Using Public Relations to Grow your business

Are you interested in growing your company? Using public relations is a vital element to grow and achieve your goal. But first, it is important to understand what great PR means and why it matters to you. 

According to the Public Relations Society of America, “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” 

Simply put, it’s about earning attention and gaining credibility from that attention.

What is Public Relations? 

Public Relations revolves around building your company’s relationship with your preferred audience and achieving your goals. It’s about joining the conversation in your industry and providing a positive light to what people say about your business. 

Public Relations is not marketing or advertising; it’s obtaining the best exposure and maintaining relationships with trusted sources, ultimately creating credibility for your company. 

Through the use of SEO tools, electrIQ marketing achieved tangible results for Wine Insiders, specifically a 600% percent increase in organic traffic revenue. They wanted to make wine shopping a convenient, fun, and affordable way to distribute more than their current seven million bottles of wine each year. 

We architected a plan centered around three primary steps in order to achieve our goals:

1. Competitor research to identify which publications were backlinking to our competitors.
2. Development of an outreach strategy & template that would allow us to scale our outreach efforts to bloggers and publications.
3. Acquisition of high-domain authority backlinks.

We acquired over 34 high-quality backlinks in 5 months for Wine Insiders. These press features were on high domain authority sites with readers that matched Wine Insiders’ target demographic. Glam, which holds a Domain Authority of 63/100 and has over 35K organic visitors a month, is just one example of our work.

Using the electrIQ approach, we were able to put together a strategy and the implementation tactics necessary to achieve the organic results we wanted.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). One of the primary drivers of this score is the number and quality of backlinks going to your website, hence PR!

What PR tools you can use 

There are many PR tactics you can use to execute against your overarching strategy and achieve your goals, but we compiled some of the most important and effective ways below:

• Present information informally and establish relationships by writing time-sensitive pitches to media outlets about your company or present a guest post option. 
• Write a more formal press release: a formal press announcement with a newsworthy story.
• Schedule events locally or tours created for media sources to cover and for networking business expansion.
• Create social media promotional campaigns  
• Understand how to handle crisis management across all platforms 
• Conducting constant research to understand what is going well within the company and what we can improve 
• Utilize social media networks to help you connect with other reporters and PR professionals and spread awareness of your brand.
• Ensure that all press about you includes a backlink.

One example of a backlinking effort is seen through our case study with Health-Ade Kombucha. We acquired 12 high-quality backlinks in 3 months for Health-Ade. These press features were on high-domain authority sites with readers that matched Health-Ade's target demographic. Live EAT Learn is one example of that work. Live EAT Learn not only had a high domain authority but they also showed up on the 1st page for "kombucha," our target keyword. View the article here. 

How to use PR to grow your business 

Like anything else, it’s essential to define what your company’s identity is to help set a direction for your goals. Take into account your mission statement, information about your target audience, key brand messages, tone of voice, and your overall “brand book.” 

Since public relations is earned media, meaning you pitch to reporters and editors to write a positive story about your company or issue, you need to frame your own story to make your company be the solution to what you are solving. 

Evaluating your Results

Assessing your PR progress through quantifiable metrics is important as you continue to evolve and refine your approach. By reviewing reporting, you’ll be able to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what changes can be made to help improve your results or increase efficiency.

At electrIQ marketing, we refer to this step as the infinite step because it continues forever. The PR landscape is continually growing and changing. What works today might not work tomorrow and may need to be tweaked or changed altogether. Through this final step, electrIQ marketing can continually refine our client’s approach to PR and marketing as a whole, so that they continue to thrive today, tomorrow, and into the future.