How Solid PR Strategy Recession-Proofs Your Business
Nervous about the recent economic recession in 2022? Now’s the time to get strategic about recession-proofing your business. David Libby is here to do just that, walking you through how to make the most of your marketing and public relations spend. He also outlines the top ways that you can leverage public relations to put your business in growth mode and continue to expand even during this time of uncertainty.
David began his career working alongside Steve Jobs in the San Francisco Bay area in the early days of Apple. He was able to build this pivotal experience into a 25-year career as a PR professional, helping tech companies refine their marketing strategy and reach new levels of success. His most notable clients include Google, Ancestry, and Looksmart. He continues to bring the perfect blend of passion and expertise to every task he takes on and has been able to continue to grow and impact businesses by facilitating acquisitions and partnerships with key clients. His successful acquisition recipients include names like Elastic, IBM, Intuit, and hundreds of others.
In this video, David addresses business owners’ concerns about the current economic climate. He then offers a step-by-step plan for success through targeted PR strategies that is designed to scale to whatever season of business you’re in; whether you’re a startup or a fully built enterprise.
Read on to watch the video replay, or to enjoy the key takeaways from David’s session.
If you’d like to connect with David directly, you can do so via his GrowthMatch profile.
Key Takeaways
- There are inherent risks with startups that can cause business owners to retreat from marketing spend and refinement. This is especially true with the latest rumors of a 2022 recession.
- Resist the temptation to do this, as this can negatively impact your ability to earn. Jobs are not collapsing. There are more open roles than experts predicted would be in the second quarter of 2022.
- Marketing and PR is your business’ lifeline, especially in times of economic uncertainty.
- During the 2008 recession, we saw marketing spend grow by 4% across all industries. Businesses competed for relevancy among a more restricted consumer base, driving marketing spend upwards.
- PR isn’t exclusively designed for damage control for your business. It’s your business’ voice to consumers.
- You can leverage PR in order to build credibility and authority faster in a specific niche.
- PR can build communities around your brand, and speed the process of your customer’s journey from prospect to brand advocate.
- PR specialists can help your business to respond to negative commentary on the business’ behalf, often in ways that edify the core values of your company or align with the goals that you hope to achieve.
- The time is now — in this economic downturn — to focus on refining and optimizing operational processes and marketing strategies for maximum future growth.
How can startups benefit from PR strategy?
- PR strategy and planning aren’t just for fully built enterprises. Startups can enjoy key benefits.
- For example, PR strategy can be especially helpful for new launches or organizational shifts.
- You can leverage the work of PR experts to create buzz around the event or change with a press release, and subsequent media waterfall to keep a continuous flow of information to the public.
- This strategy is key. You use PR to help you to create an evolution of commentary around your product instead of a “revolution” with a one-off release or marketing push.
- This strategy is built for longevity, and usually is accompanied by a public marketing plan.
- Your public marketing plan will guide your business’ marketing communications, style, tone, and overall brand perception.
- You can leverage the work of PR experts to align your efforts in the startup phase, and build out your skeletal vision for branding and messaging into a fully-scalable growth plan that works harmoniously with your marketing efforts.
- Having a solid strategy for PR is essential to getting you established in the market space.
How does PR strategy help established businesses grow?
- PR can work synonymously with a business’ established product-market fit, using your enthusiastic customers and brand advocates to bring you to a higher level of success.
- They can also work with your marketing team to identify new ways to market your next launch or shift, as well as further define who you are in the space among your competitors.
- Continuous brand refinement and strategy is needed in order to remain competitive.
- PR experts can prepare your brand for future acquisition and for a smoother exit.
Using PR for business during an economic recession
- Cutting your marketing budget seems natural during times of recession, but can actually limit your business’ ability to maintain relevance in your niche.
- PR experts can help you to leverage cultural and social trends to maintain relevancy and amplify your efforts, keeping your stream of income stabilized.
- As you build a PR strategy, PR experts can use data and messages to put you in front of new markets with the potential to win long-term customers.
- Public relations helps your customers and prospects to connect with your brand with new targeted messaging and with strategic placement of information.
- While PR and marketing work together, they do not share the same focus.
- Marketing focuses primarily on lead generation and bottom-of-the-funnel work, especially in times of economic struggle.
- Public relations shifts the focus from lead generation to positioning and brand messaging in order to keep your prospects loyal to your brand and to differentiate you from the competition.
- PR specialists can also help you to regularly evaluate your current PR strategy, and give valuable outside perspective around product-market fit, branding, messaging, and marketing strategy.
On behalf of the team and community at GrowthMatch, we want to send David a huge THANK YOU for sharing his knowledge with us. If you want to work with David, you can visit his profile here.
