— Digital PR
Just Another Marketing Channel?
You’re possibly already running some Google Ads to promote your business, perhaps even complementing that with some social media posts and paid ads through Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. You may be investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) too, and you’ve recently initiated and launched an email marketing campaign to reach out to your existing and loyal customer base. Wow. That’s a lot. Surely that’s about as much as you can do to promote your business, right?
Audio 7.16 Minutes
— Digital PR
Let me introduce you to the world of Digital PR
If it’s one thing that many companies would love to achieve, especially during the Covid 19 crisis, is to have written content, or a video, that goes viral. However, this isn’t the only benefit of a Public Relations campaign.
While mass exposure can of course lead to great things, the main goal to focus on here, as with any other form of advertising, is relevance. Ensuring that your message is heard by your target audience is of equal importance to maximising your reach. After all, you don’t want to be promoting your brand, your products, or your services to people who are highly unlikely to become a customer!
As with any offering, it could be that you’ve displayed your brand message to the same audiences repeatedly, to the extent that everyone who was likely to become your customer has done so, and those that haven’t, probably won’t. Therefore you’ve reached a natural saturation point.
This isn’t necessarily bad news, it just means that you need to find either a new way to get your message out there, or find new audiences. And this is where Digital PR can help.
DIGITAL PR / OUTREACH PROCESS
Who should you contact?: Firstly, you need to determine who your audience is. This will give you an idea of who may be interested in your content and subsequently influence who you reach out to. Then, create a list of people to contact based on those involved in your content, mentions, previous people you have reached out to, influencers in your industry, prior relationships in your industry and anyone else you wish to build a relationship with. It is important that you finely target this group of people to create a target outreach strategy.
02.
Create an outreach list: Now you need to manage your outreach list. There are a number of tools that can help you with this such as Excel and Google Documents. Divide your outreach emails into three steps to optimise the chance of being heard: the first should be personalised, followed by a check up and finally a switch to social media. Make sure you are providing useful, brief and informative information.
03.
The outreach process: This step is all about how to approach these contacts and start building relationships. There are a number of ways to do this, for example: keep your message personal and respectful, be short and to the point, make it easy to respond to, target the correct people, follow up a few days after, and don’t give up, not everyone is going to respond.
What to Expect
Steve ( Growthlytics) has dedicated his career to Digital Marketing and his knowledge and skills in this area are second to none. These skills married with a solid knowledge of lead generation make him a huge asset to any online business.
DAVID BROOKS
US DIRECTOR AT MONEVO.COM
Why Digital PR is important?
What is PR in social media?
What is a PR tool?
Why is PR important to a business?
Why do you need a PR strategy?
— Digital PR
And this is where Digital PR can help
While it’s no good bringing in new customers just to replace the ones you lose, through a low rate of customer retention, you’ll always get peaks and troughs. But if you’re losing clients and not finding new ways to promote your company, then that’s a slippery slope.
To have your company featured in a relevant publication can often hold more sway than people seeing an advert. There’s no direct sale involved, and the content is presented as an informational piece. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a brand new startup, or a well established business, there should always be something newsworthy about what you’re doing. It could be that you’re helping the local economy by creating jobs; or perhaps you’ve opened a new branch; or that you’ve secured funding for your project because it’s something people really want or need.
If you’re struggling for inspiration, why not do something charitable within your local community? This then creates a reciprocal feeling of help – you have newsworthy content, while a charity that may be close to your heart, receives some welcome support. A by-product of this, is credibility. You’ll be noticed in the right publications, where people will recognise you for your support and perhaps even submit a pledge of their own. Good relationships can be forged through shared interests, and this is one great way of going about doing that.
Backlinks
We’ve spoken about achieving being mentioned or featured in well known or popular publications, but in the world of Digital PR, there’s an added benefit. Obtaining links from other reputable websites, that then link back to your own, is a key component of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The more authority a domain has, the higher the quality of the backlink. For example, if the BBC placed your website link on their site, that would be worth significantly more than simply linking to a lesser known and lesser visited site.
What Should You Look For In A Digital PR Agency?
Great PR is not just about writing an article. It involves extensive research, high quality written content, a creative mind, and the ability to communicate it effectively to the intended audience. You could suggest that an in-house marketer could create an effective campaign, but in our experience, the additional workload required just stretches them too thin. With so many other marketing channels to manage, they may end up having to skimp on quality due to meeting company deadlines.
PR is one area where quality genuinely shines through, and any detraction from that can cause more harm than good.
A good PR firm also has many ties with local businesses and influencers. They are heavily involved in networking, whether in person or on social media, and they know the right people to reach out to, based on the needs of your business.
— expertise & contacts:
Not just expertise but contacts too
When you hire a Digital PR company, you’re paying not only for their expertise, but for the contacts they have accrued over many years. It’s worth asking them about this, because you’ll quickly understand the true value (or not) of what they can offer you.
At Growthlytics, we occasionally come across stories that simply aren’t fit for purpose, or ones where we know wouldn’t have a chance of getting published on the required websites. Do we turn these ideas down? Yes absolutely, but we’ll also find a different angle to make sure your company gets its voice heard, and on the right channels.
We have contacts in all the right areas – in local, national and in trade. This means that regardless as to the industry niche you’re in, we’ve got our ear to the ground and we know where your message will be best placed for maximum impact.
Expertise.
Contacts.
Knowledge.
That’s our unparalleled service offering to you.
You may have exhausted all other marketing channels, so let’s add Digital PR into your marketing mix, and see how much further you can expand your brand’s reach.
Growthlytics’ PR team are often out and about, networking or conjuring up powerful new ways to get businesses noticed and creating amazing content. But they’re always ready to give you a free consultation to see how we can move your business forward.
If you haven’t maxed out on all your other marketing options, we can help with those too! From SEO to Paid Ads to Email Marketing and more, we’re your one-stop shop for building your business. Contact us today.
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1234 Divi St.
San Francisco, CA 29351
Contact
hello(at)growthlytics.net
01270 586400