The digital age has fundamentally changed how marketers are engaging with their audience. Today’s brand leaders are now connecting with prospects and customers by attracting them to content that will impact on their day-to-day lives. Marketers are seizing the potential of inbound marketing by creating a robust display of content – blog posts, eBooks, infographics, podcasts and other forms that capture the attention of their desired audience. While most are busy running these content campaigns, some may be leaving their PR teams out of the equation. To address this disconnect, PAN has developed an eBook titled, ‘Why PR is a Critical Piece to your Inbound Marketing Strategy’.

Data analytics, PR, storytelling, inbound content, email campaigns, and social media efforts all essentially have the same goals: Create a message that resonates with the buyer; communicate it in a way that will engage prospective buyers; close the loop, and keep the buyer coming back for more. So why would you keep these efforts separated by teams and agencies?

Integrating your PR efforts with your inbound marketing strategy comes with numerous benefits:

• Data is central to collaboration
• No longer executing from silo’d teams
• Cohesive storytelling and content development
• Staying in pace with your customer’s journey
• Easy adjustment of program goals based on campaigns and announcements
• A better understanding how PR can impact inbound lead gen and marketing ROI

While this strategy and approach sounds enticing to implement, there are steps to be taken with your PR agency before heading into full gear. PAN’s eBook ‘Why PR is a Critical Piece to your Inbound Marketing Strategy’ outlines the following for your consideration:

• Develop or re-assess your buyer personas. These personas are a critical component to leading your audience down the ‘path to purchase’. If you’re struggling on where to start, download our eBook, ‘How to Master Buyer Personas for Business’.
• Develop effective storytelling and messaging strategies. Each persona may require a different approach to messaging, but each message should tie into one overarching corporate message.
• Have the right marketing automation tools. While there are several martech tools and platforms available, PAN Communications has a strong relationship with HubSpot and uses its platform to help clients, such as TriCore Solutions, create and execute on successful integrated campaigns.
• Drive home your integrated campaigns with the right channel amplification. Before starting any integrated campaign, you must decide the most effective way to leverage your content. Social media, email campaigns, garnering media coverage and implementing ads are all viable options. Just make sure your audience is active on that channel of communication.

Having the right analytics and measurement process in place will be important for optimization, capitalizing on “micro-moments” and successfully making changes throughout your buyer’s journey. If you have the right martech stack, as mentioned above, then your PR agency can take over, so CMOs can then focus on their top-line goals – demonstrating the ROI of PR and marketing efforts; telling the true “path to purchase” story to C-suites; and becoming “customer obsessed.”

‘Why PR is a Critical Piece to your Inbound Marketing Strategy’ provides insight and guidance that will help you make this transition happen. You will discover the new landscape of PR and inbound marketing; how to lay the groundwork with your agency for implementing integrated campaigns; and the results of amplifying your PR and inbound marketing efforts.

Still struggling with communication integration? Let’s continue the conversation @MarkCNardone.