While it might be obvious for some, others may not be aware that developing a strategy is impossible without the company understanding what it’s trying to achieve.
If the company has made the decision that it needs to develop a digital PR strategy, chances are that all of the objectives have already been detailed.
Most of the time, through digital PR, companies are trying to improve their SEO, increase lead generation, or increase brand awareness.
Target Audience
The first step in developing an effective digital PR campaign is understanding the target audience. That means knowing where that audience is getting its information from in digital spaces.
For example, with B2C companies, it might be through vlogs or blog posts, while with B2B companies, it might be through digital trade press.
Before starting any sort of digital PR efforts, the company needs to understand who the target audience is engaging with, and all the places it frequents.
The best way to understand the target audience is to create buyer personas and detail their demographics, pain points, values, and interests.
Then, the buyer personas can be further defined with any data that’s available to the company, such as data from social media or Google Analytics.
Target Media
Once the company understands its target audience in detail, it’s time to figure out the target media outlets. That list can range from digital publications to bloggers, influencers, and digital content creators.
It solely depends on the type of digital media the company wants to target. Once that’s defined, it’s relatively easy to figure out which people the business needs to get in touch with.
Additionally, there are plenty of tools available online that can help businesses navigate their long list of contacts and filter the different ones according to different information.
Pitching
With an effective digital PR campaign, companies should be both reactive and proactive.
That means creating an editorial calendar with content topics that interest the target audience, as well as using those same topics as pitches on the targeted media channels or outlets.
Companies can also set up their own Google Alerts for a certain set of topics so that they’re always aware of what’s being talked about and when.
Testing
At the end of the day, no strategy is going to be as effective as one that’s constantly being upgraded, updated, and tweaked as the company learns more information and gets more customer data.
The best and most effective strategies are created by companies that are able to invest time, money, and effort into perfecting each promotional effort they create simply by learning from their mistakes and figuring out what works best for the audience and journalists.
That’s why it’s so important to constantly keep track of metrics and test out different PR tactics against the PR goals, and to adjust those tactics when necessary.
Every quarter, businesses should reflect on the results of their PR campaigns , and figure out how they will be moving forward to create the most effective digital PR.
