SKC Insights

2022 brought us lessons of growth, resilience, and transformation as we conquered the challenges of a disruptive year. With another exciting year behind us, SKC has compiled our take on the top public relations trends and challenges for the year ahead. What will 2023 bring? Here are six trends to consider and leverage for your company:

New year, new goals! As you navigate the exciting journey of business growth in 2024, consider the invaluable contributions a marketing/PR firm can make to your success. We might be biased, but even visionary leader Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to the last dollar of my marketing budget, I'd spend it on PR!” Partnering with a PR firm adds a wealth of strategic communications expertise including proven marketing campaigns, knowhow, media and influencer connections, social media chops to grow your online communities, press coverage, reputation, and so much more! 

Ready to elevate your success? Here are six benefits of partnering with a PR firm in 2024:

We’re in the heart of best-of season right now, the time of year when everyone releases their lists of favorites from the past 12 months. 2022 has been a fun and results-filled year for SKC and our clients, where we’ve added a creative flair to many PR campaigns to help clients to stand out from the crowd. 

These are some of the highlights from 2022: 

“Death of Mr. Peanut,” a 2020 Planters campaign, is a great example of social media success. It began with a tweet: It is with heavy hearts that we confirm that Mr. Peanut has died at 104. In the ultimate selfless act, he sacrificed himself to save his friends when they needed him most. Please pay your respects with #RIPeanut. Within hours, even other brands like Dr. Pepper were spreading the hashtag, and the campaign quickly became a viral sensation. Planters later revealed that Mr. Peanut was reborn as a Baby Nut, and now tweets from the Peanut Jr account.

Planters’ viral sensation and marketing prowess has continued to this day, where it has leveraged social media to engage and build followers and customers. Here are 6 ways social media can bolster your brand:

Being a small business can be a challenge, especially when just starting out. Bringing customers into your business is the first step to growth, but how does one bring the customer in? The answer lies in marketing and leveraging available tools at your disposal. While taking the time to find everything on your own is viable, it’s time-consuming and wastes precious resources. This is where a CRM comes in.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a great way to collect all your data in one place, allowing you to compile information from several sources, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By using a CRM, the time you would have spent on individual sites can be spent growing your business in other avenues. But what other benefits are there in using a CRM? Why should you invest in a CRM? Here are 6 great reasons:

Thanks to technology, it’s much easier to gather marketing data to boost your business. But are you leveraging that data for your company's public relations?

All the little marketing data-points — those you need before a campaign, those you get during one — come together to inform how you can tailor messages to achieve the most efficient effect. Companies that analyze and use their data can see big benefits.

Here are 4 ways to integrate data into your PR to boost your business:

Once upon a time, companies large and small relied on an overwhelming number of tools to market and promote their companies. Marketers were inundated by clumsy spreadsheets, a plethora of e-newsletter programs, separate social media accounts, blog extensions, and analytics tools galore. Then along came marketing automation platforms – HubSpot, Marketo, Infusionsoft etc. – with a unifying automation approach that changed the way we do marketing forever.

Today, many companies are reaping the benefits of martech and marketing automation and their belief in it is evident in their spend, now expected to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023. This spend translates to coveted lead generation and conversion for many marketers, with 77% stating that they convert more leads with automation. What have these companies gained by leveraging marketing automation? How have their businesses and marketing and PR processes improved?

Here are 5 ways HubSpot and other marketing technologies boost your business.

It’s 3 in the morning. You’re wide awake and your mind is besieged. Your competitor just sent out a new funding press release. How do you match that? Why is it so hard to reach the right investors? The right customers? Your team throws ideas at you. Dazzle with 3D presentations. We better be everywhere – on TV, on TechCrunch, on Facebook, LinkedIn, at tradeshows, everywhere! And don’t forget blogs, white papers, case studies, and email campaigns! And on and on and on.

It’s now 4am and sleep eludes you. You’re overwhelmed. Why are PR and marketing such enigmas? You know you need it to truly grow and attract investors and customers. But how? Where do you start? To think you once thought asking Rita to the prom was the toughest thing you ever did.

Sure, PR and marketing may feel daunting. But we’re here to say it doesn’t have to be. Take a deep breath, let go of everything you think you have to do. Instead, focus on just two steps that will make all the difference: First, build your foundation, and second, build your house.

This is what we mean: 

If you're a small company, trying to handle your PR and marketing on top of everything else you have to worry about, it can be overwhelming. Sure, you've got just as much ambition as a more prominent company, but you're short-staffed and as much as you hate to admit... you're not Superman or Wonder Woman.  

We're here to tell you that it's okay.

Great leaders know when to ask for help and how to delegate. So stop trying to grow that third shoulder to carry the weight of your company's marketing and instead share that load with an agency that knows what they're doing.

Here are five reasons why you should:

The beginning of the new year brims with possibilities. You have goals and grand plans for your company. You have a brand to build, products and services to launch, more customers to win over and an opportunity to scale. You have so much to do and so little time!

Yet you’re challenged. You’re dreaming up ways to stretch your 24 hour-days into 48-hour days, spitballing ideas on how to meet these goals without adding headcount. Well, you’re not alone. From brand building to media relations to digital marketing, there are plenty of reasons why so many companies have found their solution by partnering with PR/marketing firms. Here are 6 reasons why hiring a PR and marketing firm is smart business.

1. Frees Up Your Time to Focus on What You Do Best

You're building your company, designing, developing and selling products and services. That’s what you do best. The PR agency has clients and products to market. We write, message and position you, pitch media, create news stories, secure speaking opportunities and awards, execute digital marketing – that’s what we do best. When you find your trusted agency, take a sigh of relief as you can now free up your time to focus on what you do best, paving the way for you to build products that are PR-worthy.