4 minutes

Paid Social & Digital PR: 4 reasons why they work better together

Integrating your Digital PR strategy with Paid Social is a hugely influential tool that is currently under-utilised by the marketing industry. But why should your Digital PR strategy include social media activity as part of communication efforts? Our Senior Paid Social Manager, Danielle, recently joined forces with Amy Mercer, NORTH's Senior Digital PR & Content Manager, to dig into the importance of Paid Social & Digital PR working together.

 

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR is a promotional marketing tactic that applies the principles of traditional public relations to online content, and is used to boost a brands online presence. 

Digital PR campaigns are primarily about the SEO benefit (increasing visibility in search engines), enhancing brand awareness, and where possible, driving sales directly from a campaign. Social media is the stepping stone that can push those campaigns directly in front of more eyes that are relevant to and already interested in your brand, as well as having the potential to effectively funnel your target audience back to your website consistently, after viewing a campaign. 

Over the last decade, the media landscape has been reinforced dramatically by social media - becoming instantly accessible and able to be updated in real-time. News breaks so fast on social media that traditional publications - including newspapers, magazines, even TV and radio - are so far behind the curve of breaking news that they actually rely on social media to provide access to early news reports. Meaning, a large percentage of any target audience is likely to head to social media first for information about a brand they want to know more about.

Both Paid Social and Digital PR can be utilised effectively at every stage of the marketing funnel, meaning if you align and integrate the two elements successfully with clearly defined messaging, consistent brand image and clear tone-of-voice, your strategy can really excel with relevant content for every customer no matter what stage they are at in their purchase journey. The additional benefit being, Paid Social gets your message where you want it, much quicker than Digital PR can. Let’s delve into the key benefits in a little more detail…



1. Additional content for paid social campaigns

When ideating and building your next Digital PR campaign consider how you can consolidate the entire campaign with your overarching brand message - does it resonate with your target audience and is it a topic you have the authority to be an expert voice around?

When creating content and accompanying assets for Digital PR campaigns, many brands will create a simple press release or article with the brand’s name included and a link back to their website. Instead, consider creating more helpful, interesting and informational content that can be published on site (with internal links to enhance the SEO link juice to your target category pages!), but that can also be pushed across social media to spread that information further and increase your position as an authoritative voice in whatever the campaign topic may be. 

This could include creating a number of assets that have a common narrative, such as an onsite interactive asset or infographic that can be made into smaller images, graphics or video snippets that highlight important features or findings from the campaign, and are suitable for social media. Bringing this level of consistency to an omni-channel approach can really help to unite a brand's tone of voice, whilst building authority in their chosen industry and also simply providing the opportunity for further sharing across social media from those who have interest in the campaign. 

 

2. Amplifying digi PR reach

Social media can give a PR campaign traction that is incomparable elsewhere. Unless a brand has already built up a substantial social media following, relying on organic reach can be extremely slow - but a bit of paid activity can really kick start a campaign and quickly build momentum. At the same time as generating relevant traffic as a result of targeted ads, this method can also provide relevant engagement from your target audience and is likely to encourage interaction through comments if a campaign is enough of a talking point.

Most importantly though, identify which social channels are most relevant to use based on target audience, and how any content created should be adapted based on this. For example, a platform like LinkedIn is much more effective for long-form content and more formal or serious messaging, where Instagram or TikTok provide a more suitable space for ‘fun’ and creative campaigns. For each different Digital PR campaign the choice of social media channel should be chosen depending on where a target audience is most likely to be found, and where the content and topic is most suited.

Once a Digital PR campaign has started to slow and has already driven an increased number of consumers through to a website, this then provides the opportunity to retarget that audience using the data gathered from your Paid Social efforts. A Digital PR campaign alone can only take a potential customer so far, especially if it is a news-based piece that they only see once. But, a Digital PR campaign integrated with a Paid Social strategy can help to build continued awareness of a brand, remind them that the brand exists, what their services, and products are, and also what the brand's story is, while then helping to nurture a target consumer until they become an advocate.

 

3. Cross-channel creative & audience insights

Although not directly related to campaign performance, one of the added benefits to amplifying Digital PR efforts through Paid Social is the ability to get insights into audience engagement. 

By putting some budget into Paid Social to boost a Digital PR campaign, the majority of social platforms will provide a breakdown of campaign performance based on demographic and behavioural data points - meaning invaluable insight into target audience can be gained. This can provide instant feedback into what creative, visuals, topics and even ad copy is resonating most with a target audience, which in turn can provide guidance on what to do more or less of, where to scale, and what can drive the most engagement and revenue.

 

4. Improving audience relevancy

As we know, with Paid Social advertising you pay to get your content in front of your target audience quickly and efficiently. With Organic Social, although it may not incur an immediate cost, you have to wait for your audience to find you and then rely on them to spread the content further - and they might not! Paid Social media amplification allows for a set budget to be put in place and your content to be shown to only those who fit your target specification.

Every business has one mission, and that is to build a brand as strong as possible. Ortus and NORTH’s goal is to help brands by using the correct insights to drive the best performance. An integrated strategy allows your brand to stay connected, accessible and engaged with consumers, across both platforms.

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