How ‘Some’ Publicity Can Waylay Your Branding Roadmap

Many firms, especially where CEOs are directly handling media and branding strategies, can easily get waylaid in achieving their branding objectives.

This usually happens in SMEs, where any publicity is regarded as good publicity, which is right to a point.

However, if you keep focusing on your limited PR activity as a way to achieve your branding goals, think again.

Let’s take the example of an IT software firm, supplying software and implementation to organizations across verticals.

Ideally this company, like any other, should be communicating with its target customers consistently, apprising them of different initiatives it is taking to improve THEIR performance.

This can be done in various forms and forums where your TG is present.

However, since they do not have any dedicated person or an agency doing this job, the CEO de facto ends up doing ad-hoc PR activity instead.

It becomes a passive scenario when all you are doing is receiving calls from media and answering them, rather than proactively reaching out to them.

This reactive PR turns into a trap when the channel media start awarding you and making you feel great, which is good, BUT channels are not your target audience, are they?

The companies are your target audience.

Moreover, if you limit your media activity to just the channel media, then probably you will be famous amongst channels, but this has minimal impact on your branding amongst your TG.

So think strategically about brand goals, and whether what you are doing is relevant to your strategies.

It is good to feel great about winning channel awards, but leverage and integrate them into your branding roadmap.

Do you have one?