With connections to PR, SEO and brand marketing, Digital PR is an aspect of digital marketing that has been growing consistently as a standalone service. But what is Digital PR, and how does it work for your business?
Brand building is an essential part of growing your business and making it last. Digital PR can boost your brand growth through editorial features that build trust, set you up as an expert and help search engines discover you more easily.
Table of Contents
What is Digital PR?
Digital PR combines SEO, content marketing and brand building to promote your business with your audience, earn backlinks to your site and establish you and your team as experts in your field.
Digital PR involves:
- Devising a strategy that connects your business goals to the most relevant PR activity, including audience, commercial and brand objectives
- Creating and researching compelling content about the issues and experiences of your clients
- Crafting press releases and sending them out to lists of relevant journalists
- Liaising with journalists to secure coverage of the content that includes a link or mention of your brand
What is the difference between digital PR and traditional PR?
There are crossovers between Digital PR and what is now sometimes referred to as ‘traditional’ PR. Liaising and building relationships with journalists, creating press releases and raising awareness of a brand are all goals that intersect both disciplines. The way Digital PR is most commonly distinguished is based in its roots in SEO, where it began as a form of content marketing for link building to drive website traffic and improve rankings.
However, more and more frequently, the line is being blurred; many traditional PR campaigns will connect with site performance, and many digital campaigns will connect with traditional brand goals.
Are Digital PR and link building the same?
Link building is one of the central goals of Digital PR but they aren’t exactly the same. There are plenty of ways to build links between sites but not all of them would be considered Digital PR.
Digital PR campaigns can build brand awareness, share the expertise of your business and help people to trust your website before they visit. Because of how digital-first the news media has become, it’s now a common strategy to develop your brand beyond your website.
As well as this, not all Digital PR coverage results in a link back to your site. However, there is evidence to suggest that Google interprets these ‘unlinked mentions’ of your brand and uses these signals to rank you in search results.
Digital PR in the AI era
With the advent of AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, the way we use the internet is changing. Google has soft launched its AI mode in the US which is going to be one of the most drastic changes to the way the search engine works.
While new ways to search mean that how digital marketing is done is going to change, current studies show that it could be very positive for Digital PR.
Research by SEO tool Ahrefs found that how often brands appear in Google’s AI overviews had a close correlation with the number of editorial mentions these brands had. According to their data, the top 3 factors influencing AI overview presence are branded mentions, branded anchors and branded search volume.
Since Digital PR is all about building your brand and earning coverage from top-tier sites, this is a major sign that Digital PR is going to be even more important as part of your marketing mix.
Though AI platforms represent such a small percentage of search right now, Digital PR already brings value through traditional organic search and investing now means your business is ready for AI as it continues to evolve.
How is AI going to change Digital PR?
Jack Jolly, Add People's Digital PR Lead believes that AI will make consumer trust even more important when searching online.
"If AI can generate content, videos and images, your customers need to know that they can put their trust in your expertise and the products you're selling.
"In our Digital PR campaigns, we make sure we use the right experts and position them properly so readers can relate the expert to the business and build trust in the brand."
What are the benefits of Digital PR?
Existing at the intersection of several other forms of marketing means Digital PR has multiple benefits for your business, including:
Boosting rankings and traffic
Digital PR’s main benefit is helping to optimise your site for search engines. According to Search Engine Land, “links are one of the top two criteria that Google considers when showing search results.” With its central focus on links and coverage, Digital PR is able to demonstrate to your audience and to Google the value of your site.
Building trust and authority
People need to trust your brand to feel confident buying from you. While there are plenty of trust signals you can add to your website to convince people when they’re on the page, Digital PR is an effective way of demonstrating your trust and authority on relevant topics. If trusted publications are sharing your insights and research on issues that relate to your services, you’re proving to your potential customers that you know what you’re talking about before they even visit your website.
Improve brand awareness
There are around 5.5 million small and medium-sized businesses in the UK and very little real estate on the first page of any search engine. Reaching potential customers online is an essential challenge to solve for any small business that wants to survive. With 71% of the population engaging with online news, landing news placements through Digital PR is a great way to share your brand with new customers as part of your marketing strategy.
Why is Digital PR important?
Building a brand and earning coverage from high-quality websites are long-term processes that, when executed properly, lead to long-term gains.
While a successful campaign can have an impact on your site traffic or rankings in the short term, it’s consistent coverage and links that improve audience awareness and really sell your brand to consumers before they make a purchase.
The role of Digital PR as it relates to SEO is to focus on improved organic growth – something we do by connecting our campaigns to your target business areas and key commercial pages. Several of Google’s top staff have stated the value of links and Digital PR, showing just how important it is if you’re looking to improve your organic presence.
Every marketer will know how important it is to diversify the channels you use to engage with potential clients to keep growing your audience. Digital PR grants businesses access to the audience of whatever site you earn coverage from to help them discover you in different ways.
Making Your Digital PR Campaign a Success
To give your campaigns the best chance of success, our Digital PR Strategist Caoimhe says:
"It all starts with strategy and not just any strategy. We build campaigns that align with what our clients want and what the media will actually cover.
"It’s not enough to launch a campaign that looks good on paper. Every Digital PR idea needs to be backed by a clear understanding of your business goals, audience, and what’s realistically going to land links.
"We bridge the gap between what our clients need and what journalists are actually looking for. That’s how we make coverage happen."
How do I measure the success of digital PR campaigns?
Goal-setting should be an essential part of your Digital PR strategy. Because it doesn’t always have an immediate, direct impact on sales, you need to understand what success looks like for your brand.
When setting goals, make sure you’re:
- Aligned with your key business goals – Making sure your business goals are front of mind during all PR campaigns will help the connection between the two more evident. For example, if your goals is to drive traffic to your site, identify things like the best pages to link to, the best keywords to track and the sites that drive the most referral traffic.
- Focused on your most important products or services – Being able to focus your PR efforts into specific areas of your business will help you monitor the impact compared to a less targeted strategy. If you have seasonal products, best-sellers or products with a higher margin, concentrating your efforts into one of these places will have a great impact on your business.
- Keeping relevance at the front of your mind – Relevancy is the most important aspects of Digital PR because if you’re getting coverage from irrelevant sites, your audience won’t see it and Google won’t care. Aim for key publications in your niche for bigger impact.
- Aware of what is achievable in your industry – Understanding what a reasonable goal for coverage or impact is relates to your industry, your budget and your expertise. You need to ensure your goals are achievable to really measure the success of your Digital PR campaigns.
Case Study - 0 to 1,000 Visitors in 6 Months With Digital PR
One of our clients in the home and interiors industry asked us to work on their brand new website with no other marketing activity.
We saw this as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the value of Digital PR for business growth, even for smaller sites with no prior branding work.
We knew we’d have to be strategic with our campaigns to maximise the value of the work and show a clear link between what we were doing and their organic performance.
Through targeted link building, we were able to grow their organic presence massively in their first six months.
How we did it:
Created campaigns that aimed to solve the problems their audience face
Built relationships with key journalists
Used keyword-optimised bios and anchor text
In just a few campaigns, we picked up coverage in House Beautiful, Ideal Home and The Sun.
The site is now ranking on page 1 for key terms for their top products and has grown to 1,000 monthly visitors in 6 months.
Running Digital PR campaigns.
There are plenty of ways to earn coverage from news publications, but some of the most common strategies include:
Expert comments
Journalists are constantly looking for experts to provide insight into the topics they’re writing about or to share advice about issues that their readers regularly encounter. By providing advice, guidance or analysis on these key topics, brands can position themselves as experts in their respective industry and show support to their customer base outside of the buying journey.
Reactive outreach
When news breaks, journalists need opinions and commentary from relevant voices to deepen their coverage and build on the story, allowing PRs to conduct outreach reactively when something major happens. Most commonly, reactive outreach includes expert comments, but it can also include sharing relevant data with journalists.
Data-led stories
Whether it’s internal data from your website or publicly available data, gathering data that tells a story about your industry is an effective way of marketing your brand and capturing the attention of journalists.
Hero campaigns
Hero campaigns can take any format but typically involve assets like images, blog posts, data or videos. These campaigns require more preparation and investment but generally have higher returns in terms of links or impact.
Producing Digital PR Campaigns
Coming up with ideas that are going to appeal to journalists and create content that’s engaged with is one of the biggest challenges of Digital PR. It’s very difficult to know if an idea is going to land and there are many variables, including the interests of the journalist you’re pitching and what’s happening in the news when you send the email.
Reading the news is the easiest way to get to grips with how people are engaging with certain topics in your industry. Understanding what’s newsworthy is about identifying the most impactful emotional triggers. There are plenty of formulas for newsworthiness, including the SUCCES model or newsworthy values that determine whether content is shareable or not.
Once you have an idea you think will work, you need to convince relevant journalists that it’s worth sharing. Journalists have little time to read all the pitches they get so the best pitches are emotive enough to pull them in and succinct enough to give them all the information they need as quickly as possible.
Best Digital PR tools and what we use.
You can earn media coverage by individually sending emails to journalists and finding their email addresses on their author pages if your story is relevant and timely. But, what if a journalist doesn’t list their email address? What if you need to build links at scale to keep up with your competitors?
There are plenty of Digital PR tools available but the ones we use to secure our SME clients top-tier news coverage include:
- Response Source – a journalist enquiry service that connects us directly with journalists
- Muck Rack – journalist contact database for when those emails aren’t publicly listed
- BuzzStream – an outreach platform that helps us connect with journalists and track the impact of our campaigns
- Ahrefs – an SEO tool to track our clients websites and show the value of our coverage
- Google Analytics – Site performance tracker to review traffic and conversions impact
How to get started on Digital PR for your brand.
If you want to build trust with your customers, expand the range of your marketing funnel, drive up your organic rankings and outpace your competitors, Digital PR is probably right for your brand. To get started, your first steps should be:
- Create a Digital PR strategy
An underpinning strategy is what makes PR work – without it, you’re flying blind. Links and coverage are good but if there’s no strategy, you’re probably not getting the best out of every campaign.
- Come up with ideas
Figure out the intersection between what you’re qualified to speak on and what people care about in your industry and focus your ideas on this space.
- Find the right journalists
No story works if it’s not placed in the right hands. Research your industry, find the journalists most likely to be interested in your story and convince them to share it.
At Add People, we’ve been running Digital PR campaigns across a huge range of sectors for over 5 years. Through Digital PR, we’ve earned our client roster of small and medium-sized businesses coverage in some of the world’s biggest publications.
Learn more about our Digital PR service for SMEs.
About the author:
Damon Culbert
Damon is our Digital PR Manager. Working at Add People for six years, he has been growing the Digital PR team for the last five. View his LinkedIn profile by clicking on his headshot.