Top 3 PR trends to watch out for in 2021
PR is ever-changing; there's been a whirlpool of breakthroughs. The changing power dynamics between customers, influencers, and media producers; the introduction of new channels like TikTok and YouTube; and video content as the premium approach to sell... The world of PR is evolving into a multi-dimensional field that now requires skills to be both adaptable and creative to achieve success.
In this blog post, you’ll find the top trends to watch out for in 2021. Feel free to use it as a reference it for your research or bookmark it. If you’d like to share it, that would be even better. Happy reading ahead!
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Customer Feedback and Sentiment technologies
New channels (Youtube, TikTok)
Video content for selling and building rapport
Customer Feedback & Sentiment Technologies
Customer feedback or customer sentiment is an increasingly important subfield within marketing and PR. Customers have more power than ever. Their voices echo across the online and offline world. Word of mouth, reviews, ratings, are constantly being tracked and publicized online. Your brand is, metaphorically speaking, under the microscope at all times.
New technologies like AI and machine learning help crawl the web in determining what your customers are saying about you or how they’re finding you. Sometimes through predictive analytics, you can even find out if they’re likely to buy from you again or revisit. Natural language processing (NLP) is a special technology that parses the text, then runs a sentiment analysis to determine the intent behind the customer's message.
According to Amazon, "72% of customers expect a response to a complaint in under an hour.”
That’s an astounding figure to live by. Brands must be able to have a way to communicate with customers in order to fulfill their demands. Bots on websites are one way to open up the conversation with a visitor, but a customer service rep should be immediately present once a customer initiates contact. Even email surveys are great as well as monitoring your Facebook, Yelp, etc.
Embrace New Channels (Youtube, TikTok)
Youtube and Tiktok are growing year after year. Both social media channels are centered on user-generated video content. However, Youtube has been around for more than a decade whereas TikTok was only launched in 2018 in China. Both apps are consumed especially by the younger demographics, mainly the Millennials and Gen Z. If brands want to approach these audiences, they must be present in these channels, especially if it's a B2C business.
Youtube on the other hand is a fantastic channel with growing, viral, content creators. Many brands approach these content creators or influencers which in turn sell these brands on their YouTube channels. According to Alexa’s top sites
Video content for selling and building rapport
Building video content isn’t only for B2C brands. B2B brands can also embrace video as a new selling tool to reinforcing relations with customers or stakeholders.
Research according to HubSpot and wyzowl state that
This is an interesting turnout over the years. Clearly video has been widely used as a tool for both marketers and consumers.
Combining social media channels with video is an interesting tactic to build rapport with customers. Personally, I’ve seen some great sales pitches come in my email inbox. For example, a small business that sells coaching services had the CEO send a Happy New year message to me. Or recently, I purchased a new bed frame for IKEA. The day it was delivered to my house, they sent me a follow-up video to give me a few instructions on building it.
Conclusion:
Overall, it’s important for public relations marketers to embrace these trends in their PR plans for 2021. Budgets shouldn’t have to make or break these new tactics. PR professionals can find alternative and creative ways to create video content, build customer feedback channels, and reinforce brand relations on new channels like Youtube or Tiktok.
