1. Use PR to Facilitate Content Promotions

Reach out to relevant journalists, editors, influencers, bloggers, or other media outlets with your content. Your content should be data-focused, but emotional enough to connect with the average consumer. This should lead to more sharing among social media, increased media coverage, and a wider audience that may include merging complementary industries. A study by ON-Broadcast, a broadcast specialist agency, showed that many journalists admit to finding stories on social networks or other media outlets. This means that reporters could possibly pick up your story when you distribute your content across different channels. Consider looking out for guest posting opportunities on reputable websites. Having regular articles and press mentions will amplify your reach in the long term.

2. Use PR to Build Relationships with Influencers

PR is more than just sending a single inquiry email and hoping to get more eyes on your content pieces. It is about building and nurturing mutually beneficial relationships. The better your PR, the easiest it gets to attract new partners, which is a valuable asset when using influencer marketing. An influencer has the trust of their audience and to keep that trust, they try to work with companies that are reputable. Create an influencer strategy built on honest reviews of your product or service. Make sure your content is clear and easy to understand. If the influencer created the content, check that their work doesn’t have any misleading information. After that, enjoy a steady stream of media coverage, co-branded content, social media mentions, and product or service reviews. 

3. Use PR to Help You Become an Industry Authority 

Public relations help you increase authority through speaking engagements, interviews, media coverage, or social media presence. Keep an eye out for local tradeshows, community events, or schools hosting a career day. Allow your employees to build personal brands and share industry insights or news under the company name. Also allow individuals within your company to become thought leaders by publishing insightful content pieces, such as industry reports or expert commentaries. This not only will build the creditability of your company but will show your employees that they are valuable members of the team. Potential clients will feel more at easy if they see real people interacting with the company. 

4. Use PR to Improve Your Online Visibility 

Proactive PR and reactive PR are two ways to approach improving your online presence. Proactive PR involves sharing content with the public in the forms of research and press releases being published on high-ranking high authority websites. Press releases are usually distributed by PR specialists or via newswire services, but you can easily send them out yourself with dedicated PR tools or with the help of a digital marketing agency with SEO services. The goal is to create buzz around your brand and become “findable”. You want journalists and potential customers look for information through Google Search and have you pop up in an ad, snippet, or the first or second page of Google’s results page. 

Pair proactive PR with reactive PR which involves responding to journalists’ needs. There are all sorts of new platforms from local to international online magazines or news companies. Once you find a suitable outlet to share your content, make sure to answer fast and personalize your pitch, depending on the media outlet and its requirements. This PR tactic helps to build quality backlinks and drive traffic to your business’s website.

5. Use PR to Leverage New Communication Channels

Create an online newsroom or company blog is an important communication channel for PR specialists and content marketers. You can use it for publishing press releases, in-house announcements, messages from the founders, or other newsworthy stories your company may have. Unlike traditional media coverage, this is where brands control their own story entirely and decide what to make public. Having an online newsroom or creating a company blog via WordPress will add a sense of legitimacy to your website. It will also make it easier to nurture media relationships and help you manage your online reputation on your own. This shared desire for PR and content marketing is an excellent way to manage and improve your brand’s online reputation. A better reputation equals a higher chance a potential client will pick your business over another’s. 

Need help incorporating PR into your content strategy? Call 248.528.3600.

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1. Photos of current staff member(s).

2. Photos of a new team member.

3. Photo of owner or boss interacting with the business.

4. Photo of new products being unboxed or stocked.

5. Photos of satisfied customers (with legal and proper consent).

6. Photo of an office pet or mascot. 

7. Photo of a holiday gathering or charity event.

8. Photo of staff members in action (meeting, helping customers, stocking shelves, etc.).

9. Short video of a happy customer’s testimonial.  

10. Photo of new equipment. 

11. Photo of staff working on location (especially if it is out in the field).

12. Photo of “behind the scenes” or “how it is made”. 

13. Memes made from your own pictures.

14. Short video of company birthday or employee birthday.

15. Video announcement of a promotion, product, or special.

16. Video tour of the business or areas you serve.  

17. Video/podcast with some helpful industry advice for the customer. 

18. Video supporting a local cause or volunteered event.

19. Video showing off use new products or services (30 seconds to a minute).

20. Video of the owner talking about the mission of the company.

21. Video/podcast interview with team members.

22. Assemble product or service photos into a collage. 

Create a content strategy for your business. Call 248.528.3600.

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1. Build Your Mailing List

Your email must be shared by users of their own free-will. Forms such as “subscribe”, “contact”, “become a member” are good examples to have on your website. When you collect their data include name, date, email, birthday or month, and any more pieces of info tailored to benefit them. Be careful not to violate privacy policies. To not come off as a scam, it best to give something in return for the info. Examples include discount codes, free eBook, or member-exclusive video. Remember to ALWAYS have an option of unsubscribing from your email list. It is illegal to send marketing emails without the opportunity to disengage.

2. Select an Email Service Provider (ESP) 

The old-fashioned way is to collect email addresses, add them to your contacts list under a label, and send email newsletters that way. This is time-consuming, inefficient, and you could be missing out on some fantastic online services that will increase your business efficiency. Here is the top 7 ESP used according to wpbeginner:

• Constant Contact
• SendinBlue
• HubSpot
• Omnisend
• Drip
• ConvertKit
• MailChimp 

3. Create a Marketing Strategy

There needs to be goals that you aim to accomplish in your email marketing plan. First start with your audience. Who are you going to be emailing? Who are you targeting to grab details to send your emails to? Knowing your audience can help you build your customer base and make sure you aren’t sending it to people who don’t need your product or service. Once you have your list and have been emailing for a while, segment your email info into groups. Organize by who engages, who opens the emails, and who clicks through. This will allow you to tailor different campaigns to your most engaged viewers. Speaking of content and goals. Are you trying to get the people who engage less to click through more? Do you want to reward the most active people on your list? Do you have news to give or a new product or service to market? Your campaigns should focus on answering these questions and be designed to accomplish these tasks.

4. Design Your Emails

Plan text on a white background won’t cut it. These emails usually end up in someone’s spam box or worse you email is reported and banned. You must add you brand colors and imagery to the email, so you look legitimate. Most modern email software in use, will also allow you to include HTML links, embed videos, and more, making it much more desirable to the end-user. Interactivity should help the potential client through the sales process. If you are struggling hirer a graphic designer or a digital marketing agency with designers to help you. 

5. Test the Email Systems

Before you send ANYTHING, test that it works. This also includes any automation you’ve set up. Here is a checklist of items to go through before you send to customers:

 Subscribe to your service and see if your free offer works.

 Set a test list with five or so emails with different browsers or different email software systems.

 Send the emails and then read them to find spelling or grammatical errors you may have missed.

 See if the emails work on mobile devices as well.

6. Implement Email Automation

If everything is working and you are quickly gaining more emails, it is time to start automating simple tasks. Have a welcome email, thank you email, the gift, and the multi-step EDM campaign all automated. This will free you from micro-managing email marketing and open up your time schedule to work on other more productive and profitable things with your business.

Too busy for email marketing? Let us do it for you! Call 248.528.360 

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Top: Drive Traffic & Awareness

The top goal of your content should be to drive traffic and awareness to your company’s website, social media, or local storefront. Make your ideal customer aware of the problem your product or service solves. This can be done with online advertising, direct email marketing, instructional video marketing, and SEO. 

Middle: Generate Leads 

Turn awareness and engagement of the user into qualified leads to pass to your sales team. Use content that can only be accessed by a user if they provide personal information such as name, email, phone #, etc. This can come in the form of a contact forms or email subscriptions boxes. Unlike the top, this content coverts traffic already gained into leads that your salesperson or team can follow up on and start a conversation. 

Bottom: Convert Leads to Sales 

The audience is engaged, you provided valuable content, collected emails, and given your sales team something to take action with. So, what now? You create supplementary content that team can use and that makes potential customers feel confident in their purchase. This content is usually case studies, specific use-cases of your product, free trials, or statics showing the benefits of your product. This type of content helps potential clients feel that your business is reputable and that their purchase will not be wasted. 

 Keys of Content Marketing Success

 Understand the Buyer’s Journey

• Awareness
  • Identify the problem
  • Conduct online research 

• Consideration
  • Explore solutions
  • Research Vendors 
  • Determine relevant strategies 

• Decision 
  • Create a shortlist of solutions 
  • Assess the ROI of each
  • Make purchase decision 

 Tailor Your Funnel the Buyer’s Journey

• Create Content for Each Stage:
  • Top: SEO, Blog Content, Videos, YouTube channel, How-To Content, Webinar Snippets, Social Media ads, Targeted Web ads, Direct Email, Cold Email/Outreach.
  • Middle: Case Studies, Templates, Drip Campaigns, Newsletters, Webinars/Events, White Papers, GooglemyBusiness Profile
  • Bottom: Customer Stories/Testimonials, Competitor comparisons/spec sheets, Trials, Demos, Sales Deck. 

 Customer Retention 

This phase is often forgot, but very important for your business to stay relevant and successful. Your sales, customer service, support team, and marketing team all need to be working to maintain the customers attention. Share insights and resources into your product or services that will help customers succeed and create behind-the-scenes content from your company to keep the client engaged and part of your business. This strengthens the relationship and creates community around your product or service. 

Create a content funnel with us today! Call 248.528.360 

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SEO is about optimizing websites, but far more importantly, it is about enhancing and improving the broader Web presence and the user experience itself so that enterprises (businesses like yours) are seen as relevant to, and favorable for, a prospective audience/user’s query (the terms and phrases they use) when using one of the popular search engines. That was somewhat of a long-winded definition of search engine optimization, so let’s simplify and in the process clarify what those responsible for the practice of SEO engage in and the type of initiatives they routinely embark upon.

SEO is about building a website presence and maintaining an online reputation that results in being awarded or assigned a position on the search results pages that is favorable to brand objectives.

As previously mentioned, search engine optimization requires a balance between the technical and the creative (with a virtual eye toward the quality of the user experience of course). Enterprises that understand this fundamental realization are those which, on the whole, experience the greatest level of success.

SEO>

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