How to Make the Most of PR and Digital Marketing

By Laura Holland

How to Make the Most of PR and Digital Marketing

PR and digital marketing often get the short straw - they're usually the first to go when there are budget cuts, often left out of strategic meetings about business direction, and frequently operate in silos.
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However, we’re here to tell you why they shouldn’t be and why PR and digital marketing should be at the very top of your priority list, even in challenging times.

Understanding the importance of PR and digital marketing

To grasp the significance of PR and digital marketing, you first need to understand that your company’s reputation is the cornerstone of its success.

According to Forbes, it’s not enough to have a good online presence. You need to reach your target audience with relevant content - first impressions matter more than ever. If you don’t make a good first impression, any follow-up efforts will be significantly less effective.

Both PR and digital marketing play crucial but distinct roles for your company.

PR helps raise your company’s profile and authority through media and broadcast opportunities, as well as nurturing and maintaining relationships with journalists and publications that align with your narrative.

Like Ant and Dec, digital marketing makes a perfect partnership with PR by enhancing its efforts, giving you the opportunity to speak directly to your target audience through various digital platforms, including groups, paid social, and lookalike audiences. Digital marketing also helps you monitor sentiment and domain authority—two important indicators of your company’s performance.

Developing a Clear PR and Digital Strategy

Your strategy will heavily depend on your goals. For example, if you want to enhance the profile of your CEO (something we’ve previously helped clients with), one of the most effective ways is to create a LinkedIn thought leadership campaign to comment on key events and become an industry-leading voice.

Here are three key considerations for creating a successful strategy:
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1. Creating a Clear Narrative

 A clear narrative derived from an in-depth messaging workshop will enable your communications team to understand your brand, mission, and ideal audience. This allows the PR team to build effective and targeted media lists and approach journalists aligned with your positioning.

For digital marketing, this narrative helps in building audience criteria for paid campaigns, identifying relevant communities, conducting competitor research, and creating a solid content plan that embodies your messaging. This content can be utilised in paid campaigns and repurposed by the PR team.

2. Building Reputation and Authority

The goal of both PR and marketing is to build and nurture your brand’s reputation and authority.

PR is a fantastic tool for getting your brand mentioned in top publications such as BBC, Forbes, and WSJ—signalling to readers that you’re legitimate and trustworthy. From a marketing perspective, it also helps you leverage the domain authority of these publications.

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score; the higher your DA, the more likely you are to top search results for your topic or industry. Other factors affecting search engine ranking include metadata, fresh content, content relevance, social media signals (e.g., engagement with posts), and mobile-friendliness.

As the bigger picture unfolds, you can see why PR and digital marketing complement each other and help achieve your broader objectives.

3. Monitoring and Reporting

Monitoring and reporting allows you to see if your efforts are working and where you might need to pivot your approach to reach your goals.

Key metrics to track include engagement rate, time spent on your site and key landing pages, click-through rates, and sentiment.

We recommend taking a snapshot of your KPIs before implementing any new strategies to establish a benchmark. This will give you a clearer understanding of the impact of your campaigns on your brand.

If you’d like any guidance on effectively utilising PR and digital marketing, please get in touch. 

Email: [email protected], or call us at 020 3357 9740.