How to Integrate Marketing Strategies Within Your Public Relations Plan

Public Relations is a vital component of a company’s overall marketing strategy. In order to get the most out of your efforts, time, and budget, the two must complement each other.

First, what’s the difference between marketing and PR? In general, marketing is the sales and promotion of your company’s product or service, including research and development. Public relations work to build positive sentiment of your company or organization in the media, industry, and community. When PR and marketing are being considered simultaneously, it’s called an integrated communications strategy.

Here are 3 ways to integrate marketing in your public relations strategy:

1. Amplify your PR Success

Was your company featured positively in a news article? This is the time to amplify your PR success to all aspects of your lead generation. Some examples could include:

• Writing social media posts and tagging the publication or media outlet
• Add the mention into your sales presentation
• Include the news in your next company email blast or newsletter
• Notify your employees about the article and provide ways they can share on their own social channels

2. Consider your target audiences

While marketing and PR strategies target different audiences, it’s important to consider whom you're talking to, what the end goal of the PR efforts is, and what will define success. A general PR strategy considers many different audiences including the potential customers, current employees, recruits, suppliers, board members, or journalists. By considering who this news might be of interest to, or what we’re trying to achieve by announcing this product, you’re implementing marketing strategies that will ladder up to your company’s success.

3. Track your metrics

This can be tricky because not all PR efforts can be directly associated with lead generation or increased traffic to your company website. BUT there are tactics to put into place that help gauge the effectiveness of a PR effort. This can include: 

• When creating an announcement, use tracked links for each channel: Newswire, LinkedIn, Twitter, website blog post, etc. 
• Provide a Call to Action with all announcements. This can be as simple as “want to learn more?” or “how to get involved” which of course have specific tracked links to measure traffic. 
• Keep track of increased website traffic, an influx of social media followers and newsletter subscribers or unsubscribes with the first 48 hours of an announcement. Establish these key metrics at the beginning of the planning of your announcement and PR strategy, as it will often cross over departments or people — web, sales, IT, or marketing. Tracking these key may also require you implement new processes or technology. The results will help guide you through the next launch by determining which channels are vital, which surprised you, and what needs to be enhanced or improved.

While these are just a few of the marketing techniques that can be implemented into a PR strategy, they are simple changes that can influence the best way to invest your PR hours and budget.