As the world becomes increasingly digital, the way we promote our brands has also evolved. With more digital touchpoints than ever before, making sure your brand is visible to your users and in search has never been more important. 

Digital PR is a promotional strategy that increases brand awareness and engagement with not only your target customer but on Google too. Keeping your brand at front of mind and higher up the SERPs. 

 In this guide, we will delve deep into the world of digital PR in 2023, explore how it can help elevate your brand and how it can be measured to affect overall business goals.

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR is a promotional marketing concept that refers to the use of online channels to promote a brand’s message, product or story. In simpler terms, digital PR is about building brand awareness, driving traffic, and generating relevant backlinks through online media outlets, social media, and other digital channels.

Contrary to belief, digital PR is not just about earning links. Digital PR forms a part of a wider mixed marketing model as a way to create content that gets clicks and shares.

Digital PR has become an essential aspect of modern-day marketing because it allows brands to leverage the power of the internet to reach a wider audience. By landing stories on relevant publications, brands can get in front of people who are already interested in their niche, and Google notices this too.

Is digital PR different to traditional PR?

Digital PR and traditional PR are two different approaches to public relations. While both aim to tell a brand’s story and increase brand awareness, they can differ slightly in their methods and channels of communication.

Traditional PR focuses on traditional media channels such as print, broadcast, and outdoor advertising. On the other hand, digital PR focuses on online media channels such as social media and online publications. Digital PR aims to reach a targeted audience through online channels and is often more data-driven and tailored to specific demographics or interests. 

In 2023 the lines are being blurred between traditional and digital PR with both approaches achieving success. Traditional PR campaigns can earn online media coverage and digital PR campaigns can also be amplified through offline methods. The major difference comes in measurement. Digital PR agencies focussing on the wider search benefit of earned media. 

Check out how we earned worldwide coverage with our social-first campaign. 

What are the different types of digital PR

Digital PR tends to fall into two categories; reactive/planned PR and campaigns. 

Reactive PR is a method in which you can put your brand in the middle of a trending topic. Due to the nature and need for speed this rarely includes anything on site.

Campaigns take longer to produce and generally include data and creative. Campaigns can use a variety of creative from fully devved pages to hero videos. If you want to know which creative yields the best results, check out our campaign creative report.

Using a blend of campaigns and reactive PR, you can create an always-on PR strategy that ensures a solid flow of links.

But not all links are equal.  Reactive and campaign PR can build links to various parts of the website. However, some are more difficult than others with direct links into categories often being the most tricky. To ensure you know where is best to build links too, a solid search strategy needs to be in place before you start your campaigns. 

How does digital PR impact SEO?

 

Everyone knows the 3 pillars of SEO. Content, tech, and yes you guessed it, backlinks. Effective digital PR can earn you the links that will move the needle. The type of links that drive traffic, get shared, and even drive direct and indirect revenue. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Not really. The key to getting those coveted links is by producing awesome content that’s relevant, engaging, useful, and entertaining. When other authoritative and relevant sites link to your content, Google sees that as a signal of trust and authority on the topic. The more of these links you get, the more Google trusts you, and the higher your organic rankings can climb.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just about the number of links. It’s also about the quality. The links need to be relevant to your brand and content. When digital PR is combined with solid technical SEO and on-site content, it can be a winning combination.

So what does this mean for your website? Well, those links gained through digital PR efforts can help increase search visibility for non-branded keywords. And therefore search is the channel that gets the sale.

But don’t get too excited just yet. If your site is struggling technically, or your content is subpar, those links won’t be enough to drastically improve your organic rankings. Digital PR and SEO need to work together, like a beautiful symphony, to create a credible and trustworthy brand online.

What are the benefits of digital PR

Digital PR is not just link building. The value of it goes way beyond the link earned.

Here are some of the key benefits of what good digital PR look like:

Generating backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites

Digital PR can secure valuable backlinks from respected publications and websites. The type of websites that are relevant and where your target audience hangs out online. These backlinks improve a website’s domain authority, helping it rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and driving more organic traffic to the site. 

Building and improving brand reputation and credibility online

Digital PR helps to establish and maintain a positive brand image and reputation online. By engaging with relevant audiences and media outlets, digital PR can showcase a brand’s expertise, values and unique selling points, building trust and credibility with potential customers.

Driving traffic to a website or specific piece of content

Depending on the type of digital PR campaign you are running, it is possible to drive traffic to different parts of the website. Even a product page.

Using a solid strategy, links to deeper parts of the website carry higher SEO value. Using a variety of techniques can earn links to all different parts of the website.

Increasing brand visibility and awareness

 Digital PR can increase a brand’s visibility and reach by securing media coverage across a variety of platforms. By leveraging the power of media outlets and influencers, digital PR can get a brand in front of new audiences and help to build brand awareness. From this you can see increases in branded search over a period of time. 

Enhancing brand storytelling and messaging

Digital PR helps to craft a brand’s narrative and messaging, shaping how the brand is perceived by audiences. By working with journalists and content creators, digital PR can ensure that a brand’s story is communicated effectively and resonates with the target audience.

Boosting social media engagement and sharing

 Digital PR campaigns can work across social media too. Campaigns can generate buzz and excitement on social media, prompting audiences to engage with and share a brand’s content. This can help to increase a brand’s social media following and reach, while also driving traffic back to the brand’s website.

Establishing thought leadership and industry expertise

 By securing media placements and creating valuable content, digital PR can position a brand as a thought leader and expert in its industry. This can increase the brand’s credibility and influence, while also attracting new customers.

Providing measurable results

 Above all Digital PR provides measurable results, enabling brands to see the impact of their PR efforts. Metrics such as referral traffic, social media engagement, backlink quality, keyword ranking changes, direct and indirect revenue, brands can optimize their PR strategies for maximum impact and ROI.

How to Implement Digital PR

Implementing a successful digital PR strategy requires a combination of creativity, strategy, and persistence. Here are some tips on how to implement a successful digital PR strategy:

Identify Your Goals

The first step in implementing a successful digital PR strategy is to identify your goals. What do you want to achieve with your digital PR efforts? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, generate backlinks, or all of the above? By identifying your goals, you can tailor your digital PR strategy to achieve the desired results.

 Combining this with a search strategy you can plan which categories on site are the most important for you to build links into which will have the most direct effect on your business. 

Research Your Target Audience

Before you can start crafting your campaigns and stories, you need to understand your target audience. Who are they, what are their interests, and where do they spend their time online? By researching your target audience, you can identify the target publifcations that are most likely to resonate with your target audience and tailor your digital PR efforts accordingly.

Create Compelling Content

Compelling content is essential for any successful digital PR campaign. Your content should be informative, engaging, and shareable. Focus on creating content that provides value to your target audience, whether it’s in the form of blog posts, creative campaigns,, videos, or other types of content. You can see which format of campaign has worked the best over the past 5 years in our digital PR format report.

Outreach and promotion

This is where you launch your campaign in the wild. Every campaign should have a thorough outreach and promotional strategy including target publications and journalists. Outreach is a process that takes time and can require reangling if required. 

What makes a good digital PR idea?

At BI, we pride ourselves on being idea generators. We love experimenting with new formats, brainstorming, and pushing boundaries. But let’s face it, with the rise of PRs, landing coverage has become more challenging than ever. Journalists’ inboxes are flooded with pitches, and a single #journorequest can attract over 20 replies within an hour, with only one likely to succeed. It’s a real wild west out there.

So, what makes a good PR idea, whether it’s reactive or a campaign? Well, it all starts with data and insights. Every great story has a solid insight behind it, and we use this as a foundation for all our ideas and pitching strategies. But we don’t stop there. As PRs, we often feel the pressure of time and KPIs, leading us to throw everything at the wall and hope that something sticks. However, that’s not our approach. If a story could come from any brand, we strive to take it one step further and make it truly unique.

To achieve this, we take a step back and do our research. We observe what journalists are talking about, and we think about how we can differentiate our pitch. We brainstorm alone, in groups, or using whichever method works best for us. We never leave brainstorming to the night before a pitch. Time is our friend, and we use it wisely.

Once we have our ideas, it’s time to get them signed off. And, guess what? We have some top tips for that too! Our webinar below will show you how to get your ideas signed off like a pro.

Now, you may be thinking that this is a shameless promotion of our webinar, and you’d be right

Closing thoughts

Back in the day, before the Penguin update, link-building was easy, but it also made it harder for searchers to find what they were looking for. Nowadays, earning links is more challenging, but the rewards for creating quality content are much greater.

Enter digital PR. The benefits of digital PR are vast, from higher search rankings and social shares to greater brand awareness and increased traffic. But like any good marketing, it all comes down to planning and strategy.

To succeed in digital PR, you need to start with a solid strategy that is shaped by your content and business objectives. The hardest part is coming up with a strong angle that will capture the attention of your target audience. This is where thorough research and novel brainstorming techniques come in handy. It’s crucial to keep the preferences and requirements of your target sites and audiences in mind throughout the process.

Digital PR is not easy and takes a lot of resources. But the results can show for years to come. To get there, you need to invest time and resources in creating quality content and promoting it to the masses. It’s a challenging journey, but the rewards are worth it.

If you want to level up your PR game, get in touch.