related, but not always. SMEs mustn’t forget that a brand needs to be built. And that takes time.

THE NATA PR MODEL

6 steps to get known using Public Relations and Social Media.

Several years ago, I hired an advertiser to get a fresh look at what we were doing and better define who we are. The goal was to simplify our work processes because, as public relations experts, we have a talent for making things complicated!

Through these meetings and conversations with our advertising friend, we created the NATA PR Model. Moreover, it was this advertising expert who defined the different steps in our model. We have been using this model for many years and, although we have made a few adjustments, it has proved to be the simplest tool for explaining what we do to our clients.

We created this toolkit at the agency when we were defining our processes. We were in a period of strong revenue growth and so it was paramount to write down everything we were doing to pass it along to our new employees. Our goal was to create an ISO-like operating method, which was precisely what we did. Through this process, we finalized the NATA PR Model.

The NATA PR Model has six steps. Each step is important and, when all six steps are followed, the model has proved to be highly effective.

These six steps provide a manageable overview of a public relations campaign that might otherwise seem intimidating.

Just like advertising campaigns, PR campaigns have a beginning and an end.

The six steps are:

1-Determine why journalists/bloggers would talk about you

2-Tell your story

3-Identify the real influencers

4-Give them the necessary resources

5-Assess the impact

6-Follow up (reminders)

A little careful thinking at each step in the process will allow you to put your creativity to good use. If you want to apply the model on your own, I would suggest that you define a few points for each step. Next, check what one or two journalists or bloggers who have shown interest in your product have had to say about it recently. What did they discuss? What are they writing about now? This could help guide your actions.

The NATA PR Model is the backbone of our public relations campaigns and an effective guide for understanding. It is the basis for our actions. Each step can be expanded depending on the resources you have. However, we have used this version to run massive campaigns for global businesses.

The NATA PR Model is equally effective for multinationals as it is for small businesses with local reach.

NATA PR MODEL NO 3 – Identify the real influencers

With so many people online claiming to be influencers, it can be difficult to identify the real ones. Every day, our agency receives requests from influencers who want to be added to our media list and receive our press releases, or who are offering a paid partnership where they will promote our clients’ products.

For many of the influencers we meet every week, this is a fleeting endeavor that lasts just a few months or years before they move onto something else. In these cases, it is not easy to see how they develop. However, although the term influencer is overused, some influencers manage to stand out, creating a double occupation and making a good living out of this genuine profession. Noticing this, a few years ago agencies began to educate themselves in how to represent these influencers.

A completely new industry was born and has been becoming more structured ever since.

The role of influencers

Today, influencers sell their services to companies, to present and promote products to their community. For example, we often see them using an item or appliance in their kitchen (YouTube) or enjoying a hotel room (Instagram). Brands and companies post the content the influencers create on their own social media platforms.

At NATA PR, we distinguish influencers – who we have categorized – from journalists, even though some of them have real influence on social media and the Internet.

Below you will find the most common categories, as defined in articles by Bertrand Bathelot on the website www.définitions-marketing.com.

DEFINITION

In a marketing context, and in its broadest sense, an influencer is an individual who, by his or her status, position, or media exposure, can influence consumer behaviours in a given universe.

Nata PR: the best of both worlds

This year, Nata PR is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. After two decades in business and now established in Montreal, Toronto, and Miami, the public relations agency has never stopped evolving, from discoveries to partnerships, renewing itself to the industry’s rhythm and of its inevitable mutations. Preparing for the next generation and implementing a personalized approach taking into account the multiple possibilities of digital, its founder, Natalie Bibeau, appointed David Tremblay, the firm’s first partner, in 2017. Tremblay will infuse the company with a young and dynamic vision that will blend harmoniously with the determination and humanity that have characterized Nata PR since its inception.

To read the article by Justine Aubry : https://magazines.grenier.qc.ca/magazine-parution/20200824/