A well-researched digital PR strategy is essential to set your business up for success, and leveraging data can assist in establishing strong foundations.
Putting together a long-term strategy can feel overwhelming; there is no one-size-fits-all approach in digital PR, however, by harnessing data you can ensure that you stay on the path for a relevant and compelling strategy.
Begin by identifying your business objectives. What do you want to achieve by the end of the strategy? Are you looking to improve brand awareness, increase website traffic, generate more leads, or increase rankings for a specific keyword? Your goals should be measurable and realistic, allowing you to steer your strategy with relevant campaigns.
Once you’ve set clear goals it’s time to begin data research.
Audience Insights
One of the most valuable insights you can hold as a business is understanding your customer. You want to be privy to their behaviour including the websites they frequent, what they read, and the social media platforms they follow. By knowing this, you can create campaigns that resonate with them, resulting in better engagement and conversion rates.
You can find this data by using tools such as SimilarWeb. Take the Impression site for example; we can see that the top five industries searched by our visitors include: Online marketing, computers and technology, social networks, programming and developer software, and search engines. We are also able to identify that ChatGPT is among the most popular visited domains.
Using this data we can guide our internal digital PR strategy to include b2b content surrounding AI and technology. Whilst the ‘social’ steer of SimilarWeb suggests that Linkedin is the best platform for marketing our content, as 92% of Impression’s social traffic is driven through here – perfect if social impressions are your measurement goal!
Your Competitor Profiles
Mapping your competitors is a great way to reveal gaps and weaknesses in your digital PR strategy. You can do this by conducting a link intersect using a tool such as Ahrefs – in short a link intersect shows you where your competitors have backlinks and your business does not.
By identifying these gaps it allows you to direct your strategy and make informed decisions on campaigns that are likely to land backlinks in these missing domains. This is key if one of your measurables is SEO-driven.
Having a diverse and relevant backlink profile is a significant factor in search engine algorithms, and a link intersect can help you map out the different verticals you should go after in your strategy. We strongly recommend that you include both direct organic competitors and aspirational ones in your analysis, so you’re staying ahead of the game.
Keyword Analysis
Many aspects go into growing your business, and often multiple products that you want to promote – so, where do you start? If you haven’t got specific targets then keyword research can play a fundamental part in kicking off your strategy and deciding where to focus your digital PR efforts.
Understanding the keywords relevant to your business allows you not only to optimise your content but also to identify the words and phrases potential customers use when searching for products or services in your offering. These are the keywords you want to target in your digital PR strategy to help direct more relevant traffic to your site – essential if your objectives are conversion or ROI.
Keyword research can also help guide your strategy by sharing insights on topics and themes that are relevant to your audience, that we identified earlier on. With your newfound knowledge of your customer, you can match up their interests with your website’s keyword opportunity and create engaging campaigns that resonate with them.
If you would like further advice on your digital PR strategy then get in touch with our team, or visit our Digital PR page to learn more about the work we do.
