Public Relations in the Digital Age is an ever-shifting amalgam of tried and true communications practices and new and different methods through which you may connect with your target audience.

To maintain success, you must expand your understanding of current tools and applications, as well as which platforms and influencers are drawing your audience. And a cursory understanding of these factors is not enough. To truly make the most of your PR opportunities in the Digital Age, you need to understand both the value and the purpose of several evolving realities.

Scarcity marketing can be a powerful tool to sell your product or service. Scarcity marketing is based on the principle that people want to have things are hard to obtain. It creates a sense of exclusivity and also operates on the psychology of fear – forcing people to act out of fear of missing out.

However, these days, it seems like a thing of the past with everything being about convenience, ease, and availability. If you can’t get something you want from one business, then you can probably get it from the store around the corner, and if that’s not possible either, then it’s just a few clicks away. People are just not used to limited supplies or having to wait for something anymore.

There could be many reasons why your business is shutting down a particular product or service – from monetary loss to product feasibility to changing business focus. However, even if you have solid reason, bidding adieu can be difficult. To make the process easier, here are some insights into the best way to handle internal and external communications in such circumstances:

Proper planning ahead of time can make the process much easier on you, your employees and your customers. Adopt an approach that takes into consideration everyone who will be affected by the shutdown. Create a detailed communications strategy so that your message is aligned and consistent throughout all channels

A major goal for any business is to create profit by selling its product or service. A source of frustration for many business executives is the sheer amount of time and effort it can take to convert a potential sales lead into a buying customer. While sales and marketing teams are the ones usually in charge of creating conversions and thus driving sales, neglecting the role of PR activities in the sales process can be a missed opportunity for many businesses.

PR can be a powerful tool to jumpstart sales. It can be helpful in improving response times from potential leads as well as increasing the probability of a sale.

Each year, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity recognizes some of the best and most impactful PR campaigns that year. The entries tend to run the gamut in public relations, from fun interactions to creative engagement, to artful apologies, and recently recognized campaigns included all of the above.

McDonald’s debuted a new look in celebration of International Women’s Day when the company “flipped” its iconic Golden Arches logo, turning the internationally-known “M” into a stylized “W” in honor of women. And that was just the beginning…

Gaining and maintaining consumer trust is the goal of every PR professional. Consumer trust is invaluable to brands. However, recent data suggests consumers are growing more and more distrusting of traditional media. Additionally, with the spread of ‘fake news’, consumers are more suspicious than ever.

In this very confusing media environment, PR professionals face hurdles when it comes to earning trust through media efforts. So, how do we navigate this maze in a world where trust on a downward spiral.

When a message goes out, is it public relations or advertising? For a lot of folks, these terms are understood interchangeably. However, while there is some overlap, the truth is, each enterprise has a distinct purpose, priority, and metric for success.

Public relations is, essentially, a strategic communication program or process that connects brands or persons with a market or audience in a beneficial way. The key takeaways here are that PR is a process, not a one-and-done scenario. PR is connective, creating goodwill or a bond between the audience and the brand; and PR is supportive of and beneficial to the brand vision and mission.

Every industry has it set of myths that have stuck around throughout the years, despite evidence to the contrary. Marketing is also a victim of folklore needs to be addressed. Sometimes word of mouth can get out of hand by distorting knowledge and creating ideas that are not based on facts or reality.

When these myths start to inform our thinking and our actions, that’s when it becomes a problem. Misconceptions about common marketing practices can lead to misuse or even complete abandonment of marketing tools. As we say our goodbyes to 2018, let’s also bid farewell to the myths that are incorrectly influencing our decisions. Here are four marketing myths that need to be debunked: