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Public relations, especially earned media and media relations, are crucial for creating brand awareness and building a positive reputation for cannabis brands and businesses. Having worked with dozens of founders, CEOs, and marketing leaders, aligning public relations, marketing, and sales can be challenging for a number of reasons. As something we frequently discuss and work on with clients, we're going to highlight five ways to align your public relations strategy with sales and marketing efforts to maximize brand awareness, establish trust and credibility, and drive more business.
Align on End Goals and Objectives
To ensure that public relations efforts support your sales and marketing goals, it's a must to make sure that everyone involved is aligned and working together. Teams should work closely to ensure that everyone understands sales targets, ideal client profiles, target markets, and common objections experienced during the sales process. This alignment helps the public relations team build campaigns that speak directly to decision-makers, resonate with target audiences, and create content that doubles as a sales enablement tool for the team's sales force, and as an asset that the marketing team can incorporate into their campaigns as well.
Overcome Objections in Your Communication
One of the most effective ways to create content that moves the needle on revenue is by addressing pain points and common objections while conducting interviews, speaking on podcasts, or writing thought-leadership pieces. For example, if potential customers are often concerned about the quality or safety of a particular cannabis product, the public relations team needs to focus on communicating the company's commitment to quality and safety. By thoughtfully addressing common objections, the public relations team has a clear path to supporting new business developments, and making the sales team's job easier and more effective.
Maximize Media Opportunities to Educate
A public relations team should work tirelessly to secure media opportunities that allow talking heads of cannabis brands and businesses to share insights about the industry as it pertains to their expertise and unique vantage point. By positioning oneself as a source of trusted information and knowledge for potential customers, cannabis leaders should lean into a variety of angles and opportunities to maximize brand awareness for themselves and their business by building lasting relationships with writers, reporters, and journalists.
Spot Opportunities to Amplify Big Announcements
If your company is launching a new product, expanding into a new market, or has an exciting development that's newsworthy, the public relations team should look for opportunities to plug the announcement into media coverage by way of interviews, articles, appearances on targeted shows, and more. By generating a buzz for big, upcoming announcements, your company will remain top of mind with your target audience, and the third-party validation of others talking about it will bolster your brand's authority, trust, and credibility–something that can help turn a hesitant lead into an excited new customer.
PR Pro Tip: Let's say you're being interviewed and the interviewer asks a question such as, "Is there anything else you'd like to share with us today?" This is a great opportunity to share relevant information about your brand and business, in a tasteful way, that you'd like to bring more attention to. Maximizing opportunities like this is an excellent way to bring attention to your business in a non-promotional way, and leading with an education-first approach.
Invite People to Connect with You In-Person
Do you have a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art facility where you run your operations out of? Do people feel excited to walk into your dispensary? Is there an upcoming event that you'd like to invite members of the media and press to attend? The next time you're interested in generating some buzz, think about what assets and resources you have at your disposal that others find fascinating, unique, and intriguing. For you, it may be just another Tuesday. For others, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience something new. Don't overlook what's already in front of you, and utilize it to its full potential. This is where a trusted PR partner can help.
Aligning public relations with sales and marketing is crucial for cannabis companies to maximize their investments of time, energy, and hard-earned dollars. By aligning on goals and objectives, tailoring communications, seeing around corners to spotlight big announcements, and leveraging in-person opportunities, cannabis companies can transform the way they do business. Need a hand with adopting these strategies to drive new business? Reach out to Green Lane Communication today, and we'll show you how to get started.