Are you struggling to make a brand image for yourself? No matter what you do you fail to get traffic on your website. And when you do, it is just not your target audience.
The pandemic brought a robust digital wave and caused a significant shift towards online mediums. Social media and the web play a pivotal role in our lives nowadays. People spend a lot of time on their phones, consuming a plethora of content. To attract and engage with this audience, it is crucial to tailor your content to suit their preferences. One hard and fast way to do this is through digital advertising or digital PR.
Digital PR or public relations is a marketing tactic to boost one’s online presence. It helps them in customer acquisition and gaining popularity. Like any marketing tactic, this requires a strategy, intricate personalization, and high adaptability. Some approaches used in digital PR include increasing visibility, intensifying engagement, maintaining authenticity, boosting content marketing, etc.
1. Enhanced Visibility and Brand Awareness
Image Credit – Unsplash
To increase visibility and brand awareness, it is important to gain ‘eyeballs” from the target audience. Digital PR can help achieve this by utilizing social media platforms, placements on online publications, partnering with influencers, etc.- boosting exposure and attracting the audience.
Being associated with trusted brands and faces helps you establish credibility and the “trust factor” with potential customers.
Imagine you are new to business and you want to reach your target audience by letting them know your USP, your vision, your values, and how you are helping them out but you want to do it in a way in which they remember you forever.
How would you do that? How would you create a lasting impact?
You need to look for new and exciting ways to get in the front by becoming newsworthy.
One such example of such a thing is:
zomato blinkit billboard
This broke the internet not only benefiting Blinkit and Zomato but various other brands hopping on this trend for their niche.
2. Targeted Audience Engagement
Google Search Console
One great thing about digital PR is that it brings your brand to the right audience at the right time.
The key to achieving this is by studying demographics and statistics of ‘what your audience prefers’. This helps you create content that resonates with your target market, something they are just compelled to click on, something they cannot resist, and something they are most likely to think about later.
It can be done through social media, through a public campaign, or an ad placement.
The best kind of PR or marketing is Word of Mouth.
You are most likely to go to a therapist your friend referred to you instead of trying a new one.
So with the right kind of marketing, it is also equally or more important to maintain the quality of your service or product.
When you know that, you have some loyal customers, give them something to return. Let them know that your brand cares for them. Give them offers they can’t deny.
Your repeat customers are more likely to also bring new customers. So once you reach your target audience, put them on the pedestal.
One such example of reaching your target audience and engaging with them is through mass media and the entertainment industry:
organic smoke shark tank
Whether you get the deal in Shark Tank India or not, you have reached a mass audience nevertheless.
Taylor Swift booked more than 95000 people in Australia in her Eras Tour. This is one such example of organizing a public event (in her case a concert) to directly reach your target audience.
Taylor Swift booked more than 95000 people in Australia in her Eras Tour. This is one such example of organizing a public event (in her case a concert) to directly reach your target audience.
To have so many people show up for your brand, to care for you and your brand, you need a digital PR.
3. Reputation Management and Crisis Communication
A good PR strategy is a necessity for brands to maintain their reputation. PR can make or break a brand. User-generated content, positive feedback, and social-media interactions create social proof or barriers. Transparency and honesty in content help build a loyal community and prevent potential lashback or defamation.
News spreads faster than fire on social media and depreciation is pushed harder than appreciation. Therefore, digital PR provides tools to manage crises and effective ‘damage-control’. Timely responses to negative comments, transparency, and active communication can help tranquilize the damage to a brand’s reputation.
Sometimes the best strategy is to accept that you made a mistake and you are ready to learn from it. Sometimes the best strategy is to do nothing as doing something can seem like a “desperate attempt” to save your brand’s reputation. Digital PR gives you a decision-making ability and helps you get rid of this confusion.
4. SEO Benefits
Digital PR helps in ‘search engine optimization’. Improving your search engine rankings is a crucial aspect of any successful online marketing strategy. Securing placements in trustworthy media outlets through digital PR and its relevance creates high-quality backlinks and elevates the brand’s ranking. When our brand appears on a reputable page, the search engine considers it valuable and relevant, pushing it above in search rankings. This makes your content more accessible to your target audience, which leads to increased visibility and improved brand awareness.
SEO is one of the most talked about and important methods to drive traffic. If your blog posts aren’t optimized for search engines, the organic reach becomes non-existent. With SEO you enhance the probability of getting seen on your landing page. You can further improve your SEO for press releases by including keywords, having a compelling call for action (CTA), integrating links, and adding visuals wherever possible.
5. Amplifying Content Marketing Efforts
A lot of times people get confused between marketing and PR.
While marketing focuses on sales, leads, and data analysis, PR focuses on maintaining the brand reputation and awareness. However, both are linked to generating traffic.
Content marketing and digital PR have to go hand in hand when it comes to distribution and popularisation. This collaboration facilitates multichannel distribution, leveraging social media and influencers to amplify message effectiveness.
6. Measurable Results and ROI
Investing in PR yields measurable results and ROI (return on investment).
All the PR you invest in now will pay back multiple folds in the future. The intensity of positive feedback to your brand is directly proportional to ROI. Every positive or negative comment goes into building a prolonged brand reputation.
Notably, your initial PR move might not give you the results you anticipated but with frequent investment, you will achieve great returns. These returns are the sum of all the investments you made from the very start.
7. Adaptability in the Digital Age
The most important thing in the digital age is to keep upgrading. What might have worked for you today may not work for you tomorrow. What is trending now might become ancient in some time.
Everything including the algorithm of various social media platforms is continuously changing. Your brand has to adapt quickly or your competitor will.
Let’s Recap
Digital PR and its relevance for establishing a brand’s credibility is incredible in this day and age.
What is your brand? Why is it superior to another brand? What does it provide that others don’t? Does your brand care about people? Why is your brand a mastermind?
Digital PR gives you the answers to all these questions and more. Digital PR isn’t a one-time thing but a long-term investment to establish you and your brand as a leader in the industry.
