No business can hope to develop into a well-established brand without investing in its PR strategy somewhere along the way. By ensuring that your business looks good in the eyes of the public, you secure its credibility and authority. However, since moving industry trends don’t really explore the notion of PR marketing that much, Movers Development is here to help with that. In this article, we look at some essential steps in creating a PR strategy for your moving business. Keep reading to learn how to start strengthening your brand name in the eyes of your customers.
What is a PR strategy?
- A PR (Public Relations) strategy is a plan of action that an individual or business takes to ensure publicity and credibility for its brand.
PR strategies usually come as a combination of publications on relevant media platforms, brand mentions on podcasts, social media posts as well as public announcements. In fact, the approach is similar to developing a moving company marketing strategy. It all comes down to finding the right way to spread the message about your brand and to increase sales.
Why would your moving business need a PR strategy?
There really isn’t a specific moment when you’ll go “I know what my business needs – a PR strategy!” The truth is that every brand needs to work on its relations with the media and the public. After all, it’s a strong way of advertising your moving business and to dictate relations with customers, both current and future ones. So, before we get into the steps for creating a PR strategy for your moving business, it’s important to note the benefits of doing so:
- It improves brand awareness.
- Crisis management.
- It helps build trust.
- Higher lead generation.
- It helps attract investors.
- Recruitment comes easier.
Creating a PR strategy for your moving business in 8 easy steps
The goal of any PR strategy is to attract the attention of media representatives, brand influencers, and customers with influence. However, accomplishing that goal requires a detailed plan based on detailed research and the exploration of multiple channels. So, here are the seven steps necessary for building a PR strategy for your moving company:
#1: Create a project timeline
The first step in coming up with a PR strategy for your moving business is to create a proper timeline for the project. That translates to deadlines ad buy-ins from stakeholders.
#2: Create goals
What would be the point of coming up with a strategy if it has no endgame? After all, any good plan starts with a goal in mind. And those goals need to be based on proper research in order to be realistic and achievable. Therefore, when creating a PR strategy for your moving business, start by looking back at your engagements with customers in the past year. These are the things you will want to focus on:
- Which type of content attracted the most traffic?
- Which social media channels performed best?
- How did your sales team perform and what pitches did they use?
- What the overall opinions of customers were about your brand?
Once you gather all this data and go through it, you will want to establish a clear set of goals. Are you interested in attracting new crowds to your website, boosting brand awareness, rewriting your reputation, introducing new services, or something else?
#3: Identify your target audience
Understanding your audience is a vital step in converting them into customers. Without knowing what it is that people are searching for in your services, how can you know what to offer them? Hence, the more data you have, the easier it becomes to advertise your moving business in the best way possible. This is where you need to take into consideration factors such as demographics, geo-locations, behavior, etc. Based on these elements, you will be in a better position to create an optimal PR strategy for your moving company.
#4: Do your homework on the competition
Competitive marketing and competitive SEO analysis teach us that there is a lot we can learn simply from monitoring our competitors. And the same applies to PR strategizing. Sometimes, you can learn more from watching how other successful brands handle public relations. That insight, combined with your own ideas, can be refocused and applied toward perfecting your own PR efforts.
#5: Write your key messages
Conveying the core values of your brand is what you want to do through your PR strategy. So, the next logical step would be to write a list of key messages that translate the pillars of your brand to the public. Key messages should be similar to taglines and slogans – concise, catchy, easily understandable, and engaging. They will help you shine a light on any new content you create, no matter the format.
#6: Set and implement tactics
Having done all your research and outlined the goals and key messages of your PR strategy, you will want to shift your focus toward the tools and tactics that you will use to make it all come true. There is a variety of moving company software that you can use to automate and enhance your PR efforts. Additionally, you will need to test out multiple tactics to see which has the most effect on your audiences. Consider some of the following tactics when creating a PR strategy for your moving business:
- News releases that announce a new service/product or an upcoming event, rewards program, etc.
- Creating shareable social media posts that put the spotlight on your services/products.
- Referral marketing that would invite users to recommend your company to others for compensation.
- An open invitation to customers to leave feedback and share reviews for your moving business.
#7: Establish connections with others
PR tactics require the support of third parties to ensure that your publications are seen and promoted through proper channels. And this means that you will need to establish a network of website owners, editors, social media influencers, brand ambassadors, etc. All these people will serve your PR strategy by ensuring that the content you create sees the light of day through their channels. Of course, most of them will require negotiating something in return for their support, so you’ll need to invest time and resources. But if done right, you will be able to ensure long-term PR success for this and other future projects for your moving business.
#8: Measure the results
Finally, like with any strategy, it’s important to understand how beneficial it was for your business. And in order to reach this conclusion, you need to measure the results of all the efforts you put into creating a PR strategy for your moving business and implementing it. You can achieve this by:
- tracking engagement through different advertising channels;
- exploring the reach of your social media publications;
- analyzing website traffic (organic and paid);
- documenting media coverage in terms of press releases;
- reviewing interactions with customers;
- etc.
By analyzing the results, you will also be creating a strong foundation for optimizing any and all future PR campaigns for your brand.
Start working on the PR strategy for your brand today
When people hear “public relations”, they think of press conferences and false representations of individuals and brands in the eyes of the public. There is a misleading notion that PR strategizing should be used as a reactive measure rather than a proactive one. Movers Development is here to tell you the truth. By creating a PR strategy for your moving business, you are preventing an issue from happening instead of resolving it after it occurs. Our team understands what it takes to build a strong name for your business, and with this guide, we hope that you do, too. Contact us today and start making your brand stronger!
