What is Digital PR and Why Should Your Business Be Using it?

Find out why the market for digital PR is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7% and why your company should be using it.

The worldwide public relations (PR) market is expected to reach a staggering $144.28 billion by 2028[1]. Largely attributed to the rise of digital and social media, this growth lends itself to the increasingly popular strategy of digital PR – an approach born out of traditional PR but evolved to meet the needs of the digital age.

Understanding and leveraging digital PR through digital PR agencies can be a game-changer for businesses worldwide.

But why? How does digital PR differ from traditional PR? And how will your company benefit from using digital PR?

What is digital PR?

Put simply, digital PR is a marketing strategy used to increase a company’s online presence and brand awareness. It’s a chance to tell your brand’s story.

While a key part of digital PR is generating high-value backlinks, this is not its only purpose. By utilising digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing and social media, digital PR enables companies to interact directly with their target audiences across multiple platforms, leading to greater brand awareness, authority, organic rankings and – most importantly – sales.

Digital PR strategies include:

• Creating engaging news stories: Much like traditional PR, digital PR aims to get your business in front of your audience, in the publications they are reading.
• Forming relationships with key journalists: As we outreach your PR campaigns, we can build relationships with journalists along the way, finding other opportunities for coverage.
• Developing content to attract natural backlinks: Highly relevant and high quality content can, over time, see others in your industry linking to it as a source of information.
• Generating social media campaigns: Digital PR can help boost your social media channels by creating shareable assets and these same channels can also be used to find angles for your campaigns.

How is digital PR different to traditional PR?

Digital PR and traditional PR share the same objective of increasing brand engagement but use different methods to get there. Traditional PR relies on making key contacts in the media to generate coverage. Figital PR also does this but also combines this approach with SEO and content marketing to increase organic and referral traffic.

This can be done by focusing on the search terms your audience are using to provide a starting point for digital PR campaigns. By focusing on online news outlets, digital PR also builds your authority online in the eyes of Google, whether through backlink or brand mentions.

This can make improve your site’s overall authority, help it rank better for certain keywords and drive traffic to high converting pages.

In essence, digital PR is one step up from traditional PR – it leans on the foundations of traditional strategies but has evolved to suit the digital age.

Digital PR and SEO

Digital PR and SEO are two sides of the same coin, working together to boost your site’s relevancy in the eyes of Google.

Digital PR strategies, including securing high-value backlinks and creating engaging content, can have a large impact on organic rankings.

The more links your site receives from reputable and relevant sites, the more Google will trust you – and in turn, so will your potential customers.

What are the benefits of digital PR?

The benefits of a strong digital PR campaign are not to be underestimated.

By implementing digital PR, you can expect to see:

• Improved EEAT signals: Google uses EEAT to make sure your site is relevant, high quality and trustworthy. By having links to your site and brand mentions of your company in respectable and highly relevant sites, those sites are saying to Google they trust you as a brand.
• Increased brand visibility: No one is going to search for your brand if they don’t know who they are. Digital PR helps introduce your brand to a wider audience.
• Boosted website traffic: The aim of a good PR campaign is to provide an engaging and interesting story – and then link back from that taster to your site, where people can read more, learn about your company or explore your product range.
• Stronger connections with journalists: Developing relationships with journalists in your sector mean that if they need a quote for a news piece or industry figure for a feature, you are on their radar.

At Edge45, we are committed to delivering these results for our clients. We have worked with a range of companies, gaining coverage and backlinks from high-value publications such as The Mirror, The Guardian and Metro, to deliver higher brand visibility.

We measure success through:

• Backlinks gained: How many of these sites covering your story link to your site, and which pages on your site are they linking to.
• Referral traffic: How much traffic are these links driving to your site, is the traffic engaged and are they converting.
• Improvements in your site’s Domain Rating (DR) / Domain Authority (DA): Links from high value sites can help boost your site’s own DA, which helps it rank better overall.
• Keyword rankings: By providing keyword rich anchor text in PR campaigns and backlinks, we can boost your site’s ranking for these terms.
• Coverage: How many publications have covered your story, what is their readership, how many social followers do they have.

Ways to do a digital PR campaign

Although gaining backlinks is a key component of digital PR, there are many other strategies your business can implement to boost engagement and rankings.

Different approaches might include:

• Back link building: This encompasses digital PR plus looking at other ways to build backlinks from key publications such as guest posting and sponsored content.
• Data-driven research studies: Using first- or -third-party data, we can create engaging statistics that make great news stories and attract natural links over time.
• Thought leadership: Using your experts, we can help position you as thought leaders in your industry.
• Conducting surveys: Surveys can be used to gain original data and insights,
• Stat bombs (page filled with statistics): One PR tactics is to create a piece of content that becomes the source for statistics.

Why – and when – you need digital PR

In today’s digital landscape, the need for Digital PR is more pressing than ever. With the volume of online consumers increasing by the day, having a robust and visible online presence is critical for brand credibility and engagement.

The question is not so much why, but when?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want to launch a specific product or service? Digital PR is a great way to get the word out about new products and services.
• Is your site something you want to showcase? The aim of digital PR is to drive traffic back to your site. If you’re not happy with your site, it might make sense to carry out a technical SEO audit first to get it shipshape.
• Is your site converting? Again, there’s no use sending people back to a site if your user journey isn’t slick and efficient. If your site’s not converting, you might need to consider CRO before launching digital PR.
• Does Google already associate you with a topic due to high quality and highly relevant content? Having on site content around your core products and services will help Google to associate you with that topic. Digital PR builds on this, so it makes sense to check your site has all the informational content you need first.

If you answered yes to all the above, it might be time to start implementing a digital PR strategy. Whether you are launching a new product, looking to generate further reach or simply to stay relevant, digital PR can make your brand work harder for you.

Summary

Companies that embrace digital PR strategies are better positioned to develop and grow in the digital age, while those that don’t may find themselves left behind.

If you are looking to transform your brand’s online presence, connect with audiences more effectively and stay ahead in the competitive market, Digital PR is the strategy for you.

Get in touch to discuss your digital PR strategy with us today!

[1] https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/public-relations-global-market-report