By Rebecca Whitlocke
🔷 2-MINUTE TIPS FOR YACHTING COMPANIES 🔷
In the realm of brand communication, the intersection of PR and marketing creates a powerful synergy. However, in the boating industry there is much confusion about their distinct roles:
🚀 Marketing strategies propel customer activity and sales by promoting your products or services to your ideal customer at key moment/s.
🎙️ Public relations is focused on raising brand awareness and industry authority, while cultivating and preserving a positive brand reputation. PR should also include reputation management/crisis communications, but that’s a post for another day!
Getting traction by working with writers and editors TAKES TIME.
Meaningful, business-making communication and marketing TAKES TIME, particularly if you’re not active digitally, a well-known brand or a publicly traded company.
💡5 COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES THAT I SEE ALL THE TIME:
1) Not all news is worthy of a press release. A well-thought-out press release shouldn’t be a sales or advertising plug. Press releases are strategic tools that transform news into engaging narratives. So many companies get this wrong and expect press releases to magically drive business and media mentions, when they actually could be simple emails sent out to your newsletter subscribers.
2) Companies who don’t respond before a press deadline. We simply don’t have time to chase you 10 times. You snooze you lose.
3) If we ask for a specific comment or information, please just stick to that. Two sentences mean two sentences, not 2000 words advertising your company. Sending random stuff unrelated to the media request, or a 25-pages sales brochure just wastes time.
4) Keep it relevant and understand who your audience is! Doing it yourself is a lot more time-consuming than most people realise. Good publicists use strategy and a framework that’s already been tested. If I had one euro for every time a yachting startup believes they will get 25 separate press mentions for the cost of one article, I would be retired on a tropical island by now. 🏝️
5) Work with a freelancer (or agency) that explains their process to create, deliver and give feedback about your project. Most importantly, work with someone who is honest about what can – or can’t – be achieved. Value doesn’t always arise immediately – even if you show up with the right media, with the right audience.
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