As Helen Woodward famously said in 1938, “Advertising is what you pay for; publicity is what you pray for.” In today’s attention economy, this saying is even more applicable. Making potential customers aware that you exist and building brand awareness is a massive part of what makes certain brands soar and others fail. You could have the best and most innovative product or service in the world, but without proper publicity, you might struggle to gain traction. Therefore, as we navigate through 2024, here’s all you need to know about the key advantages of digital PR.
This blog will cover:
- What is PR?
- What is digital PR?
- What is the difference between traditional PR and digital PR?
- Key advantages of digital PR
What is PR?
First things first, what exactly is PR? It’s short for public relations, however it isn’t an easy concept to define. In 2012, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) agreed on the following definition: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and their publics.”
There’s also a difference between positive and negative PR. With the former, you’re proactively trying to build more awareness about your public-facing image. As a result, your PR professional will seek ways to draw attention to your products, individuals of note within your company, and your brand story. Typically, they invest in reaching out to their contacts in relevant online and offline publications, and strive to secure speaking engagements.
On the other hand, negative PR is about damage control, and dealing with less-than-ideal situations that can harm a brand’s reputation. If the public discourse around a brand is overwhelmingly negative, a PR professional can advise you on how to proceed.
This includes advising on how to respond to negative feedback, writing an apology message on social media, reaching out to news outlets to mitigate the impact of a negative story, and working on ways to turn a negative situation into a positive or neutral press story.
What is digital PR?
As the name suggests, digital PR is all about the online sphere. Essentially, it involves the use of digital platforms and tools to build relationships with your target audience, the media and influencers.
Good digital PR practices can still incorporate press releases and reaching out to online publications for coverage. However, it also involves taking part in written, video, and podcast interviews, leveraging influencer marketing to establish key partnerships, creating and publishing content to boost domain authority, and engaging in link building activities.
What’s the difference between traditional and digital PR?
They both have the common goal of boosting brand awareness and reputation. However, while traditional PR relies on more old-school methods, such as reaching out to print newspapers and magazines, televisions and radio, holding press conferences and sending out physical press releases, digital PR deals only with the digital.
Traditional PR is still important in some sectors. However, nowadays, digital PR reigns supreme, as it offers a more dynamic approach that can reach even more people than traditional PR methods. You can get real-time feedback, which is not as possible with the traditional PR route. Furthermore, the ability to target specific demographics and track the effectiveness of your campaign via metrics can make a world of a difference in creating a hyper-specific PR campaign that gives quantifiable results.
Key advantages of digital PR strategies in 2024
Enhanced brand visibility and recognition
In an oversaturated market, having a good brand story counts. One of the key advantages of PR (and a good PR professional) is the ability to give your unique brand story the opportunity to reach even more people. Through press releases, strategic media placements, and traditional and online public appearances, brands can significantly boost their exposure and reach audiences that might otherwise not have heard of them.
Additionally, by working hand in hand with your marketing team, PR experts can advise on the best ways to respond to news within your niche and engage in the conversation in a manner that embraces your brand values and enhances your thought leadership potential within your sector.
Credibility
With information at their fingertips, customers are becoming more and more sceptical of what you’re trying to sell. Therefore, you have to work extra hard to build trust and prove your business is credible.
When information and a seal of approval come from a trusted third party, such as a well-known publication, it carries more weight than paid ads that you’re directly paying for. A good PR professional already has a relationship with the journalists and contacts that can give your business that crucial seal of approval, which will help audiences who may be on the fence about your product to convert to paying customers.
Link building for SEO
Link building remains one of the key cornerstones of any search engine optimisation strategy, and digital PR can play a role in supporting this. By securing coverage and backlinks from well-respected outlets, PR can directly impact your search engine rankings, which in turn helps you reach more potential customers.
A page on an authoritative domain almost always ranks higher than a counterpart on a less authoritative domain, as confirmed by Google. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that any good digital PR service in 2024 needs to include link building considerations to truly impact your SEO strategy and drive organic traffic to your website.
Domain authority
Another key advantages of digital PR is that it can help boost domain authority. Domain authority is essentially a ranking system that describes how well a website will rank on search engine result pages.
Link building is closely related to domain authority. By creating and distributing high-quality content, digital PR campaigns have the unique opportunity to attract backlinks from other websites, which directly improves a website’s domain authority.
In addition, being featured on other websites with a high domain authority sends a signal to search engines that your website is also trustworthy and of a certain quality, further boosting your domain authority. This has the potential to increase long-term visibility and organic traffic, which is definitely a bonus when you’re trying to one-up your competitors.
Market positioning
Effective PR can turn ambitious businesses into market leaders. By highlighting their brand story, unique selling points, and the expertise within the team, PR can help a brand stand out from the crowd and assume the position of a leader and “the one to beat.”
As we’ve already pointed out, in an oversaturated market characterised by sceptical customers, a good story can be the deciding factor in a potential customer’s decision-making process. Moreover, a well-thought-out PR campaign that focuses on establishing the brand as a pioneer can make all the difference when trying to attract investors.
Wrapping up
As we move through 2024 and beyond, there’s a growing gap between brands with good PR and brands that close up shop because of zero brand awareness.
From boosting your brand’s visibility to helping with your SEO strategy, the advantages of digital PR are undeniable. So, if you’re ready to give your brand a shot at digital PR success, get in touch with our PR experts today.
