When companies think about lead generation, they often think about sales & marketing. What can we do to improve our sales funnel? How can we better target our intended audiences and promote stronger sales conversions? Are we sending enough targeted drip campaigns?
While those are great questions to ask, and sales & marketing initiatives are important pieces to the puzzle, there’s one element that often goes overlooked. Public relations.
PR is a powerful tool communicators can leverage to help generate leads and grow their team’s business. By building relationships with journalists, research analysts, and other industry influencers, communicators can ensure their company and its products or services are getting seen. This can lead to increased website traffic, more sales leads, stronger engagement, and ultimately, more revenue.
Let’s explore some tips on how communicators can start better using PR as a lead-generating tool:
Drive targeted earned media outreach. Identify the target audience(s) your company not just wants but needs to reach. Build strong media lists that identify key journalists and publications that cover that sector. (Extra pro tip: avoid shiny object syndrome! The NYT has the cool factor, and trades might have the “IT” factor! A publication’s quantitative reach does not, alone, indicate the impact it will have on your business. Targeted trade publications are often great vehicles for reaching specific audiences that your company would like to see convert to prospects and, ultimately, qualified leads.)
Lean into thought leadership and set multiple narratives, to span multiple distribution channels — you should have a story ready to tell that caters to each specific audience you are trying to reach. Press releases are a great start to driving earned media coverage, but they are not the only avenue to accruing that earned media coverage. Think about the different comms materials and gated content (ie. whitepapers, ebooks) you likely already have at your disposal.
The content may be jargon-heavy and a bit technical. How can you broaden the messaging to fit your targeted audiences? Go back to the media lists you just set. What are those reporters writing about? What would make them care about the story your company is trying to tell? How could your executives help their target audiences (the readers) overcome specific challenges they might be facing? Solve, don’t sell.
Once you’ve started pitching and accruing those earned media wins, take it further. Think about your distribution channels. How can you amplify the earned media wins you’re likely to procure across owned and social channels? Can you convert an earned media bylined win into a blog post on a similar topic? Can you amplify the bylined win across your company’s LinkedIn and individual executives’ LinkedIn channels?
Measure your results, and adjust your strategy accordingly. It's important to measure the results of your PR efforts so that you can see what's working and what's not. Some metrics you may want to track include:
Share of Voice: How does your company stack against competitors in the media? Are the media wins you’re starting to accrue by pulling substantial Share of Voice from another company?
Sentiment Analysis: Are you attracting the right type of media attention? Ultimately, media coverage on your company should skew positive, if not neutral.
Media Frequency: Are you showing up in the media consistently month over month? Or, did you see a fluster of media coverage when you released that big announcement, and now you’re in month two of a very noticeable dip in coverage? Consistency is key (at Kite Hill PR, we like to call this “managing the peaks and valleys”).
By following these tips, and starting to better incorporate PR initiatives into your overall lead generation strategy, you’ll be leaning into the PESO (Paid, Earned, Social, and Owned) model. Implementing this 360-degree approach will help you, in time, generate more leads and grow your business.
If you have additional questions and/or need some help to get started, reach us at hello@kitehillpr.com. We’re here to support you!
- Mackenzie Sikora, Senior Account Director