A Guide to the Different Types of PR and Their Benefits

If there’s one rule, it’s that you need to tell journalists and readers something, or multiple things, they don’t already know. Data-driven campaigns have huge potential to earn links and drive traffic to sites, as well as get a conversation going. The more detailed data-led campaigns see Digital PRs and brands creating or trawling through heaps of trusted, unique datasets and conducting meticulous analysis to give them a variety of news hooks to play with.

Campaigns and stories can be based on new or exclusive data that can be sourced online, such as via Google Trends, on social media, from a client’s own internal database, from a survey conducted through an external facilitator or in-house at the brand, or obtained from a public body by way of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, to name a few!

People base their whole campaigns around data or use them to add more weight to existing stories. You can use data to prove the point you’re trying to make.

Google Trends is a free tool that analyses the popularity of Google search words and phrases using real-time data. It shows what people are searching for, when, and from which location. Not only can this data help you work out when is the best time to cover a topic and when something is trending, but you can also show an increase or decrease in search terms over a period of time of your choice. This is something journalists value as Google is a trusted source.

Social media data can be sourced and used in many ways. One example is to analyse the number of views a hashtag has on TikTok. You might do this to discover how popular a trend is compared with others. If you were writing a piece about the most popular types of different weddings currently, you might search for #sustainablewedding – which has 12.4m views on TikTok, #winterwedding which has 89.3m views, and #humanistwedding with 4.6m views. You can do a rolling comparison between the trends to create a story with your key findings.

Creative campaigns often involve the kind of data we’ve discussed above, but that’s not always the case. When they do, assets like videos, images, infographics and GIFs can be created to showcase the data in an eye-grabbing manner. Assets work well on branded landing pages because they’re a good way of demonstrating key points without the need for too many words, which may lose a reader’s interest. But they’re not always based on stats and figures.

We’ve seen DPR campaigns that utilise wow-factor assets to demonstrate, for example, how a city might look if refused planning applications had been approved through the creation of new-world images using developer’s designs. Alternatively, GIFs that show viewers ancient landmarks around the world being restored to their former glory. These assets can also be used or repurposed for other digital marketing channels like social media.

These types of digital PR are ideal for those in the e-commerce or service-based industries, and while some of these methods are simpler than others we’ve discussed, they can be equally as powerful. The launch of new products and services can be published through press releases. But digital PR teams will also use commercial calendar dates to their advantage. For those selling products and offering deals, Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are key times to pitch products for inclusion in round-up articles and gift guides that might be titled say ‘the best Christmas gifts for her’, ‘Black Friday fitness deals you don’t want to miss’ or ‘Mother’s Day gifts for under £50’.

In recent years shopping reporters and editors have become roles more publications are filling, with pages dedicated to helping readers find the best products and deals. The key to success with this method is targeting the press who write about the brand’s product or niche and pitching it in an engaging way – the price of the product and how good the deal is will also play a huge part.

Where relevant, seasonality and trends can be the driving force behind consumer-focused content. As well as pitching products to be included in existing or future articles reporters may write, brands and DPRs can create their own to outreach. For a fashion brand that sells country attire, you might write an article about ‘the 10 best hiking boots for your Winter adventures’ and pitch it to journalists who cover fashion and shopping.

Something else to take advantage of is reviews – there are a lot of dedicated review writers employed at publications, or journalists who cover a specific topic like fashion who are happy to review items, as well as those who run blogs. Blogs usually have lower domain authority, which is an important metric to check first if your efforts are SEO-led. In general, however, reviews are great for brand awareness and are often a major factor at play when it comes to the consumer’s buying journey – they can be the difference between a purchase or loss of interest to a competitor.

Stories that contain ‘expert’ commentary hold a lot of value – provided the source is trusted, reputable and qualified – and these are things expert-led stories can help to build. Any company doing digital PR needs to think about which internal experts and specialists can be utilised when expert-led comments are needed. If a DPR was working with a doctor at a skin health clinic, they can use the doctor’s commentary plus potentially the founder’s from a business perspective.

Experts’ advice, knowledge and guidance are valued in the eyes of journalists and readers. Stories can be created solely on expert commentary, or to bolster an existing story on a relevant topic. You might create a story around a trending topic, for example, a skin health hack that is trending on TikTok – you can ask the doctor questions about whether it’s good for the skin, do’s and don’ts, and other advice. Or you might base your story around seasonality, and ask the doctor how best to nourish and maintain skin during the colder months. Tips and advice-based articles are still extremely popular, so if you can find the right news hook and ask the right questions, you have a better chance of gaining media coverage.

These are stories where people are at the heart of them, but still achieve a brand’s goal. A lot of human interest stories are described as ‘real life stories’ – powerful and engaging stories which are shareable, and provoke emotion and conversation. A lot of companies who have case studies can utilise their stories for promotion in the press. We can use the example of the weight loss case study mentioned above. You’d interview them and find out more about their backstory, what caused them to gain weight and so on, to determine the most newsworthy angle.

You can also utilise the stories of key figures within a business – perhaps a CEO who has changed career and fought off a lot of hardship to get to where they are today – which is running a multi-million-pound company.

Key figures like these can also be put forward to write opinion pieces for publications and be featured in leader profiles within their niche.

Reactive PR requires DPRs to remain fluid and flexible to work on opportunities that might not directly tie in with their main strategies. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly popular within the industry, with some professionals even attributing the bulk of their media coverage success to reactive PR. Reactive PR is the practice of responding and reacting to news and trending topics and looking for ways to place a brand or individual within the conversation, which can help them to achieve different goals.

Big, breaking news stories and viral trends that journalists are keen to cover provide space for brands and people to step in and get involved by creating their own stories around them, or contributing to articles reporters are already planning to write.

Both of these form huge parts of Reactive PR. Newsjacking specifically involves jumping on the back of a hot news topic and using it to your advantage, and is usually done by way of using a brand’s data, insights or expert commentary to contribute to the conversation – providing it’s relevant. These don’t need to be in the form of press releases – you can simply send your information out to the reporters covering the topic, and you may find journalists add it to existing stories or that you’re their inspiration to create a new one. Of course, whatever you’re contributing needs to be newsworthy, unique or insightful.

The Covid pandemic and the constant changing of travel rules and restrictions we’ve seen in the last couple of years gave key figures within the travel industry the chance to give their thoughts and opinions about the news. Hotels, airlines, airports, and people who had their holidays cancelled or got stuck in other countries were a huge part of the conversation around that time.

Media requests can be golden nuggets. Also known as #journorequests on Twitter, journalists use them when they’re doing a call out for specific information, case studies or experts for their stories. Tools like ResponseSource and Twitter are great tools to use to monitor them, which is a huge part of the job for DPRs. Being able to respond quickly and work with clients to get the information or quotes required, the better chance there is of success. Not only do these gain brand mentions but it’s an effective way of building up links too.