Besides an agreement to marry, being engaged also defines the act of being ‘involved’ with something or someone.

In the marketing world, how engaged your audience is depends on how deeply they relate to your company and how interested they are. 

Are your customers loyal and passionate advocates of your brand? Or are they cynical and distracted?

Having a brand, with an engaged audience is the key to long-term sustainability in your market. This can be facilitated with PR campaigns focused on building engagement. 

The term brand engagement is often loosely defined as: emotional commitment, loyalty and a shining reputation that spreads rapidly by word-of-mouth.

How to create a PR campaign to build engagement

PR campaigns which are focused on promoting engagement, rely on content that is interesting, positive, insightful and actionable. This approach should be supported by a strategy that’s designed to spark positive conversations about your brand.

Be Positive

Campaigns and content which arouse emotions like excitement and wonder are shared more often than content eliciting a more negative response. This was revealed in research from Berger and Milkman, which analysed thousands of articles from New York Times to find the factors that fuel shareability. The results showed a strong relationship between virality and content that evokes positive emotion.

Content with a positive outlook – inspiring awe and wonder – is naturally more contagious and likely to start conversations. On the flipside, content evoking anxiety or anger was found to be more shareable than articles that served to confuse or sadden the audience.

Be Insightful

Campaigns and content that educate your audience and provide insightful answers to your audience’s burning questions invites engagement by sparking conversations.

This content can be delivered in the form of thought leadership articles which give expert opinions on industry issues, and answer commonly asked questions to help build and grow your brand into the industry authority on such matters.

At the same time, demonstrating expertise and credibility can help with your brand positioning by showing your audience that you understand the plethora of possible solutions available, and the pros and cons of each.

Case studies can bring insights to life by relaying direct experiences — acknowledging the audience’s problems and re-living emotions by bringing the problem to life, and then using the classic arc of the hero’s tale to show how it can be overcome.

Be Actionable

Articles that make the rounds on social media are often not only insightful, but actionable.

Content and campaigns that can easily be actioned, generate more engagement because they can have a direct impact on people’s lives; leading them to share their own experiences so they might contribute to solving other people’s problems. According to a study from The New York Times, The Psychology of Sharing, over 90% of social media users assessed the usefulness of a piece before sharing it.

So, along with shining a light on the problem, actionable content should be clear in highlighting a solution, by providing clear advice on how to surpass the struggles. For maximum impact, your advice should be extremely practical and very different from what your market competitors are offering.

Engaging with your audience on social media

Unlike the past when only those in PR or media could easily voice their opinions on products and services, blogging sites and online review platforms have now created a shared narrative — opening a two-way street of communication which is plastered across the internet for all to see.

To shape these discussions and ensure that the content you are sharing is getting the best possible reception, you need to be consistently engaging with your audience on relevant social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.

By joining the conversation on trending topics, you can establish your brand expertise and demonstrate authority by hosting ‘ask me anything’ (AMA) sessions or curating relevant content. Asking questions to get to know your audience and responding to customer service requests creates a shared narrative, helping to humanize your brand and form relationships with industry influencers to help drive engagement.

Trust is a precious commodity, developed and banked with your audience over the course of thousands of interactions and touchpoints.

The more honesty and helpfulness infused in each of these interactions, the more trust that is accumulated. Until eventually, you’ve transformed from an ambiguous stranger, to a helpful ally, and your audience are prepared to buy critical products and services from you.

In today’s world however, trust is in scarce supply. The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that trust in businesses and governments has significantly eroded since 2012, with the tech sector suffering the largest loss of all.

Educate with Thought Leadership

Strategic thought leadership content helps build your authority and establish your brand as a brand worth listening to.

Influence on social media

Social media is one of the best PR tools that your brand has available to influence customers and demonstrate trustworthiness.

This was quantified in a study by the International Journal of Research in Marketing, which found social media can help improve brand customer relationships by helping consumers to associate human characteristics with brands.

By opening up a two-way street for communication, social media gives brands the opportunity to build trust and grow a community. Demonstrating expertise in this informal setting can help your brand to shake off the corporate mask, share a behind-the-scenes look at your business with your audience, and win a great reputation by quickly responding to customer service requests.

Several pioneering tech firms have given clear examples of how to build trust across a broad audience by using social media.  For example:

Persuade using free content

An audience that recognises your expertise and engages with you on social media can be drawn even further down your funnel, with strategic giveaways that demonstrate your value.

How-to-guides

How-to guides show that you understand your audience’s pain points and gives them a small taste of what to expect when they work with you. While it might seem that you are giving away your expertise, you are in fact helping the audience to justify their investment in your offering by providing insights into their problem and a clearly articulated solution – best applied by you.

Tutorials and helpful content

Helpful social media posts and tutorial videos can fulfil a similar function, showcasing your expert knowledge and giving prospects the opportunity to ask questions and engage with your brand. Inbound marketing platform, Hubspot uses this strategy to great effect giving away interactive guides and free educational courses to demonstrate their expertise and encourage prospects to purchase a paid service. At the same time, the free content acts as a lead magnet helping to build an email list for future marketing campaigns.

In a similar way, internet marketing tools and Software-as-a-Service platforms like Dropbox and Trello often employ the “freemium” model – a combination of “free” and “premium” to build trust by giving away a basic level of service. This helps grow an audience by providing genuine value before pulling on their purse strings.

Once customers are comfortable on the platform using the free model, they are then more likely to trust the same company, when they need a more enhanced version, rather than switch over to a different brand.

The marketing funnel (also known as the sales funnel, or customer journey) takes prospects from an initial stage of awareness, all the way through to becoming a qualified lead, a customer, and hopefully, a loyal brand ambassador.

Along the different stages of the buyer’s journey (awareness, interest, desire, and action), PR plays a critical role. With engaging and relevant messaging, that meets their needs during each phase of the customer journey; a strategic PR campaign can draw more leads into the funnel, and ensure they willingly move through the cycle, to eventually become a loyal customer and advocate.

Awareness

The funnel begins with awareness. It’s a fairly simple concept; if your target market doesn’t know that you exist and have a solution to one of their problems, they’re not going to enter your funnel and become your customer.

This is why it’s necessary to begin your PR campaign with tools that make you visible and broaden your reach. Simply put, you need to set your brand up on platforms that your target market uses, and provide influential content, in the form of insights, white papers and thought leadership on subjects that matter to them.

Promote your knowledge and expertise by gaining coverage on specific media outlets—blogs, websites, or traditional magazines read by your target audience – that firmly position your brand as the authority.

This media coverage can be supported with activity on social media accounts and pay-per-click ads. These tools are going to be your daily bread; the consistent things that need regular upkeep, maintenance, and engagement to direct people towards your high-quality, relevant content.

Interest

When your target market begins to develop an awareness of your brand, they have taken the first step into the funnel. At this point, your goal is to get them to continue on through. To do this, you need to keep them engaged by building trust and demonstrating value.

This step in the buyer’s journey will focus on your potential customer’s problem and the range of solutions available to them; helping them to navigate the choices towards your brand. Now is the time to nurture your leads, paint a picture of their challenges using story-telling. Reach their heart and emotions with empathy and understanding using their language speak to them not at them. Then with authentic engagement and connection, walk them through potential solutions as their trusted adviser.

Desire

By the time your leads have reached this phase of the customer journey, they know who your brand is and what it stands for (awareness), and they’re interested in it because you have connected with them, shown them you understand them, and gained their trust (interest).

You’ve also helped them to really pinpoint what their challenges are, and with that knowledge, they’re ready to find and purchase a solution. This is the time to showcase your products or services, and to offer them as the solution they need.

Fortunately, by bringing your leads through your funnel, you don’t need to do a lot of selling at this point. The prospect is already aware of your brand and has an interest in it already. Now that they desire a solution, they’ll know exactly where to turn.

Owned content can play a critical role at this stage.

Use your website and blog or social media to showcase your products and services and provide a smooth progression for leads, who might decide it’s time to visit your website and learn more about what you’re offering after being exposed to editorial placements or relevant external media coverage.

Action

At the bottom of your funnel, your lead is ready to convert and become your customer. This is the goal post, the finish line, the place where they take action.

Your lead finds themself on your website, looking at your products, feeling compelled to purchase, and yet there’s always that little nagging voice causing them to fear making the wrong choice.

At this stage, PR can provide the extra layer of comfort needed to make a decision. This can be created with content like reviews, referrals, and testimonials, that give your product or service a third party stamp of approval, and knock down that last barrier to your lead saying, “Yes!”

Digital transformation has pushed the once divergent fields of marketing and PR closer together, creating a new media landscape for public relations (PR) professionals.

Integrated PR is PR that you wrap around your marketing activities to create impact and effect. A multi channel approach will broaden your reach and leverage your investment. PR is media-neutral it concerns itself with any form of communication that nurtures and protects reputation while moving your brand towards your desired outcome.

Gini Dietrich, the author of Spin Sucks, has developed an integrated planning tool, the PESO model, to help brands effectively position themselves as industry leaders in this new territory.

Successful use of the PESO model requires that you select the appropriate paid media for the task in hand and then apply the right tools to the selected media. We take a look at some of the more successful tools out there, for each of the different types of media.

P Paid media tools

New forms of paid media have rapidly proliferated on the internet, including native advertising, sponsored content, paid search, social media promotions via influencers, and content discovery platforms like Outbrain.

Your choice of paid media channels will depend on the demographic you’re targeting. And, how effectively you can tap into the full potential of the paid media channel will depend on which tools you choose to use.

Social media adverts

Social media ads typically rely on an auction model where advertisers bid against others targeting the same audience and keywords. These are best navigated using native platforms like Facebook Campaign Planner and Twitter Ads Manager which let you carefully hone demographic targeting and compare your efforts with competitors.

Google adwords

Advertising on Google Search can be constructed using tools like Google Keyword Planner that help you choose the right campaign setup and quickly shortcut the search rankings.

Content discovery

Content discovery platforms like Taboola and Outbrain can help broaden your reach by recommending your content to other readers who might be interested.

E Earned media tools

As the traditional realm of PR has evolved to include web-based publications like blogs and social media, a new toolbox has opened up for earned media.

With these tools in hand, the process of contributing content to more traditional media including newspapers and paper magazines, and new media like blog posts and digital magazines, is made vastly more efficient.

Media databases

Gorkana and Buzzstream are media databases that help you build your own media lists and manage outreach by tailoring personal email messages.

Search tools

Search tools including Anewstip and Muck Rack help you find journalists, bloggers, and other media figures by their articles or social media activity.

Distribution tools

Distribution tools like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) put you directly in touch with journalists looking for your expertise, helping you to win media mentions with minimal effort.

Full-stack tools

Full-stack tools like Cision make it easy to identify prospects, build media lists, manage the outreach process and then analyse the results.

Scheduling tools

Scheduling tools enable you to coordinate delivery across multiple channels from a single dashboard, and then analyse the engagement to see which channels drive the most engagement. These include Loomly and Hootsuite that coordinate content across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and broader content management systems like Hubspot that connect social accounts to other content.

Media monitoring tools

Keep tabs on brand mentions to find out what your audience has to say about you with media monitoring tools . These include Reputology, which tracks mentions across Yelp, Google, and Facebook reviews, and Google Alerts, which tracks mentions across the whole web.

Analytical tools

Analytical tools including Twitter Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and third party tools like Followerwonk can monitor your audience interactions for insights to help drive more engagement, and maximise posts that drive leads and sales.

Content curation tools

Content curation tools like BuzzSumo can identify gaps in competitor content and help you identify publishing opportunities.

O Owned Media Tools

Last, but not least, the right tools are essential for making the most of content that you create and distribute through your own channels including website and blog content, ebooks, whitepapers, newsletters, and podcasts. This content is the easiest to analyse and offers the most potential for gleaning deep insights from your audience.

Web analytics tools

Google’s website analytics tools like Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console can give you an accurate picture of content performance, letting you see where visitors come from, what they click on, analyse the demographics, and determine which campaigns bring the most traffic and conversions.

Content management systems

Content management systems (CMS) including WordPress and Wix provide a platform for creating and managing content that can be optimised for SEO with third-party plugins like Yoast.

Behaviour analytics tools

Behaviour analytics tools like Hotjar can visualise user behaviour through heatmaps to get a deeper understanding of how your audience interacts with your content.