There was a time when if there was a scandal within a business then a press release would be drawn up by its public relations department within the hour. In the modern world it does not seem to work in the same way. There are a number of different avenues available in which statements to the wider world can be made today, all of them seeming to be without the use of an in-house PR management department. Is this the way the PR world is now? How did it get that way?

Brand responsibility

Brands have always been involved with how they are portrayed by the media. Whether it is via press releases and statements or by carrying out an interview with someone who is influential within the media. It could be a high profile TV interview, or an interview with a prominent reporter. Such events were always carried out under the watchful eye of the internal PR department. Brands would see it as their own responsibility to control their brand reputation and an internal PR department was regarded as the best way to do so. It meant that costs and budget could be controlled by the brand itself as well as fostering more loyalty than an outside PR company would offer. Things have changed however, and the PR industry is staring into the abyss.

As the internet began to gain more influence on the world at large, the influence of internal PR departments began to wane. A blogger with a huge amount of reach could easily dismantle the work of a PR department. This meant that brands began to change tack and instead of trying to control how their brand was seen by the public, they instead tried to get influential people within their sphere on their side. Of course, if a brand has made an enemy of someone who has a large amount of influence then this can lead to false stories being widely believed. In this situation it is important to have someone like Reputation Defender on board who can protect your brand from malicious disinformation. They will make sure that anything that is false about your brand will be taken down before it has the opportunity to be widely viewed, which in turn will protect your brand reputation from any long-term lasting damage.

The social media generation

Part of the trouble that internal PR departments and PR firms in general, have struggled with, is the rise of social media influencers. Because they are able to get an opinion out to their followers within seconds of something happening, it is often difficult for your brand’s internal PR department to react quickly enough. If something goes viral then it will be spread around the world in a few hours. As the saying goes, a lie gets half of the way around the world before the truth even has its shoes on. A lot of brands have got rid of their PR departments because of that or have merged them with their burgeoning new social media departments.

While some brands have taken to social media very well and are able to use it to their advantage, not all brands are able to use it as effectively. In such situations some brands have taken to using noted influencers to carry out PR for them. When a social media influencer is able to speak directly to followers in a positive light about a brand it adds a level of authenticity to what is being said. A brand speaking about itself in glowing terms does not have as much impact as someone that people trust commenting about it. This is one of the newest forms of brand promotion that has arisen with the advent of social media.

Why PR is still important

While PR departments might be slowly dying out, PR itself is still important. A brand can lose half of its customer base or share value purely from the result of a negative impact on its reputation. Because of this it is vitally important to manage your brand reputation as well as you can. Whether this is via an active social media team or from using social influencers from within your sphere, there are a number of ways to make sure that your brand is seen in a positive light. So, while internal PR departments may be on their way out, managing PR itself is just as important now as it has ever been.

Your aim as a business owner will be to make a lot of sales that will lead to the expansion of your business. As such, all your efforts will be geared towards ensuring that customers keep coming back to your business.

This quarter, you can increase your efforts: make some improvements and do away with unhelpful strategies. Here is a list of things you can do that will boost sales volume in 2019:

     1. Do your website a favour

This might sound irrelevant and you might not see the need for it but best believe that you can boost your sales volume this year when you redesign your website.  Customers who visit your website to shop are probably tired of seeing the same things over and over again. Give your website a lift by changing the design, adding more exciting colors and creating more engaging contents. Something else you could do is make your contents more persuasive so that more actions of purchase can be made.

     2. Advertise like your business depends on it

Much like the right insurance cover is the backbone of your business; marketing is the oxygen of an enterprise. Somebody said not advertising your product is like a man who is sitting in the dark and winking at a lady he likes. Nobody knows what he is doing except him. That is how important marketing is. If you do not advertise your product, you and your few customers are the only people who know what you are doing and this is not good for sales. Do a lot of advertisement, tell people why they need to buy your products. Contact DanBenNun.com for answers to some of your advertising questions.

     3. Tell your story and be visual

Story telling is one of the best ways to increase your sales online or offline. Tell stories about your struggles, your achievement and your progress. People like to know that the people who run businesses are humans too. Humans relate to human experiences. Put yourself out there in the form of videos that people can relate with. Videos that show how your business runs and relates to your customers personally will help them to get in touch with the human side of you, and boost your sales.

     4. Use business tools

In this age of technology, a lot of digital tools have been designed to help entrepreneurs. Tools to help you and your sales team understand what you have in mind, what your goals are and how you would like to go about it.  Having a sales team that truly understands what your business goals are, is priceless.

There are other tools that are designed to make other jobs like accounting, keeping tabs on customers and content creation easier. With the help of these tools, you’d be able to concentrate on other things like boosting sales. Examples of these tools are: Smarp, Oribi, Norbert, Growbots, Groove, UberSuggest and Facebook ads. All of these are digital resources that you can use to boost sales.

     5. Sales tools:

These are tools that directly help with how you respond to visitors who visit your website. Often times, when people visit your website, they don’t necessarily take action. However, with innovations on ground, tools have been provided to help make it easier for you to monitor the number of visitors that visit your web. Example of these sales tools are:

a) Intercom Acquire: It enables you to communicate with leads who are visiting your website. It helps you to set up rules to show messages that concerns a visitor’s need.

b) Active Campaign: This helps you monitor the leads as it concerns your website. Then it uses this trigger to do email marketing on your behalf.

c) Lead Forensic: This tool helps you with follow up. Sometimes, visitors visit your website and do not fill your form. Lead forensic helps you by providing the company’s IP address so that one of your team can do a follow up.

     6. Asking the right questions:

When it comes to boosting sales, it is important to ask customers the right questions. It is important to understand customer’s psychology. To understand what the customers need and understand the product they go after, because understanding the heartbeat of the customer will help you define and create the right content. This can be done by sending out survey forms to existing customers and running ads on your survey.

     7. Get a good accounting tool:

You will not know if your sales have increased if you don’t have a good accounting tool. One accounting tool you can use is the Demand Metric. This is a Microsoft word document that makes it easy for you to clearly portray vital accounting information and establish a plan for account development.

     8. Predict ahead:

To boost your sales, you have to be able to predict what your future sales will look like. There’s a business tool that can help you with that. It’s called Demand Solution Forecast. This tool will help you in terms of collaborative forecasting and decision making.

     9. Plan your sales:

One way to boost your sales is to plan your sales. Have a plan – a well thought out plan for how to plan and make future sales. One tool that can help you achieve that is Longitude. Longitude is known for its design to unify sales planning. It also offers a free downloadable model sales plan. All these plans are in Microsoft word format.

     10. Follow up on existing customers:

Customers are the back bone for sales. And if customers are kept satisfied, they keep coming back. As they come back, they go on to spread the good news. But the customers need to be kept in contact with. You have to keep in touch with the customers. The Time Trade sales scheduling software can help you with that by scheduling your calls to help you keep in touch with your customers in time.

     11. Create an ease for your sales team:

If you have a great team who understands the goals of your sales for the year, it will easier to boost your sales. Mind Jet is an online resource that can help keep your sales team in sync. It makes it possible for the entire sales team to make a collaborative venture every time and make alignment meetings. It is designed to have a virtual whiteboard, drag and drop editing and organization charts result.

     12. Score leads:

Score the leads that you get on your website. Know the number of people who visit and know what content they concentrate on. Check the previous advertisement and see the campaign with the less reactions and change it.

One of the best ways to boost your sales is to use the business tools that big brands use. This not only puts you ahead of the game, it also helps you understand how the big fish work. It also helps you understand what is obtainable in the current market and know how other companies boost their sales.