Digital PR only works when it’s backed up by a solid PR strategy because you can end up wasting time and money so it’s important to have a strategy that ticks all of your brand’s boxes. This will not only increase your brand’s engagement and awareness but also open your brand’s doors to more opportunities.

In this article we will be giving you the key tips that are super important for your digital PR strategy to ensure you are getting the most out of your digital marketing efforts.

Benefits of a digital PR strategy

Generates relevant links from credible sources and websites

Increases website traffic

Still has all the benefits of traditional PR

Enhances your brand’s reputation online

You have the ability to repurpose content you produce

Define your goals

Yes, this is something that is really obvious to most, but you’d be surprised by how many brands jump the gun and start creating campaigns without acknowledging the end goals. There are so many choices you will need to make when putting together your digital PR strategy and so you must answer some questions.

For example:

Are you looking at how much your conversion rate improves?
Or are you aiming for a higher spot in Google’s search results?

These two things of course will help each other, but the clearer you are with your goals, the better results you will achieve. For example if you have an objective of increasing brand awareness, there are many ways you can measure increased brand awareness such as direct traffic, search volume or more conversions.

It’s up to you to decide what you want to set out as your primary goals and the metrics with which you’ll measure their completion.

Figure out your target audience & personas

Do you really know what types of people you want to reach? This is the key question before starting any business venture because no one size fits all, you will need to find your niche market.

If you have a website, you are able to pull data from Google Analytics to see what kinds of people are shopping for your products. However, if you are starting from scratch, it is a great idea to find out what your competitors are doing and find the niche market they are targeting.

Once you have somewhat figured out your target market, we would suggest developing some strong buyer personas. These personas will describe this person in so much detail such as their jobs, annual incomes, family life, age, hobbies and interests.

How to create buyer personas that’ll drive more sales →

Conduct a competitor analysis

A competitor analysis is crucial in your digital PR strategy as this will enable you to find out how your competitors are performing. You are able to structure your digital PR plan around this analysis and it will give you an insight into what you can do, whether that be guest posting, digital PR campaigns or unlinked brand mentions.

You can see how well your competitors are performing to create a strategy and set goals around what you need to do to improve and compete.

So let’s say your competitor has over 50 strong backlinks, you would need to create a goal of getting your site over 60 strong(er) backlinks. It also enables you to build relationships with websites that specialise in or link to similar content as yours, because they have linked to your competitors so they are more likely to link to you as well.

How to conduct a competitor analysis →

Time to ideate

Now it’s time to get creative with your content, but remember, creating high quality content that converts isn’t an easy task in hand. If you are a small business it can be tough, but you can always reach out to digital marketing agencies like us who can help if you don’t have many resources.

Through your goals, target audience and competitor analysis you are likely to have a good idea of what sort of content will be most effective for your business. Think about if you have content already that you can repurpose which will not only be easy for you but may get you those quick links you are after.

Sit down with your team and mind map multiple ideas until one of those clicks. There are so many ideation techniques you can find all over the internet to try and see which one works best for you.

Get your pitch right

Now it’s time to let the world know about your amazing campaign and there are two ways you can go about this!

One is by checking what is currently trending and to really research what journalists are talking about, this way you really get your campaign in front of journalists who will actually care about it. Another great tip is to reach out to journalists beforehand to see if they would even be interested in the idea you are wanting to implement.

The second way to pitch is to ensure you make you are making content that journalists simply can’t refuse. Your campaign’s end goal is to entice a journalist to write about it. Attach amazing images that can really pull them in but also be clear on the benefits to their audience if they visit your website.

Lastly, don’t be disheartened if you don’t have success the first time round. If you truly believe in your campaign, be persistent and find other angles to pivot your campaign.

Build your credibility

Just because your digital PR campaign was a success doesn’t mean you should stop there, it is important to continue to build your credibility and brand awareness. Trust is key when you are an eCommerce brand. If you build trust with your customers they are more likely to purchase from you again and again.

Do you have a particular subject you can become an expert brand for? Being an expert in your field will help drive media coverage in relevant publications, meaning you will boost your backlink profile with amazing high domain sites. Twitter is a fantastic platform to keep your brand in the spotlight. Journalists are always on the lookout for expert comments for the topics that they are writing about so be sure you are always active.

Measure your success

It’s also important to lay out some KPIs before implementing a digital PR campaign as it’s crucial to let everyone know what they need to aim for within your team. Whether that be brand awareness, increasing sales of a specific product or organic traffic to your site.

No matter what your end goal is, these important measures will give you an insight to see what worked and what didn’t. Google Analytics is a great tool to find lots of information to enable you to create some end goals, you can then track to see progress on a monthly basis.

Summing up

It doesn’t matter if you are a gardening business, a clothing retailer, a law firm or a school, there’s a digital PR campaign that is right for you. Digital PR strategies unlock bigger and better opportunities for your brand, it ensures you reach the right audience rather than just your bog standard customer database that you have accumulated over the years. Your customers are always evolving, so be sure to analyse your data and implement these learnings as quickly as possible.

When you share your expert knowledge with the right journalists you are demonstrating that you provide value for their work, enabling them to see you as a credible source that they can always rely on.

Tips for a successful digital PR strategy