Smart mar­keters know that all three com­po­nents of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing and PR are nec­es­sary to have a healthy brand pres­ence. This arti­cle pro­vides tips, insights, and exam­ples on how each of these enti­ties can help your brand aware­ness, engage­ment and rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment.

When brands are look­ing to achieve a cer­tain goal in the New Year, it can be hard del­e­gat­ing where their annu­al bud­gets should go. When assess­ing the options between a mar­ket­ing, PR, or adver­tis­ing agency, the mul­ti­tude of choic­es and ben­e­fits of each one over­whelm deci­sion mak­ers. Pre­vi­ous­ly, this choice came down to choos­ing between paid, earned or owned media.

Before the dig­i­tal era, mar­ket­ing, PR, and adver­tis­ing were sep­a­rate enti­ties with defined respon­si­bil­i­ties. Now, these indus­tries are more close­ly relat­ed than ever.

Brand ini­tia­tives are car­ried through­out PR plans, mar­ket­ing strate­gies, and cal­cu­lat­ed ads. Fur­ther­more, agen­cies are find­ing them­selves cross­ing paths with one anoth­er more often than not.

Dig­i­tal out­reach is prac­ticed by PR pro­fes­sion­als and tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing moved into the social realm. But how do you use each one of these facets to achieve your goals?

Goal: Create Brand Awareness

Whether you’re an unknown brand, or have already estab­lished your­self as an author­i­ty in the indus­try, brand aware­ness is nec­es­sary for top fun­nel strate­gies. There are mul­ti­ple ways you can invest your bud­get appro­pri­ate­ly to achieve this goal.

• Dig­i­tal: Using both owned and earned strate­gies, online mar­ket­ing can help achieve this goal. Whether it’s syn­di­cat­ing a pop­u­lar info­graph­ic or tar­get­ing long-tail key­words through your con­tent cal­en­dar, you can reach an audi­ence that was once untapped. A sol­id con­tent strat­e­gy is key here.
• PR: This is where the lines become blur­ry. Off-site SEO often col­lides with the PR world when con­duct­ing influ­encer out­reach. This earned media strat­e­gy results in online men­tions by influ­encers, blog­gers and even jour­nal­ists. PR and mar­ket­ing agen­cies can approach this tac­tic in mul­ti­ple ways includ­ing con­tent mar­ket­ing (dig­i­tal) and pitch­ing to jour­nal­ists (PR). Either way, a healthy brand should use both out­lets to cov­er the dif­fer­ent areas of exper­tise.
• Paid: Paid media is also extreme­ly ben­e­fi­cial for brand aware­ness, main­ly due to the prospect­ing options avail­able online. Using cus­tom audi­ence met­rics, PPC and social ads tar­get new cus­tomers that may not be aware of your brand, but have sim­i­lar inter­ests, are locat­ed near­by, or have pre­vi­ous­ly been to your com­peti­tors’ site.

Goal: Build Brand Engagement

Keep­ing your audi­ence engaged is dif­fi­cult. Con­stant, high-qual­i­ty con­tent cre­ation is essen­tial to this, but then what? You need to stay rel­e­vant to your audience’s inter­ests, indus­try trends, and more.

• Dig­i­tal: It all starts with con­tent. Cre­at­ing use­ful, inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant con­tent for your audi­ence mem­bers is a nec­es­sary step in this process. Fash­ion brand Joie cre­ates con­sis­tent pieces of con­tent that relate to their tar­get demo­graph­ic, includ­ing music, fash­ion trends, and inter­views with influ­encers. Its social media also engages users on a fre­quent basis. Whether it’s cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful­ly pinned boards, host­ing a con­test on Face­book, or reply­ing to mes­sages from their users, these actions keep audi­ence mem­bers engaged and talk­ing about the Joie brand.
• PR: Once again, PR and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cross paths. PR agen­cies will con­sis­tent­ly mon­i­tor social media for any brand men­tions, trend­ing top­ics, and more. This mir­rors what many social media man­agers do on a dai­ly basis as well. PR pro­fes­sion­als will fol­low-up with social media or edi­to­r­i­al leads to try and insert the brand name into the con­ver­sa­tion. They will also notice if influ­encers organ­i­cal­ly men­tion the brand or show inter­est and send them some free prod­ucts (thus increas­ing engage­ment). For exam­ple, an emerg­ing beau­ty influ­encer has been receiv­ing a mul­ti­tude of prod­ucts from big beau­ty brands (includ­ing Ben­e­fit Cos­met­ics and Pixi), thus lead­ing to var­i­ous social men­tions.
• Paid: Remar­ket­ing is a pow­er­ful tac­tic that can keep your brand top of mind through­out a user’s online expe­ri­ence. Dis­play and social remar­ket­ing ads tar­get users are the mid to low fun­nel, thus increas­ing the chances of engage­ment and direct con­ver­sions or leads.

Goal: Manage Reputation

• Dig­i­tal: Rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment strate­gies used to be more aggres­sive in the SEO world. Today, the major­i­ty of this is done via on-site opti­miza­tions for a cer­tain brand term or name. Anoth­er way to man­age a brand’s rep­u­ta­tion is through social media. Social media plat­forms are now con­sid­ered a meet­ing point for brands and their con­sumers, giv­ing con­sumers the pow­er to voice their con­cerns. Hav­ing strong CRM allows brands to address these con­cerns in real-time.
• PR: Cause mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives help align brands with pos­i­tive mes­sages such as REI’s #OptOut­side cam­paign or brands that par­tic­i­pate in #Giv­ingTues­day. This also gives brands a chance to tout their social cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty.
• Paid: Using PPC, brands can ensure their web­sites are the first thing users see when search­ing for their brand names. We also hope for organ­ic list­ings to also appear first for your brand name; how­ev­er, an opti­mized PPC cam­paign can ensure this hap­pens.

The above sit­u­a­tions include spe­cif­ic exam­ples of the roles each dis­ci­pline can take, how­ev­er they aren’t lim­it­ed to these actions. In real­i­ty, there are an end­less num­ber of ways all three dis­ci­plines can inter­act and com­pli­ment each oth­er. So, when con­sid­er­ing your bud­get for this year, make sure to incor­po­rate ade­quate spend­ing across these three areas.