How to build a Digital PR strategy for your brand

What to know about coming up with a Digital PR strategy?

Maybe you’re sold on digital PR but not sure where to start when it comes to formulating your strategy? We understand that you’ll want to get it right, which is why we’ve pulled together information on potential digital PR tactics you might want to use and steps for getting started.

In this blog, we will be discussing:

• Common digital PR tactics
• What to know about creating a digital PR strategy
• The importance of setting KPIs
• How to measure the success of digital PR

Common digital PR tactics

Content marketing campaigns

Content marketing campaigns are perhaps the most common digital PR tactic, and can include attention-grabbing stunts, interesting surveys, fun interactives, data-led studies, and more.

Regardless of the campaign framework, the end goal is always the same – creating content that is interesting to both the media and potential customers.

When ideating for content marketing campaigns, the thing that should be at the forefront of your mind is whether it will provide value to your brand’s audience. After all, they’re the people you want visiting your website, interacting with your brand, and eventually converting.

Reactive PR

Then there’s reactive PR, which, as you might have guessed from the name, involves keeping up with current news and trends so that you can quickly jump on any opportunities that could be relevant to your brand.

The main difference here is that you can’t really plan ahead for reactive PR. Basically, in order to secure coverage, you need to respond fast and be one of the first to get in there before the media (and people) move on to the next thing of interest.

With the rise of social media, TikTok in particular, this has become an even more popular PR tactic. In fact, we’ve got our own dedicated newsroom team at connective3 so that we can ensure an ‘always on’ and ‘always there’ approach for our clients.

Product PR

Whether it’s getting your products mentioned in gift guides and roundups, generating excitement around a new launch, or having your products reviewed in the media, there are various ways to create buzz through the use of product PR.

In short, product PR is a great tactic if you’re wanting to place attention on your brand’s products or an upcoming launch.

Internal business news

If you’ve got internal business news that you want to showcase or that might be of interest, there doesn’t always need to be another existing story in order to secure coverage.

From new openings and big hires to charity initiatives and more, internal business news is information that can be shared with the trade media to promote your brand and establish authority.

Technical link reclamation

Technical link reclamation is another PR tactic that can help with building links but isn’t quite the same type of outreach. Instead, this is the process of trying to reclaim both lost and broken links or transforming existing brand mentions into links. We’ve actually got a whole guide to technical link reclamation if you’re interested in looking into this further.

Creating your own digital PR strategy: step-by-step

1. What do you want to achieve?

To start, you need to nail down your goals and aims. This could include promoting a new product launch, increasing traffic and visibility of a particular section on the site, increasing brand awareness, and more.

2. Identify your audience

Given that your PR tactics should appeal to your brand’s target audience, you need to identify who they are, including their age range, interests, and other information. From here, you can then decide what media they consume that you should be targeting.

3. Use organic insights to your advantage

Once you know your audience, it’s time to combine this with organic insights to inform a strategy that will be effective. This includes information on any target keywords, particular areas of the site that need focusing on, and how your competitors are performing.

4. Ideation

To ensure your ideas are relevant, you should bring all key channels together to brainstorm ideas that will meet your goals and objectives. On top of that, you should be taking your target audience, their preferences, and the media landscape into consideration as well.

5. Creating top-quality content

In some cases, you may have accompanying on-site content for your PR campaign which will be referenced in the press release. It’s important that this blog is also in line with your overall goal and organic insights, including internal linking opportunities and target keywords.

6. Having an outreach strategy in place

Before you start any outreach, it’s important to decide on a strategy which details how you’re going to make your campaign work harder. This also includes compiling an overall media list, coming up with a range of hooks and angles for different media niches, and figuring out when you’re going to outreach these angles.

7. Use any learnings for the future

Once a PR campaign is over, sit down with your team to discuss learnings for the future. This way, you can identify what worked, as well as what could be improved next time. We’ll delve further into the importance of setting KPIs and how to measure success in the following sections.

Creating your own digital PR strategy: step-by-step

1. What do you want to achieve?

To start, you need to nail down your goals and aims. This could include promoting a new product launch, increasing traffic and visibility of a particular section on the site, increasing brand awareness, and more.

2. Identify your audience

Given that your PR tactics should appeal to your brand’s target audience, you need to identify who they are, including their age range, interests, and other information. From here, you can then decide what media they consume that you should be targeting.

3. Use organic insights to your advantage

Once you know your audience, it’s time to combine this with organic insights to inform a strategy that will be effective. This includes information on any target keywords, particular areas of the site that need focusing on, and how your competitors are performing.

4. Ideation

To ensure your ideas are relevant, you should bring all key channels together to brainstorm ideas that will meet your goals and objectives. On top of that, you should be taking your target audience, their preferences, and the media landscape into consideration as well.

5. Creating top-quality content

In some cases, you may have accompanying on-site content for your PR campaign which will be referenced in the press release. It’s important that this blog is also in line with your overall goal and organic insights, including internal linking opportunities and target keywords.

6. Having an outreach strategy in place

Before you start any outreach, it’s important to decide on a strategy which details how you’re going to make your campaign work harder. This also includes compiling an overall media list, coming up with a range of hooks and angles for different media niches, and figuring out when you’re going to outreach these angles.

7. Use any learnings for the future

Once a PR campaign is over, sit down with your team to discuss learnings for the future. This way, you can identify what worked, as well as what could be improved next time. We’ll delve further into the importance of setting KPIs and how to measure success in the following sections.

The importance of setting KPIs

As with any type of marketing activity, setting KPIs (aka ‘key performance indicators’) for your digital PR campaigns is crucial, as it is essentially how you value your success and see the actual impact of your work. Having KPIs in place will also help you stay focused on the main goal and allows you to report back on the performance of your campaigns with data that actually matters.

When it comes to setting these KPIs, this will depend on your overall goals and what you want to achieve to drive business performance. It’s important to bear in mind that one brand’s idea of success might look different to another, and this will then impact your KPIs and how you measure success.

Of course, when it comes to digital PR, you should be setting KPIs in relation to backlinks such as average DA, whether the links are from a new, relevant domain, etc. However, aside from backlinks, other important KPIs include:

• Social media reach/engagement
• Traffic
• Visibility
• Keyword improvements
• Impressions/clicks
• ROI

Measuring the success of digital PR

Here at connective3, our PR strategists work closely with our organic team to map out the PR results we expect to receive over time. Measuring the success of your digital PR efforts isn’t just about link numbers on a sheet. It goes beyond this, including:

• Traffic share growth
• The state of the link (e.g., follow or no follow)
• The type of tactic the link is for (e.g., campaign, reactive, proactive, etc – this is also good to report on so you can see what kind of strategies are currently performing best for you!)
• The DR/DA and relevancy of the site linking to your site – is it a ‘new’ link on a wishlist domain?
• Where does the link point to on your website – is it a target page, has it made any impact?
• Visibility and traffic increases throughout outreach – how many people have been sent to the site? Leads/sales made? Have clicks or impressions increased?

On top of that, you’ve also got other vanity metrics like reach, awareness, positive brand sentiment, and social engagement.

What are good results for digital PR?

Good results for digital PR don’t necessarily equate to tonnes of links. Other factors, such as the relevancy and authority of the domain that provides a backlink, are just as, if not more, important when it comes to boosting organic rankings.

Ultimately, even though the number and quality of your backlinks do matter to search engines like Google, focusing on link building alone won’t lead to a boost in organic rankings. If your brand’s site is struggling technically, producing poor content, and the majority of their backlink profile is coming from sites of little relevancy, you’re not going to see the results you want. All of these different elements share the same goal and need to work together harmoniously in order to achieve true success.

Essentially, ‘quality over quantity’ couldn’t be any more accurate than when looking at the impact of your digital PR work. Taking this back to what we said right at the start, this is exactly why digital PR is so much more than just ‘link building’.

If you want to find out more about what our team get up to and how we can enhance your brand’s online presence and reputation, be sure to check out all of the digital PR services we offer.