A report by the PR Newswire has found that nearly six out 10 businesses in the APAC region chose to prioritise brand influence enhancement over sales growth and conversion in their campaigns.
According to the 2020 Asia-Pacific Corporate Communications Report which surveyed over 900 public relations and communication professionals, stated that 70 percent of businesses prioritise news websites as the most important communications channel as part of their efforts to optimise brand awareness.
One of the takeaways from the report were the challenge of maintaining trust and audience engagement. 69 percent of businesses in Vietnam and 28 percent of businesses in South Korea have cited it as one of their challenges.
The report also found that 37 percent of businesses plan to increase their earned media budget with larger businesses with over 1,000 staff showing a greater willingness to do so compared to their smaller counterparts.
News websites continue to lead as the preferred distribution channels for corporate news, followed by social media, official corporate websites and print media, with common topics in corporate press releases being events, news products, industry perspectives and award announcements.
According to the report, relative to their B2C counterparts, B2B businesses tend to prioritise their official websites (65 percent vs 50 percent), offline activities/ events (32 percent vs 19 percent), email/EDM (31 percent vs 21 percent) on average.
However, B2C businesses tend to prioritise TV or radio (32 percent vs 21 percent), mobile news app (26 percent vs 19 percent), video/short video (28 percent vs 16 percent) over their B2B counterparts.
Meanwhile, B2C enterprises in mainland China prioritise new media/ KOLs (58 percent) and Weibo (56 percent), while WeChat (82 percent) is the most commonly used social media channel for B2B enterprises in mainland China.
“We understand the challenges that businesses face when tailoring campaigns in a diverse media environment, and hope the insights contained in this report will help our clients better share their stories across different markets, cultures, and languages,” said Royce Shih, Asia-Pacific vice president, sales and marketing of PR Newswire.
