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Over the past few years, digital PR has become significantly more important for brands and now goes way beyond ‘building links’. It includes increased brand awareness, brand positioning, SEO ranking, marketing share, share of voice, social media performance, organic traffic, sales and more – all encompassed in one.

If you’re still new to the world of digital PR, that might all seem a bit overwhelming! Here, we’re going to go back to basics and highlight what exactly digital PR is and how it can help your brand.

What is digital PR?

Digital PR involves creating content campaigns around unique data pieces, interactive content onsite, newsjacking techniques, and other strategies to increase awareness and gain high-quality backlinks. Quality backlinks from a credible source indicate to Google that a site is trustworthy by appealing to its ranking factor, therefore increasing your organic ranking, as well as many more benefits.

Digital PR is similar to traditional PR, but instead, campaigns are online and supported with online content including information about the campaign, that is also outreached to journalists and online publications. Incorporating digital PR into your marketing strategy is a great way to enhance your SEO value and create new and creative ways to reach your target audience.

 

What are the benefits of digital PR?

Greater SEO ranking

Digital PR can help to grow your organic visibility. As part of Google’s ranking components E (Expertise) A (Authority) T (Trust), digital PR fits the trust of this equation – especially backlinks from high authority sites. Domain authority is counted from 0-100, the greater the number, the higher possibility your website is likely to rank. In simple terms, the higher the DA, the more Google recognises that the site is trustworthy – therefore pushing it up the rankings on search engines.

This means that the higher your target keywords appear on search results, the more results you will see for your business! Combining SEO and content marketing will increase your online presence, as the reach is much greater from higher rankings.

If you’re on the 2nd page of Google or greater, then you’re basically unseen to the digital world. This is how digital PR campaigns help brands, by gaining quality backlinks from high authority websites you will start to see your pages appear higher on search engines. Therefore, driving more traffic and sales to your site.

Increased Market Share

Market share indicates how much of the market your brand holds. This is one of the ways digital PR can help, by achieving more authority, brand mentions, and sales through the distribution of online content you will be responsible for a higher chunk of the market.

This means not only will your brand dominate the conversation online but dominate sales – in turn strengthening a brands reputation and customer base, as potential customers will follow the lead of new ones. In addition, this will enable you to have a broader audience to subject your future PR and marketing campaigns to.

Driving sales through a CTA

In a world where more people are using organic search to purchase products online, search engine optimisation is integral to success. A good digital PR strategy will not only have newsworthy content that your target audience is highly-likely to engage with, but it will have a direct link to your website. This link could be to find out more about your brand or a product page, which will in turn drive website traffic and entice internet users to convert.

Another digital PR campaign that provides a personal way of interacting with your audience, is hero campaigns. And as you guessed by the name, they’re not your ‘standard’ campaign. They involve building an interactive asset on-site to lure users in, this could be a map, leaderboard, or game. Hero campaigns are beneficial as they show a different side to your brand and offer a unique way of interacting with your audience through shared media, that a stand-alone graphic can’t replicate.

Enhanced reporting

Reporting for digital PR campaigns can consist of a number of metrics including links, organic sessions, content reach, and social media mentions from integrated campaigns – providing enhanced reporting for you to demonstrate ROI.

Reporting tools include platforms such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Moz where the impact of the campaign can be directly tracked and monitored.

Increase brand awareness

Digital PR can help you target various audiences and raise awareness. By achieving online coverage, you’re able to achieve a greater number of brand mentions and overall presence online. This online coverage will position your brand as the ‘go-to’ operator in your field, thought leader, industry specialist, or generally drive awareness around a unique selling point.

A strong digital PR campaign will involve engaging content and messaging that will get readers interested. This is where you can be creative with your content marketing and target audiences who may not have necessarily interacted with your brand before.

In addition to the SEO value digital PR brings, achieving backlinks from high quality articles such as Mail Online, Good Housekeeping and trade publications, tells internet users that your site is a trusted brand. Therefore, creating the same effect positive reviews do – a growing reputation for your brand and a reliable sales source.

A variety of channels to reach your target audience

Globally, it’s reported that 4.95 billion people use the internet daily in 2022. The beauty of digital PR is there’s an abundance of digital channels to reach your target audience on. Everything from radio, podcasts, news outlets, online reviews, social media, website content, and much more are on the radar of a digital PR agencies network. And with more and more people consuming online media, this is a powerful way to reach an active consumer audience.

By using digital channels you’re able to attract business online on an international scale, to generate leads and revenue opportunities across the globe – which is extremely beneficial if you’re looking to launch into a new market.

Integrating other areas of online marketing for greater brand messaging

Digital PR campaigns can be integrated into other service areas such as video production, influencer marketing, social media, paid advertising, blogger events, print media, and traditional PR. By using these other services, digital PR can help to amplify campaign reach to new audiences and levels – helping you to achieve your objectives.

At Prohibition, we work with a range of brands across all sectors, B2B and B2C, to create innovative PR campaigns that deliver real ROI and help meet business goals. Get in touch with us today to find out how we could support you with your Public Relations. Drop us an email: hello@prohibitionpr.co.uk or give us a bell on  0113 430 4160.

For more interesting articles from us check out these posts:

  1. Why it’s important to secure coverage for your product
  2. Five reasons why public relations is important for brands
  3. Top five tips on how you can make the most of your media coverage