PR And Inbound Marketing: How Can PR Be Inbound?

In accordance to the evolution in the world of media consumption, much has been written about the need for accuracy in measurement of PR activity. While there is a dearth in measuring the direct effect that PR exposure can have on a company’s revenue scale, Inbound PR metrics offer insight on how much traffic is being generated directly from PR coverage and how strong is the recall value formed among the target audience.  

PR and inbound marketing

PR is essentially the kind of engagement you develop with the consumer/public. A PR specialist or firm helps both create and maintain a good reputation, for an organization, among the media and the customers. This is done through communicating on the organization’s behalf and presenting their products, services and the overall operation in a more positive light. A positive public image helps build a strong relationship with the customers, in turn increase sales. Inbound marketing is more about using marketing to bring potential customers on board, rather than having your marketing efforts vie for their attention. The core of inbound marketing is based on creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your target customers, inbound helps measure the amount of engagement the target audience has the brand.  

Why is inbound marketing important for PR?

Traditional marketing is all about one-way conversation – the marketer pitching to the potential customer. Inbound marketing strategies help create a medium through which you can communicate with your customers in both a professional and amicable manner. By publishing the right content in the right place, your output becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive. Now that’s marketing people can get involved with. Inbound equals interactive. Alongside, Inbound marketing helps optimize your operations, curbing on unnecessary expenditure as compared to traditional outbound marketing. Whether your company is digital or traditional, inbound is 10x more effective for increasing Website Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation and Customer Loyalty. Inbound Marketing aids in taking your campaign to the next level, through optimizing content with visuals and search-friendly keywords to increase recall value.  

How can PR be inbound

Often, marketers are at their wits end in trying to incorporate inbound marketing into their PR Strategy. Fortunately, it is not as difficult as marketing professionals make it to be. Inbound Marketing can, instead, help break big them down difficult campaigns into doable strategies that can applies one at a time. Your existing plan has an enormous value, and you simply need to weave new strategies into the existing ones. Social media, content marketing, and SEO are the key components of inbound marketing, which have similar goals as PR – visibility and awareness, thus complementing each other perfectly.

Here is how to integrate inbound marketing strategies tactics into your PR Plans-

1. Add enriching, informative articles to your mix of bylines, and place them on credible, well-trafficked mediums in both print and digital.
2. In regards to digital campaigns, always optimize your press releases with SEO’s, that would help attract eyeballs.
3. Become a content generation machine by using your PR materials as fodder for publicity.

By timing your campaign correctly, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, ensuring further conversion from interest to action-based engagement. Tags : Traditional PR, Content strategy