How To Use PR For B2B Lead Generation
Do you want to improve your Lead Generation?Then it's time for some PR. What is PR?In this blog post, we are going to discuss how PR works as well as effective ways to generate leads with PR.
What is PR?
PR or Public Relations is a process of maintaining a good reputation and developing positive connections between an organization and the public communities, organizations, and individuals it serves.For lead generation campaigns to really work, one must integrate PR as one of their main channels.
Goal of PR
The goal of public relations is to manage a favorable image and create beneficial connections between an organization and the general public.Another aim of PR is to get people talking about your website, goods, or services. As a result, gaining attention and making it simpler to attract the ideal potential customer.PR or Public Relations is one of the best lead generation tools because it can help you to spread your message and also establish yourself as an industry thought leader.It can help you to generate more leads that will be interested in your product or service with the goal of converting that interest into sales, either immediately or down the line. More and more Lead Gen companies are starting to understand the importance of PR for their Lead Generation efforts.
4 Ways To Use PR for Lead Generation
Public relations is about influencing people to take action. That's what makes PR such a useful tool for increasing lead generation.Most B2B companies realize the importance of using Public Relations as a lead generation tool because it is known to generate high-quality leads at a low cost, but not everyone knows how to do this successfully.Here are five tried-and-true public relations strategies that can assist your company in generating more qualified leads.
1) Editorial Outreach
The most popular and fundamental type of PR is editorial outreach.
- People will notice and be interested when your company, products, services, management team, etc are featured in a magazine or newspaper or on a television or radio news program!
- Editorial coverage can help to make your business more popular. If you are better known, you will get more calls, people will visit your website more often, and it will be easier to do business.
- In addition to getting more leads, editorial outreach can also help increase your conversion rates. If somebody is choosing between two companies and they see that your company was featured in a magazine or TV, then they might choose you over the other.
- Editorial outreach provides credible endorsements of your company. This is because people think that if an editor or reporter recommends something, then it must be good. It is like saying: "This product has been tested and recommended by a trusted source".
2) Create Focused Long-Form Content
PR is not just limited to just media relations. It includes content marketing and other types of communication which you can use to grow leads.Long-form material, such as white papers and ebooks, can be effective tools for demonstrating your expertise and domain knowledge while also building your company's reputation in a certain industry.Customers want to know that you have domain expertise in their particular area, that you know about their problems and how to fix them.You can do this by writing documents such as:
- White papers and ebooks
- Case studies
- Press releases
- Promoting the articles on your social media sites to further promote your content and reach a wider audience.
- Use paid and organic search services to get potential leads to read your long-form content so you can convert them into customers.
- Create a podcast and have Public Relations help to shape the message, while the digital teams handle promotion and technology.
- Guest blogging- it’s still the most effective way to build links. Guest blogging allows you to reach out to high-quality websites and enhance your chances of obtaining backlinks.
- Influencer marketing- They are regarded and seen as an authority in your field; and it may be a person or a business brand. People enjoy hearing from them, and they frequently have a big following on their social media sites. Collaborate with the influencers to generate ideas for lead creation, and offer enticing incentives for their efforts.
- Email marketing- Use email marketing to send people links to your most recent articles or webinars.
- Adding a CLEAR CTAs on Lead Gen Content- add a clear CTA that directs people back to your site or landing page where they can fill out forms and give their information in exchange for more valuable offers, like free eBooks or whitepapers. Examples of clear CTA are: "Get Our eBook", "Fill Out The Form" etc.
These can all demonstrate your understanding of a company's pain points and allow you to offer solutions. It also gives you the opportunity to share your opinion on where the market is going and what opportunities it offers.
These may illustrate how you've assisted other businesses in the past with similar issues. People also want to see what happened when other companies used your services and how you helped them achieve their goals.
When you issue a press release to announce the introduction of a new product, make sure to include a link to your company's website so that customers can go straight to it and make a purchase or learn more about the offering. Press releases aren't limited to achieving media exposure any longer; they're also meant to drive action, such as downloads of whitepapers or sign-ups for webinars.
3) Merge Digital And Traditional Communications
Lead generation isn't something that should solely happen offline - it's also possible to generate leads online through social channels like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more. Online channels can be used to share a blog post, press release, or other lead generation content.When it comes to getting your message out there through traditional and digital channels, lead generation efforts should always work in tandem with each other, but it's important that companies think about how to best integrate the two strategies online.
Here are some ways to do it:
4) Using PR to improve SEO efforts
PR can help to improve Lead Generation and SEO efforts by:
- Link Buildingstill remains an important ranking element in Google and other search engines. Guest blogging is a great way to have PR's help build up your backlinking.
- Brand RecognitionIn the SERPs, having a well-known brand is becoming increasingly important, and being featured on major third-party sites can help you establish yourself as a reputable company. Influencer marketing can help you achieve that.
- ReputationWhen individuals are looking for anything to purchase on the internet, they generally want to know if they're buying from a reputable source. They'll frequently conduct a brief search to verify whether or not there are any reviews for that item or service. Editorial outreach can help you get into the news and establish yourself as a reliable source.
- Social Proofhaving an online presence establishes social proof that you're an authority in your industry.
Example:
When an influencer links to your site, search engines will notice the increased popularity of your content. It could give you a great impact and generate more backlinks, same with social media if you get more shares meaning more backlinks! This may help increase your rankings!
Bottom Line:
When it comes to combining SEO and public relations efforts, you should use a variety of outreach strategies to get your high-quality content published on as many sites as possible - maximizing both reach and backlinks.Link building/ backlinking is important for SEO since the more backlinks you have, the better your position in the SERPs will be. You can naturally increase the rank for the most important keywords in your industry if you can gain links to your website from reliable sources.When people look up particular keywords, your company will show up closer to the top of the results list. Improving your rankings with search engines drives more traffic to a website every month which will, in turn, increase highly targeted leads!