5 Reasons You Should Incorporate PR into your Marketing Strategy
Public relations experts have predicted that the future of in-house PR departments will soon be no more, as public relations strategy becomes heavily incorporated into overall marketing strategy. In our professional opinion, the two should always go hand in hand.
Whether you push products to market via traditional routes such as radio and billboards, or you prefer digital techniques like display advertising and retargeting; either strategy can benefit from the implementation of a partnering product PR strategy. The goal of this would be to share whichever product or service you are pushing to a wider audience, whilst simultaneously increasing your brand and product’s credibility.
Brand and Product Credibility
Without brand and product credibility, your sales are not likely to increase at a high rate. Having the product or service you are currently marketing featured in publications, digital or print, allows for potential new customers to start trusting your brand. This can happen through many routes but the key ones include:
Potential customers retaining your brand name when reading a publication and recognising it as trustworthy.
Customers researching your marketed product or brand via search engines to find that they have been featured in credible publications.
This increases the likelihood of a new customer making a purchase as they can see your brand is endorsed by well-trusted publications and journalists.
Gaining a Higher Search Ranking
Another essential benefit of having a PR strategy to work with your marketing strategy is the ability to create a higher search ranking for your marketed product. To put it simply; the more digital coverage you receive with hyperlinks featured, particularly followed links, the higher your product will appear in search engines. This allows for more opportune purchases from customers searching for a product like yours.
It’s Free and Feels Genuine to the Customer
PR is also a great way to push your product without customers becoming bored. With advertising, it’s usually obvious that you have paid for that ad to be put in front of that customer. Customers are smart, they catch on, and although ads are great, they can also become tiring.
Public relations is not only a free form of advertising, but it’s a form of advertising that feels genuine to the customer. If they’ve spotted your product in a magazine they were reading out of choice, rather than it popping up in the corner of a website as an ad, they are more likely to believe this product placement was by coincidence and feel as if they have selected this product (when we know it’s been selected for them)!
Brand Visibility
Finally, the overarching reason as to why you need PR in your marketing strategy is to boost brand visibility. While pushing your product through paid routes seems like the best route to go down, your product will only be pushed to new audiences for as long as your budget can handle. PR continuously delivers in terms of engaging potential new customers and letting people know about your brand.
Still not quite sure where to begin? You can send any PR-queries to us using our contact form.