How and where you communicate with your target audiences has a profound impact on your overall online presence. With a proven digital PR strategy template at your disposal, you can create comprehensive campaigns that encompass everything from content creation to social media outreach.
Before you fully implement this vital tool, however, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the crucial steps required to develop and execute a successful digital PR strategy. And that’s exactly what we’re going to address in this article.
You can’t assess the efficacy of your PR initiatives unless you first set the objectives you’re trying to achieve. You’ll likely set several goals, but it’s important to ensure they’re specific, measurable, and achievable.
For example, your primary goal may be to increase the sales of a particular product or service, but your secondary objectives may include building brand awareness, increasing customer loyalty, and educating your target audience.
As long as your goals are specific and measurable, you’ll be able to gauge the overall effectiveness of your strategy during and after the process.
Who are you talking to? What are they looking for? What's the best way to communicate with the people most likely to be receptive to my products or services? These are the kinds of questions to ask yourself when identifying your target audience.
While ascertaining age groups, gender mixes, locations, and income is a great place to start, take a deeper dive into your target audience for the best results.
For example, do your customers have young families or are they predominantly retirees? What are their lifestyle interests? Do they prioritize work or leisure? Create buyer personas to paint a clear picture of the people you’re talking to, and craft your PR content accordingly.
Pro tip: Once you know who you’re talking to, think carefully about where these people hang out in the digital world. Are they sharing photos and videos on Instagram, for instance? Are they more likely to be commenting on blog posts or mooching around in online discussion forums?
Decide who your target consumers are, and focus on the places they’re more likely to be active.
It’s time to learn as much as possible about your customers, your competitors, and the general state of the market. Don’t worry if this process lacks structure; just get together with colleagues if you can, and play around with ideas and concepts.
A good digital PR strategy brainstorming session includes things like SERP analysis, competitor analysis, social media analysis and backlink research. Where are the opportunities? How can you improve on what your competitors are doing? Which customer needs aren’t being addressed?
Yes, we say it three times because it’s THAT important. If you’ve spent time brainstorming ideas and opportunities, the next logical step is to research your brand and where it’s at in terms of digital PR. That way, you can identify your strengths and leverage them for quick wins. More importantly, however, you can identify your brand’s weaknesses and address them over time.
Start with the fundamentals:
Good PR is about good communication. Audit your digital communications and look for areas that require improvement or fine-tuning.
Remember: If your messaging isn’t resonating with your target audience, you must find the reasons why. It might be that you’re not focusing on the right channels. Or it may be that you aren’t using appropriate language or visual media.
The essence of digital PR action plans is beautifully simple: communicate with your target audience in places and ways that resonate. When you lay it out like this, the concept seems simple. However, there are more marketing channels and mediums around than ever before.
Finding the right mix that works in your market—while resonating with your target audience — requires a carefully designed set of PR tactics. However, this is where we start creating content, and that’s usually the best part!
Become a thought leader in your sphere of influence, and your target audience will turn to you when they need information they can trust. You can achieve this status by creating articles and guest posts that deliver real value for readers.
Explain complex issues in an accessible way; answer frequently asked questions; share your insights and opinions; provide experience-based advice and practical tips. These are all ways you can build trust and a faithful online following. And if you do this consistently, people will want to share your content — generating backlinks for your website and boosting your domain authority.
The trusty press release is no longer the exclusive domain of large corporations; it’s a fantastic tool for amplifying value-driven content that people want to read and share. Think of a press release as a newsworthy article, and publishers will be more than happy to devote digital real estate to it.
Take a look at the likes of TikTok and Instagram to see who’s influencing the buying and lifestyle decisions of your target audience.
Leverage the reach and trust these people and organizations weald to take a shortcut to your potential customers. This might require a fee or some form of reciprocal arrangement, but it could save you both time and money compared to more traditional forms of digital outreach.
Keep your brand in the minds and mouths of media decision-makers. If you have a new product, send it to your preferred media partners to keep your relationship fresh and cooperative. If you have exciting news to share, contact key players within the media industry directly. Just make sure you remain respectful of their time and priorities. The chances are that they have dozens of people just like you trying to get their attention.
Let’s go right back to the beginning. Remember when we touched on setting measurable goals? Well, now it’s time to assess them.
Yes, there will be some anecdotal evidence that your PR strategy is succeeding. For example, you may have received some positive feedback from consumers, or your colleagues might be reporting an uptick in brand awareness. However, the best way to measure PR strategy results is through clear metrics.
Don’t forget to keep a close eye on your main competitors. If they’re featured in your industry’s top online publication regularly, why aren’t you? If they’re growing their social media followings at breakneck speed, are you doing the same?
Comparing your PR performance with that of the competition can give you a clear picture of your strategy’s overall success.
Yes, this is a complex process that involves several processes and tasks happening simultaneously. From the outset, it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees. And as PR strategies progress and become increasingly complex, keeping track of them can get tricky.
To keep everything focused and on track, consider using a digital PR strategy template. Based on the experiences of accomplished digital PR strategists, a comprehensive template ensures every aspect of your strategy is considered and tracked.
At Cupid PR, we utilize a digital PR strategy template based on the ‘Five Ws’:
Once you’ve addressed the ‘Five Ws,’ creating a plan to cover logistics such as content creation and the assignment of tasks should become a lot easier.
Here’s an example of a digital PR strategy template we use at PR Cupid:
