PR plays an integral part in supporting an advertising or marketing campaign. 

Conversely, editorial and other forms of PR are strengthened by the brand presence of a strong advertising campaign. In our experience, PR that’s timed with your marketing campaigns and uses planned content is the most effective way to secure coverage that’s relevant to your audience and underpins your business objectives.

• PR delivers credibility and evidence, whereas advertising delivers brand awareness and product information. Both are needed to inform and positively influence a prospective purchaser

• Editorial is generally perceived as being independent and unbiased by readers, as such it is estimated that it holds 4 times more influence than an advert

• No-one likes being sold to – we all like to feel we are making informed decisions about what we buy. As a result many of us flick past adverts, only stopping to read an editorial feature that catches our eye. Companies that are quoted or contribute editorial are more likely to be perceived as experts in their field – influencing potential buyers to look at their products (or adverts) more closely

• People that regularly write interesting and insightful feature articles or offer expert opinion are considered thought-leaders. Becoming a ‘thought-leader’ gives instant credibility to the products and services they provide

• Thought-leaders become ‘go-to’ experts and are often invited to comment when a relevant story hits the news agenda, which entrenches their position (real or perceived)

• Buyers want evidence that a product or service works. Evidenced based PR ensures journalists are given access to the users of a product or service that are willing to talk to about their experience. In addition, PR teams will prepare a bank of case studies, testimonials and other supporting evidence that can be packaged and distributed to the media

If you’ve been developing a hub of great content to sit on your website you already have a resource of PR stories that can be pitched in to the press. To be really effective, PR activity should be broken down into the following three areas of focus:

Proactive PR

This is the process of developing PR hooks, stories and pieces of editorial content for placement in media viewed by your audience sectors.

Reactive PR

Your PR agency or internal PR function will secure forward feature opportunities across all relevant print, online and broadcast media, which are relevant to your audience or time in with the themes of your marketing campaigns.

Hi-Jack PR

As the name suggests, this involves getting someone in your organisation to comment on topical news stories, which can be sold in to the relevant press or written and distributed across social media in the form of a blog. Speed is of the essence with this type of activity.

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