Your brand’s online presence is crucial when it comes to sales, reputation and relevancy, so taking steps to improve brand awareness is one of the most powerful things business owners can do. Even better – you can hire a PR agency to take the job off your hands!
Digital PR is a proven tactic to increase brand awareness and can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a business online. This is because every link gained through digital PR efforts is earned, rather than paid for. So, through digital PR, brands can forget expensive advertising budgets and marketing costs. The brands and businesses who have invested in a strong and consistent digital PR strategy are the ones who are able to achieve long-lasting results for their online site.
Digital PR offers numerous benefits, such as acquiring links, increasing traffic, influencing purchases, reputation management, consumer engagement and more. All of these benefits work together to help grow and broaden the reach of an online business. In this blog, we will run through some of the ways in which digital PR can help boost a brand’s awareness and get them in front of relevant, responsive audiences that matter.
What’s in this article:
- What is digital PR?
- What is brand awareness and why is it important?
- How digital PR can help brand awareness
- Examples of how digital PR can improve brand awareness
- Key takeaways
What is digital PR?
Digital PR is a tactic used by PR professionals and business owners to help build high-authority links to their website. This is all in effort to improve the website’s SEO performance and rankings to attract new customers and boost relevancy.
At its core, digital PR involves creating and distributing content to key, relevant journalists. The goal is to achieve online media coverage, while achieving backlinks to your brand’s website. This can generate ‘buzz’ about your organisation, increasing awareness and recognition.
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Backlinks earned through digital PR also drive traffic to your site, and improve search engine rankings to compete with other brands in your space. Quality backlinks signal to search engines that a website is trustworthy and authoritative, which can significantly improve its search rankings.
Digital PR also helps to establish and maintain positive relationships. These connections and relationships can be with the media, their readers and with key customers. If the brand is reputable and the story is strong then stakeholders, key audiences and more will be reading, engaging and supporting the content.
Through digital PR, you can also be established as a thought leader and expert in your field. By commenting on trending topics, industry-wide issues and new technologies or advancements, you can provide expert advice and help build authority in your brand niche.
PR is all about storytelling, and every business has its own stories to tell. You can find out more about digital PR and how it works in this detailed blog post.
What is brand awareness and why is it important?
Brand awareness refers to how familiar consumers are with and can recognise a particular brand. It is a key indicator of a brand’s presence in the market and plays a critical role in the consumer decision-making process. It’s often the first ‘stage’ at the top of the marketing funnel and is crucial for instilling trust, building a loyal customer base, and driving future sales.
Successful brand awareness is proven by recognition. The goal is for customers to think of a specific product or category, and then immediately associate it with your brand. The familiarity increases the chance of them choosing your brand, service or product over your competitors.
You can see then why brand awareness is essential for long-term success. It has been reported 73% of customers are more likely to trust a brand they know, so creating several points of recognition can really make the difference with important purchasing decisions.
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There are lots of different ways to increase brand awareness, and different tactics will work better for different brands and industries. Some tactics you could consider (as well as digital PR) include:
1. Content marketing
Create valuable and engaging content, like blog posts, videos, podcasts, or infographics that resonate with your audience. Develop a consistent content marketing strategy focused on addressing your customers’ pain points, solving problems, or providing entertainment, depending on your brand.
2. Social media marketing
Develop a stellar social media marketing plan by leveraging platforms like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, or TikTok to reach your audience, and use interactive features such as polls, stories, and live streams to engage your followers.
3. Influencer marketing
Partner with influencers or micro-influencers who align with your brand values and target audience. Influencers can introduce your brand to new audiences and increase trust through personal endorsements.
4. Paid advertising
Use pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google or social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to target specific demographics. Retarget ads to people who have previously interacted with your website or content to reinforce your brand.
5. Partnerships and collaborations
Partnerships can introduce your brand to new audiences who already trust your collaborator. Collaborate with other brands, especially those with complementary audiences, to co-host events, create joint content, or cross-promote.
How digital PR can help brand awareness
Helping brands tell their stories
PR is storytelling, and every business has its fair share of stories to tell. From behind-the-scenes glimpses of a new product, to how the business started, there will be a hook or angle to find.
Whether the story is packaged as a press release, thought leadership article, case study or Q&A, there needs to be a purpose to the story. PR professionals ensure that the story told is relevant and adds value to the brand’s customers, and/or the media’s audience. Does it engage, advise, or entertain the readers? Will it provoke a feeling or reaction?
Sometimes PR professionals need to dip into their toolbox and edit their style of writing to reflect the media they are targeting. The story needs to be told in a journalistic style to hit national, trade, or regional media. PRs need to make life as easy as possible for journalists and editors, so the closer the story is to the media’s style of writing, the better it is.
Establishing brand authority
PR helps brands look authoritative and be seen as thought leaders in their industry or sector. This is done by creating interesting content that establishes the business as an expert in their field of expertise.
Publishing high-quality PR articles like this on relevant and authoritative sites will improve a brand's reputation by showcasing them as a credible source of information. PR effectively conveys a brand’s innovative, forward-thinking ideas.
Using this PR tactic, a brand is mentioned much more frequently in front of a relevant target audience, which may generate leads from some of the people who read the coverage and visit the website.
This improved trust in your brand is also great from an SEO perspective and often an increase in strong editorial coverage and links is reflected in the search engine results page.
The power of online
Digital PR is particularly useful when it comes to getting your brand, product or service seen by lots of people. Gaining mass media coverage from high authority domains helps your brand be seen by huge audiences - and this will in turn help to drive brand recognition and boost traffic to your website.
When issuing a story to the media, a PR professional will prospect multiple media outlets and journalists in order to create a relevant and targeted media list. If the story gets picked up by multiple targets, then the reach of even a humble brand mention can go far and wide.
And then there’s the SEO benefit. As digital PR content gets used on high-authority websites, it helps improve search engine rankings by earning high-quality backlinks. When people search for related products or services, your brand is more likely to appear higher in search results, increasing awareness.
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Examples of how digital PR can improve brand awareness
A great example of this in our recent work is a campaign we created for Absolute Reg, an online registration plate dealer.
We employed our newsjacking skills to tap into Barbie mania around the release of the year's most talked about movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Absolute Reg had the number plate BAR 81E listed for sale which gave us the perfect way to attach the brand to the movie. If you squint a bit the plate reads BARBIE.
We used our newsjacking skills to tap into the Barbie mania around the release of the huge movie release. Absolute Reg had the number plate BAR 81E listed for sale which gave us the perfect way to attach the brand to the movie.
The plate’s huge price tag made the story even more enticing to journalists. We set about creating a strong media release which described the plate as ‘iconic’ and told how the most dedicated fans (with very deep pockets) could buy it. We also created imagery to show the media how the plate would look on Barbie’s own car.
In total, we logged 297 items of media coverage in the likes of The Sun, The Express, This Is Money and The Sunday Times, over a two month engagement period. This meant audiences had several opportunities to see the brand, engage with their story and click through to their site.
We also logged 265 backlinks to the client's website, from sites with an average domain rating of 73.
We also worked with The Inhaler Tailor – a rare business that really does offer a solution to a very real problem. We were very happy to help with their success in a brand building campaign.
The company makes funky inhaler covers, helping those who suffer from asthma to overcome any reticence they may have towards using their device in public. The business owners asked Motive to help them get their brand in front of the right audiences. We drew on our journalistic skills for this one - and produced a profile piece after interviewing all the key players and securing a role from the NHS in York.
We then pitched the story to relevant media targets, and secured a front page story in The York Press and regional television coverage on BBC Look North.
This was followed by national TV coverage on BBC Breakfast and on several news sites including Yorkshire Live, Yahoo News and Teesside Live.
The most impressive piece of coverage came from BBC News, who covered the story. Inhaler Tailor even made it to be one of the most popular BBC News stories of the day.
From these results, we estimate the opportunities for the brand to be seen by around 20 million audience members. This was a huge result for the brand and helped them increase their brand recognition immensely.
Thanks to the success of the campaign, traffic to The Inhaler Tailor website increased almost five fold. Daily sales peaked with an increase of more than 1050% following the BBC Breakfast coverage.
At the end of the campaign, daily sales remained 27% higher than they had been at the outset.
This is a great example of utilising digital PR tools to increase brand awareness and boost sales. You can see more about our work here.
Key takeaways
- Your brand’s online presence is crucial when it comes to sales, reputation and relevancy.
- Digital PR is a proven tactic to increase brand awareness and can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a business online. This is because every link gained through digital PR efforts is earned, rather than paid for.
- Successful brand awareness is proven by recognition. When customers think of a specific product or category, they immediately associate it with your brand. Increasing chances of brand mentions can be a massive help here.
Want to know more about how we could help boost awareness for your brand? Please get in touch.
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