Once upon a time, new e-commerce brands mainly leaned on advertising to get the word out about products.

But as ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook have become crowded and expensive, there's a marketing trend in brands starting to take a multi-pronged marketing approach.

An innovative public relations campaign can help brands stand out in a crowded marketplace and drive high-quality traffic to their pages.

Here are some public relations strategies any e-commerce brand can take advantage of to grow brand awareness: 

1. Launch a Clever Social Media Campaign

PR is behind some of the most viral campaigns on platforms like TikTok. An effective PR tactic takes advantage of strategies such as influencer marketing. Partnering with the right influencers, bloggers, and coming up with clever hashtags, can reflect a brand's image and broadcast content to a broad target demographic. The best PR campaigns tap into a network of influencers that have already reached their target audience. 

A campaign for the T-fal air fryer, for instance, drove 1 million+ views and spawned major media articles about how "obsessed" TikTok users are with the new product.

2. Focus On What Makes a Product Unique

Every company has a good story—whether it centers around the founder's journey or how their product is shaking up a new market.

Here's how you can successfully share stories to your target audience and even the general public:

1. Identify the most compelling narrative in your company.
2. Craft that narrative to influence engagement in journalists and potential customers.
3. Share that narrative through web content and social media videos.

Focusing on critical messages and crafting a thoughtful content marketing roadmap is a powerful way to share your company's story. On top of this, taking advantage of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will pull more attention to your content.

Here are a few tips to help you rise through Google's rankings:

• Collect backlinks from trusted and authoritative websites: Reach out to well-known websites (with high Domain Authority) that cover the same niche as your company. If they can link back to your content, that will help boost your SEO.
• Work as a guest contributor: You can create content for an authoritative website as a guest and link back to your company's content.
• Google Analytics is your friend: If you're conducting your PR activities through web content, Google Analytics is a helpful tool for tracking your site traffic. You can look into a customer's conversion path and build a strategy based on the available metrics.

3. Turn a Business Owner Into a Thought Leader

A good PR campaign can position brand founders as thought leaders in their own right. Executives who actively share comments on trends and are transparent with their audience about product innovation can quickly get the attention of journalists.

Getting company executives to offer intelligent and valuable commentary to media outlets can help keep a brand's name in the press.

Don't Forget: Establish Good Media Relations.

Getting media coverage for your company executives is an effective way to boost your brand's eCommerce outreach. Forming good relationships and having accessible media contacts will help streamline your PR efforts.

It also helps during challenging situations. Your contacts in news outlets can help you generate timely press releases in times of crisis management.

4. Book Event Slots

Booking events goes beyond just traditional linear TV. As podcasts and YouTube balloon in popularity, along comes an opportunity for brands to take advantage of these media channels.

Building brand awareness by frequently attending industry events and engaging in speaking opportunities helps build credibility and curiosity in your audience.

5. Track the Right KPIs

Every campaign has PR goals. To measure the success of your public relations efforts tracking campaign metrics will point to where you are succeeding and needing improvement.

These metrics should provide you with valuable insights into whether your efforts are paying off. This data can help you analyze where you need to make adjustments in the future. The industry is constantly evolving, making consistent updates to your PR plan and marketing strategies is essential to success. 

Tip on KPIs: A tracking template can help identify and monitor the right metrics.

6. Get Ready to Handle Numerous Inquiries

When public relations campaigns build attraction, brands should prepare to handle customer inquiries across many platforms. Being able to handle a sudden influx, and keep customers satisfied, is key to a successful PR campaign.

The Solution to Handling That Sudden Influx

Brands can use solutions such as Chatdesk Teams to integrate with their social platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Chatdesk helps brands interact with customers after launching a PR campaign.

Small businesses, larger corporations, and even stakeholders in eCommerce can confidently conduct their PR activities with the support of Chatdesk Teams.

Schedule a demo to see how Chatdesk can help with your public relations efforts.