Why good PR is just as important as a digital strategy

1 Aug

We know how it goes. Your SEO expert will tell you SEO is vital to your marketing. Your ad manager will tell you your ad campaign is absolutely essential. Your social media exec will tell you content is the priority.

All the while, we’re here banging the drum for PR. Nobody is wrong here – everyone who does their job well provides something essential for any business, but the key is working with experts in each area.

We live and breathe PR. It’s always been our thing. We’ve never been distracted by digital, and that lets us provide you with strong coverage and brand recognition.

But why is that just as important as a digital strategy?

PR is the groundwork of any communications. It’s been around the longest of any branches of comms – think of it as the foundations to a building. Digital might be the rooftop – important, yes, but you wouldn’t slap it on first, would you?

PR builds a brand, sometimes from nothing. It protects great reputations and creates trust in businesses new to their audience. PR is deep. It’s not an image and click through for your thumb to slide past. PR is a whole experience, one that can be added to with digital marketing, but one that does well on its own too.

Consider the last few ads from unknown brands on social media. Did you click on them? Did you buy? Were you unsure or left with a feeling of doubt because the brands didn’t have a history with you?

Now consider how you would have felt having seen the ads after a big feature in a national publication, backed up with radio coverage, or even a mention on the local news? Better, right? Digital campaigns often lead people to seek out the reassurance that PR content provides. When your audience Googles you, they need more than your Instagram account to build trust.

This often means a journalist (i.e. real humans with public profiles that we trust) has tried and tested the product or service they’re talking about. That builds social proof that ads alone can’t.

When we invest in PR, we’re investing in people’s confidence with us. Audiences go from unsure and needing to be spontaneous for brands to benefit, to well-informed and ready to engage. PR creates the strongest base for any campaign, digital included. So, when your audience sees your name pop up on their feed, it’s a name they recognise – and that’s half the battle won.

‘I just need a quick win, I’ll put out a Facebook ad.’

We hear you. Everybody wants a quick win (who wouldn’t?!), but the question is whether it’s likely to be successful. There’s little point putting out a social ad if the right audience doesn’t see it – and fine tuning your audience targeting, as well as your unique messaging, takes time and planning. A digital marketer worth their buck would never tell you otherwise, so while it’s frustrating to hear that your campaign won’t make you millions overnight, it’s worth knowing that the time you do invest can be matched with a strong PR strategy too. That way, you’ll be covering all bases and strengthening your overall comms.

We’ve specialised in PR our whole careers, and it shows. When we work with clients, we know there’s often in-house marketing alongside our efforts, and we love that. We bring PR to the table whenever there’s a gap for it. Sometimes that gap just isn’t the first thing you’ll think of, but it is an essential part of your comms mix.

‘What if I just want to do PR, can it work without digital?’

If you work with real experts in their field (hint hint, us!), your investment should always reward you with strong results. We work solely in PR so we can provide our clients with campaigns and coverage that stands alone brilliantly, but we’ll also work alongside other marketing channels, and even partner with digital agencies to provide that full comms package. It really depends on what you’re looking for, but we want to convey how important we think it is that PR is the foundation of all that you do.

So, in summary, if you’re weighing up how to market your brand:

Know that whatever comms you use, there are no quick wins (and nobody reputable will tell you otherwise)
Speaking of reputable, always work with experts in their field to avoid a generic approach and get the most out of the expertise you pay for
Remember that strong PR provides a bedrock to everything else – your digital campaigns will be stronger with PR underlying them
Digital campaigns alone can’t offer the same brand awareness and trust that PR can
Audiences consume content both on and off social media, with deeper content warranting deeper attention

Still on the fence? We recommend talking to people who know their stuff, so book in a call with us today and we’ll help you understand how PR could strengthen your business.