Every brand or business wants to be recognized and appreciated, regardless of what they do or who they serve. And that’s what PR does: increase brand awareness and foster a positive image of your company.
There’s a good possibility that you’ve heard the word “digital PR” if you are involved in marketing strategy for digital platforms, inbound marketing, or content marketing. What does it mean, and how is it different from traditional PR?
There are significant differences between traditional and digital PR, even though both aim to connect target audiences via strategic storytelling that increases brand awareness and presents the brand positively. In this blog, we will explain these terms and assist you in choosing the appropriate PR approach for you and your company.
What is Traditional PR?
Traditional public relations (PR) is the art of building, fostering, and, in many circumstances, managing a brand’s reputation and image across all media platforms. To reach an audience, it makes use of traditional advertising mediums including TV, radio, social media channels, newspapers, magazines, and books.
What is Digital PR?
Digital Public Relations is a technique that uses digital resources to boost brand awareness. Digital PR focuses on obtaining high-quality backlinks to your website from reputable and pertinent online media sources in order to enhance your site’s legitimacy, visibility, and, eventually, organic ranks.
Content Utilization
To introduce new goods, services, or news to the public, traditional PR is frequently utilized. Thus, it is frequently product-focused and has a commercial element, which may be viewed as less organic.
Digital PR methods use subtler content. The use of fresh and innovative content, which naturally incorporates the brand into a meaningful conversation, is crucial to gaining the links.
Tracking Success
Traditional PR is inevitably hard to measure, yet marketers still attempt it. Some common metrics are:
- Media coverage
- Advertising Value Equivalent
- Mentioning a brand on related websites
- Readers and potential audience
However, due to its online persona, a digital PR campaign’s performance can be measured significantly more easily. Digital PR companies are able to analyze performance in a much more data-driven and precise approach by using SEO tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console as well as digital PR tools, reporting on quantifiable statistics such:
- Visibility in search results
- Number of high-quality links
- Sessions
- Direct and referral traffic
Incorporation into other marketing tactics
Digital PR performs effectively when it is an integral part of the broader SEO strategy, unlike traditional PR, which is frequently seen as a stand-alone practice. Using digital PR, you may implement traditional PR strategies to get outcomes that are SEO-focused, more precisely, relevant, and authoritative backlinks from reputable sources and websites.
What is best for you: Digital PR vs. Traditional PR?
Enhancing brand recognition requires the use of any PR approach. Your scenario will determine whether you choose traditional or digital PR for your business.
For a large business with internal PR and SEO teams using both strategies simultaneously may be the ideal choice because it may provide the ideal combination of both worlds.
Traditional PR could be the optimal option if you’re a business in a highly regulated industry because of its focus on the essentials. This enables you to communicate with great accuracy and use a more formal tone of voice.
Lastly, using the realm of digital PR may be your best bet if you’re searching for a strategy to stretch your marketing budget so that it may do more with less or if you’re very focused on having measurable outcomes to report.
Conclusion
Every company should establish and grow brand recognition within its target market, and formerly, PR has played a significant role in the marketing strategies of most companies. A company may benefit greatly from both traditional and digital PR, but it’s important to remember that in the constantly evolving digital world of today, reputational harm is sometimes only a mouse click away.