While PR initiatives often generate valuable market presence and thought leadership for organizations, they are often siloed from other marketing activities. To drive more value from PR and marketing activities alike, teams can more closely collaborate through shared strategies and metrics. Following are some tips to get started.
Integrate Campaigns – If your company is making a major marketing push around a particular industry trend or issue, use it as an opportunity to extend your voice and message across PR channels too. For example, offer byline articles that reinforce thought leadership points shared on a recent webinar or at a recent conference speaking engagement.
Align Metrics – Marketing activities, particularly demand generation initiatives, are expected to drive qualified leads and sales lift. PR activities support this goal by elevating a company’s market visibility, brand recognition and thought leadership. Take marketing metrics up a notch by tracking PR-related impacts such as website traffic spikes due to press releases and media mentions, as well as offering refreshed website content on those days—such as an actionable blog post.
Cross Promote Customers – Securing customers to speak favorably about your products or services is one of the most effective sales vehicles. However, marketing and PR teams sometimes spar over customer requests to avoid asking too much of them. Instead, teams can increase their ROI by working together to involve customers in one interaction that can be used for multiple opportunities, e.g., case study, Q&A email campaign, award submission.
This article originally appeared in an issue of The Spark newsletter.