How to build a Digital PR strategy for your brand

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

Perhaps you’re sold on Digital PR but unsure where to start when it comes to formulating a strategy for your brand? In 2026, getting it right means thinking beyond link-building and incorporating traditional PR tactics and AI-driven insights. To help, we’ve pulled together key steps for creating a strategy that works.

In this blog, we’ll cover a topline overview of:

• 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 one of the most effective Digital PR tactics. These can include interactive experiences, surveys, data-led studies, and attention-grabbing stunts. The goal is always the same: create content that appeals to both the media and your target audience.

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, 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.

Repurposing your on-site content

If you’re creating informative content such as guides or top tips for your blog, you can actively use this to inform campaigns and secure coverage by repurposing it and sharing it with the media you’re targeting.

Keep your content up to date and consider adding fresh research or statistics, as journalists are more likely to engage with timely, newsworthy data.

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 using Product PR.

In short, Product PR is a great tactic if you want 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, it 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 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 product launch, increasing traffic to a key site section, improving discoverability in Large Language Models (LLMs) or AI Overviews (AIOs), growing 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 such as what they’re actively searching for, where they hang out online and more. 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, key regions where you want to increase your awareness, 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 to ensure you form ideas that are relevant to your brand, your sector, your audience and your target media outlets.

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 content aligns with your goals and organic insights. Include SEO elements like internal links and target keywords, which will optimise for AI discoverability.

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. Maximise the impact of your PR activity

It’s worth considering how your PR concepts can work across channels. For example, if you’re a B2B brand active on LinkedIn, you might share your research or campaign insights there to engage your audience further. Similarly, your concepts could support social media activity, email marketing, or other owned channels – helping you get more value and visibility.

8. 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 marketing activity, setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your Digital PR campaigns is essential. They allow you to measure the real impact of your work, stay focused on your main objectives, and report performance using meaningful data.

In 2026, KPIs should align with your broader business goals, as “success” can look different for every brand. While generating high-quality backlinks to support SEO goals remains a key focus for most, brands should start to think more about how Digital PR can help with brand awareness, and how they can capitalise on LLMs and AIOs.

While traditional backlink metrics such as domain authority, relevance, and whether links come from new domains remain valuable, the scope of KPIs has expanded. Modern measurement also includes:

• Traffic
• Visibility
• Brand sentiment improvements
• Reach/engagement
• Keyword improvements
• Impressions/clicks
• Sales

Measuring the success of digital PR

Here at connective3, our PR Strategists work hand in hand with our organic team to forecast performance and set clear expectations over time. Today, measuring the success of Digital PR goes far beyond counting links or tracking domain authority alone – it also encompasses:

• Traffic share growth. How does your share compare to competitors? How has it evolved?
• The type of tactic the link is for. Was it a campaign, reactive, proactive, etc?  This is also good to report on so you can see what kind of strategies are working.
• Where does the link point to on your website? Is it a target page? Has it made any impact?
• Traffic increases throughout outreach. How many people have been sent to the site? Leads/sales made? Have clicks or impressions increased?
• LLM/AIO discoverability. Is your brand or content seen as a trusted source, and is this visibility contributing to awareness, traffic, or conversions?

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, like the relevance and authority of the domains providing backlinks remain critical for boosting organic rankings – and with the rise of AI, LLMs, and AIOs, the way we measure impact is evolving. Brand mentions are increasingly recognised as a key metric, reflecting authority and influence across the digital landscape.

While the number and quality of backlinks still matter to search engines like Google, focusing solely on link building won’t drive meaningful growth. If a site has technical issues, weak content, or a backlink profile dominated by low-relevance sources, even strong link metrics won’t translate into results. True success comes when all these elements work together harmoniously.

Put simply, when it comes to Digital PR, quality over quantity has never been more accurate. This is why Digital PR is far more than just link building – it’s about creating lasting impact, authority, and visibility for your brand across both traditional, digital, and now AI-driven channels.

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.