PR as a Customer Acquisition Tool
In the era of Internet companies Public Relations (PR) is becoming more and more important as a tool for customer acquisition. PR has been always a part of customer acquisition strategy, but has never worked with customers directly. There always was something or someone in between the brand and the consumer.
When I started my current job, I used my PR skills and standard PR methods to acquire new customers for a new version of the website and its projects. Here is how I did that.
I had an interesting website, oriented to mass audience with interests in creative fields. On the website we hosted projects with big names such as Justin Timberlake, Linkin Park, Maroon5, Deadmou5, Pink, No Doubt, and etc. You might think – celebrities bring their fans and followers and it is should be easy to launch a website with someone like Lady Gaga behind it. In fact, celebrities usually don’t care. Yes, they host projects on our platform, but they host tons of others. Very often celebs don’t even want to share a word on their own Twitter or Facebook about a contest run by them. Here you go, I had great content, great creative opportunities with no users to participate.
Customer acquisition starts with copywriting, which is, as we know, a key skill in the PR field. What a discovery, everyone knows that. My lesson is that writing for customers and mainstream media is completely different even if it’s about the same thing. It’s pretty obvious, but try to do that. Well-written customer-targeting copy doesn’t have to be written in Shakespeare language. I would write a copy, which was good only for a boring corporate blog or website, and it didn’t work. No one responded neither on the blog, no on Twitter or Facebook. The click rate was so low.
Then I realized there must be something wrong with the way I talk to my customers. I thought about the way I usually talk and communicate on social media to my friends or just people that I want to share my opinion with. Usually I use everyday language to deliver my thoughts. I adopted the same way and I noticed the difference. I had to stop myself to read every sentence out loud to make sure. I compared Twitter and Facebook clicks, even bloggers became more responsive. That was my first transformation, where I started speaking the same language with customers. I wrapped the same thoughts and messages into simple and short language.
Then I realized that the big mainstream media like People magazine, The New York Times, and etc. wouldn’t bring actual users to our website. It’s nice to be mentioned there, but it doesn’t really help in increasing community members. I started understanding where our users go to get practical info from - either professionals or peers from the same industries and I realized it’s usually very small blogs, forums, and communities - niche media. Those sources are not huge; they don’t have millions of users and views. Sometimes it’s just about 1,000 designers or DJs for a specific genre, but these small media outlets are so targeted and 99% of the audience is what I need for our projects. That’s very important to understand – find a place where your audience is, don’t look where everyone is. Very often everyone means no one.
Next, I would read through the content and understand the main idea and language. Then I craft a copy by keeping in mind that it should be very simple and straightforward. Usually reading small blogs and niche media, people look for practical information not for poems or pages with obvious things written in an AP style language. Boom, it worked. A lot of blog owners, website administrators realized that I didn’t sell texts with ads and empty promises, they either took my texts to post or even better gave me an access to their backoffices to post when I had any news. Some of them moderated and published; some of them just trusted me as a valid source after a few posts.
That helped me bring first users to the website. Bounce rates were low and the participation rate was good enough to convert visitors into community members.
My lessons:
- Speak the same language as your customers. Learn their language and format of communication.
- Find and read the same sources of information as your customers. Mainstream media is not always what you need.
- Customize your copy. Read thoughtfully through every platform that you are targeting.
PR is a good tool for customer acquisition, but depending on the customers and product it needs to be shaped. Don’t be afraid to change standards and rules that are written in books or taught at schools. There is no a universal way that can be used to communicate with every single customer. I am personally glad that I was able to change my approach and understand customers. Now I can communicate to them without middlemen when I need to.
