BERLIN — I had the honor of speaking last week at this year’s Content Marketing Masters, one of three European conferences that are held by the German online marketing agency PerformicsAKM3.
The topic? “How to Integrate PR and Content Marketing.” Here, I will summarize my presentation for everyone’s benefit. For more details on the highlights that I discuss below, I invite you to read my lengthy tutorial “The Advanced Guide to Online Publicity Campaigns” on Moz.
Of course, I’m sure that some might be surprised at why I presented at a content marketing conference after I published a TechCrunch column that went viral after I criticized the use of buzzwords such as “content marketing” and “inbound marketing” in the digital marketing industry.
The reason is simply that I aim to educate digital marketers on traditional marketing practices so that they can do their jobs even better. “Content” is merely produced in the execution of any of the five marketing strategies that comprise the Promotion Mix (direct marketing, advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity).
Slides 2-4. All marketing consists of the creation of a message, the insertion of that message into a piece of content, and the transmission of that content over a channel to an audience. That process occurs within any of the five frameworks that comprise the Promotion Mix. (Promotion is one of the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion.) Here, I will take a deep dive into publicity campaigns.
Slides 6-7. The first step is to research everything about your target audience. Any and every detail might be relevant to your campaign.
Slides 8-9. The second step is to compile a list of every publication that is read by your target audience. Order the list by visitors or readers and include whether that publication accepts contributed articles.
Slides 10-11. The third step is to research the specific writers or contributors at each publication that write about topics that are relevant to your product, service, or industry. Sending a PR pitch to the wrong reporter at the right outlet will almost always result in nothing. Add this information to your media list.
Slides 12-13. Now, I will present the various strategies that publicists have always used to get media attention for the companies and clients. The important thing to remember: What “content” will you need to create to execute any of these strategies? Blog posts? Videos? White papers? Case studies? Videos? Infographics? Press releases? Something else?
Slides 14-23. Here, I discuss ten of the publicity strategies that marketers have always used to get mass attention online and offline. Remember: The Internet is just a new series of communications channels that allow for new content formats. The same overall principles still apply. For more detail on these strategies, see my extensive Moz tutorial.
Slide 24: A summary of best practices in pitching reporters over e-mail. Make the subject line into an attention-getting headline. Include a short summary at the beginning of the e-mail. Then, copy and paste the contributed article, press release, video, graphics, or anything else into the body of the rest of the e-mail. Most journalists cannot open attachments because of corporate policies that aim to prevent viruses. Include a link to a Google Drive document, if needed. Include everything in the body of the e-mail so that the journalist can ready it all quickly on mobile devices — after all, they are often on the move.
Slides 26-28. The best and greatest numbers of backlinks to websites — especially in the tech startup world — come as natural by-products of news coverage and publicity campaigns. Here is the data as well as a list of further resources.