The Benefits of Digital PR

When it comes to growing a business online there are multiple things that you can do to bring success, but the most important thing you can have is good visibility.

Ask yourself if you are operating in the right market and if you are appealing to the correct audience. Are you making the right noises to those who are highly likely to interact with you and are you able to evolve and adapt with your audience?

The key to answering all of these will be in your marketing strategy and in the digital PR that you push out. It will also be dependent on your ability to use a variety of platforms and numerous techniques. The benefits of implementing a successful strategy are vast and over the remainder of this blog post we’ll look at some of them before releasing our ‘Beginners Guide to Digital PR’.

SEO benefits

Historically marketing and PR departments would have sat on opposite sides of the office, each trying to outdo one another but more than ever these teams are now either working together or are, in fact, the same department. This is because the end goal will be the same. It is to garner as much engagement as possible and promote the businesses at every opportunity. Part of this is done to generate improved search visibility and the SEO benefits of putting out informative, engaging, shareable content which is keyword rich and resonates with your audience are increasingly noticeable.

With Google placing an increased focus on the number of high quality, relevant backlinks to your website and weighing an increased value to those that echo both the searchers intent and the on-page content, digital PR is a vital tool.

By engaging with the audience and encouraging collaboration it is possible to generate links from third parties which, it can be argued, act as an endorsement for your company.

According to Moz:

There are two pillars of integration for a successful strategy, “PR and Traditional Marketing” and “SEO & Digital Marketing.”

“The “PR” side deals with people and content (eg, messaging, media relations, and materials, etc), while the “SEO” side focuses on things (eg, online data, analytics, and research, etc).

“SEO,” may want to use certain keyword-based language in messaging in an attempt to rank highly for certain search terms. “PR” might want to use different terms that may resonate more with media outlets and the public. This needs someone to make a decision and often you find that this person is the Marketing Manager or Director.

If your business looks like the above diagram and you are operating in multiple channels then it could be worthwhile in operating different strategies depending on the audience. Build all areas of the business equally and there is no reason that visibility won’t improve.

Click, click, click

The main benefit, and one which many forget about, is the fact that with a digital strategy you actually have a link. In the past newspaper, TV and radio advertising have been the primary channels for marketers but now you can actually lead the reader to a conversion whether that be a service or a product and you can add them to your engaged audience lists. You can track their activity and remarket to them like never before and buy offering a tailored, personalised campaign to them you can improve interaction and sales.

Brand reputation and identity

This is an important benefit as boosting your brand reputation and identity enables you to engage with market influencers who have the ability to encourage conversions and boost sales.

You will also be able to respond to customers in real time through your digital PR, which increases consumer confidence or can limit any damage to your reputation.

By creating a dialogue between you and your customers you can really reinforce the sense of relationship and promote brand loyalty, giving your organisation a human touch which consumers will respond to. Not only this, but interactions will likely be seen by others and can create further interest in the company.

With digital PR it’s also possible to push out integrated campaigns to influence consumers’ purchasing decisions, all for far lower costs than other mediums.

Analytical benefits

With other forms of marketing, advertising and communications you often get very top level audience figures and it can be very hard to prove who has had eyes on your products or news. With digital methods that lead to a conversion or which require a form to be filled you can track engagement. You can also monitor audience growth especially in terms of social media.

Using this information can help guide your future marketing campaigns, as you begin to learn what your target market responds to in a positive way.

Final thoughts

The overwhelming benefits of having a multi-faceted approach to both you digital marketing and your PR are vast. If you are able to engage as wide an audience as possible, build loyalty, protect your reputation and increase your search visibility then growth is inevitable. You can deal with problems and communicate successes to your readership in a way that shows the business off in the best possible light.