Search Engine Optimization

The growth of the Internet has made it both tougher and easier to reach your potential clients. While it has increased competition by leveling the playing field, it has also provided a channel for marketing your services on a low-cost budget and reach many more people than was possible earlier.

As these new marketing techniques proliferate, it is no longer enough for corporations or organizations to rely only on referrals or word-of-mouth publicity to earn new business. At The Public Relations and Marketing Group, we recommend that clients tap into a mix of both traditional and new marketing methods to promote themselves and their business.

This article outlines PRMG’s top 10 PR and marketing techniques that will help both businesses and non-profit organizations build their brand, demonstrate their expertise and attract many more clients or a community of supporters.

1. Media Availabilities

Is there an important issue (relating to your area of business) in the news you can comment on? Do you have an opinion on a prominent public policy issue that may affect your business? Making yourself available to speak to the media is an excellent strategy that will not only help you display your leadership and expertise, but also help you build professional credibility. Once you establish yourself as a reliable, useful source, the media will want to write about you. A great way to attract media attention is to ensure that your press release has a strong news angle and targets the right publications and beat reporters. Pitching a local angle in your press release will help to secure coverage in local media outlets.

2. Monthly Columns

Writing monthly columns for your local merchant chamber or trade association’s newsletter or for a mainstream publication will help increase your visibility and establish your reputation in your area of business and can often serve as the backbone of your marketing strategy.

In particular, advice columns can be highly effective in attracting potential clients and may be well worth the time spent in answering queries and giving out advice for free. If getting your article published in mainstream publications is difficult, you can submit them to popular article directories such as ArticleBase and EzineArticles.

3. Seminars/Lectures/Networking Events

Speaking at seminars and offering lectures or workshops will also help you expand your professional network, increase your visibility and build your personal brand. Attending professional or business networking events will help you connect with prospects. Despite the growth of social networking and virtual communication, building relationships through face-to-face networking is one traditional marketing technique that will never go out of style.

4. Traditional Advertising

Among traditional advertising tools, you could also consider advertising in daily newspapers and specialty publications but in general, print advertising has been providing diminishing returns. Through television advertising, especially cable television, you can target niche markets or demographics with special programming. This offers you the advantage of reaching a larger audience at a lower production cost and is increasingly becoming an attractive option for smaller, local businesses. In the long run, nothing beats television advertising in establishing a brand that people will remember.

5. Online Advertising

With an increase in the amount of time people spend surfing the Web, online advertising offers great opportunities for reaching your target audience. Google AdWords, a pay-per-click advertising program, allows you to target your ad based on keywords people type in the Google search engine. You pay Google a certain cost per click whenever people click on your ad and visit your Web site – and not how often your ad is shown. Pay-per-click ads are easy to create and allow you to reach an audience that is looking for information on the services you provide. 
You can also buy pay-per-click ads on Facebook or LinkedIn, targeting your ad based on demographic criteria such as age, gender, education, profession, geographic area and other select keywords (such as your audience’s interests).

6. Web Marketing

Since your Web site is often one of the first impressions people will get of your business or organization, it’s important to plan carefully for your site’s design and content, keeping in mind your target audience and the message you want to communicate. While most organizations and even small businesses now have Web sites, many ignore the importance of using search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that their site is easily found when people look for them online. Using on-page and off-page SEO techniques, you can improve the volume or quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines; the higher a site ranks in search results, the more traffic it usually receives from search engines.

7. Social Media Marketing

Before the growth of social media, most businesses needed to either buy expensive advertising or receive media coverage to attract the attention of their customers. Using social media tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you can easily network and connect directly with potential clients and deliver information about your services. Social media can also be useful for driving people back to your Web site by posting your latest events, company news or even informative articles on issues that may serve as a useful resource for your target audience. Think of social media as a tool for two-way communication with your potential clients and for displaying your professional expertise.

8. Newsletters

Newsletters – whether printed or sent through email in an HTML format – can be useful for delivering relevant information to your target audience and keeping them updated on your organization’s services or recent events. E-newsletters are especially helpful for generating leads through e-mail programs such as Streamsend and Constant Contact. Using these programs, you can identify and track recipients who click on your e-newsletter. To convert these leads into prospects, you can then follow up with them by sending a brochure and making a follow-up phone call about your services.

9. Booklets

Creating a printed booklet or an e-book with informative articles or whitepapers on relevant issues that may be of interest and of use to your target audience is a great way to start engaging with your prospects and create an image of being a leader in your field. E-books can be easily sent in a PDF through e-mail or social media channels or they can be printed and distributed to your current clients and prospects or the media. You can also make them available for download on your Web site through a contact form that your prospects can fill. This will allow you to follow up with them and keep them informed about your services.

10. Direct Mail and D-Cards

Direct mail can be quite effective for localized businesses, especially if you purchase highly targeted mailing lists. If you are targeting a specific demographic profile in a particular geographic area, consider direct mail.

Another recommended option for direct mail is to use detached address cards or D-cards with your advertisement printed at the back. D-cards can be distributed through weekly publications in your local area at a very low cost of less than five cents each. If you want to saturate a zip code, and are not concerned that all residents will receive your mailer, you can use D-cards.

Social media can be a great way to take your message directly to your target audience. Using various social media tools, you can build your online profile and reputation, create more backlinks and drive people back to your Web site.

Below are the various tools PRMG uses to get clients maximum exposure on the Web:

Blogs: Blogs are Web journals that contain opinions on different subjects. Often described as the “front door” to social media, the authors of blogs can read, comment and exchange links on other blogs. Since blogs can be updated more frequently, search engines looking for fresh content will rank it higher and make it more searchable.

Besides this, blogs can be a great way for you to build your organization’s reputation, showcase its expertise, highlight a product or service, and help improve your Search Engine Optimization by drawing audiences back to your website and including backlinks to internal pages in blog entries. They also provide a more personal way of communicating with your customers or other target audiences, giving you an opportunity to obtain constant feedback from them.

Social Networking: Social networking sites operate on the simple premise of building a profile and connecting, interacting and sharing information with “friends” over the network. 

Facebook, which has more than 200 million users worldwide, allows you to build your own business fan page and create your own targeted ads, applications or platforms, which can serve as a great marketing tool. Using Facebook, you can share links, latest company news, start discussions, list events and post videos and pictures.

LinkedIn, another popular site, is particularly known for professional networking, where you can create a profile, and also display recommendations or testimonials from clients or former employers, ask and answer questions on business-related topics and create or join a professional networking group.

Microblogs: Twitter, the most popular microblogging tool, is a free service that allows members to send short messages or updates that are 140 characters or less. The message is sent to people’s “followers” or people who are interested in what the person has to say or share. Twitter can be a useful tool to drive people to your blog, Web site or Facebook profile by posting a URL every time you update them or want to inform people of latest events, promotions, press releases or company news. By posting your Web site URL to your Twitter profile or including your Web site link in a direct message to new followers, you would also be helping to boost traffic to your Web site.

Since it only consists of short updates, Twitter can often be easier to keep up with, as compared with blogging, and still help you connect and network with current or prospective customers. Many organizations use Twitter for customer service and as a quick way to monitor what others are saying about their brand. 

How PRMG Can Help You Tap Into Social Media

The vast array of social media tools available can often be confusing. To help you cut through the social media clutter, we begin by first identifying your business and communication goals. Based on your target audience, we devise a marketing and communication strategy, and select social media tools that can help you best achieve your goals and reach your target audience most effectively. 

Whether you need help with starting a blog, setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile, PRMG will always adopt an integrated approach to social media and ensure that it complements your traditional public relations and marketing efforts.

The Web can be a great place to showcase your product or service and get out your message directly to your customers. However, with the evolution of the Web into a crowded marketplace, being found easily by your target audience can often be a challenge. By strengthening your online presence and improving your rankings in search engines, you can enable consumers and media to find you at the precise moment that they are looking for information or need a particular product or service that you can provide.

Wikipedia defines Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a Web site from search engines through search results. Usually, the higher a site ranks in search results, the more traffic it receives from search engines.

 In simple words, SEO is mostly based on three steps:

• Identifying a profitable key phrase
• Creating content around the key phrase
• Building backlinks around the key phrase and other relevant content

Backlinks are clickable words, phrases or images that take a user from one Web page to another. While quality and not just quantity of the links is important, more and more backlinks to your site can help improve your search engine rankings.

Traditionally, SEO has only been associated with marketing and Web development, with a focus on Web site usability and architecture. While optimizing Web copy, graphics and multimedia files for search engines is important, most organizations ignore the importance of public relations in driving SEO results.

Here are a few PR tips and techniques that can be used to achieve better SEO results:

News Releases
With most journalists increasingly looking online for information, e-mail pitches alone are not very effective. By posting the latest news releases about your company on online news distribution services and your Web site, you can ensure that journalists can easily access newsworthy information about your company.

Besides journalists, most consumers and other target audiences use the Web as their primary source of information. This has changed the traditional public relations practice of distributing press releases exclusively to the media. Press releases can now serve as a great tool to directly reach your target audience with the latest news and information about your company or organization, and direct them to your product or service.

PRMG uses free online press release services like PRlog.org to ensure that your latest announcement reaches not just the media, but also your target audience when they look for you or a relevant phrase associated with you online. PRLog distributes press releases to search engines, including Google News. So when someone searches for your company or organization, the latest information about you can be easily found within the first three search result pages.

Using tools like Wordtracker, we can identify keywords and phrases that can be included in the headline and copy of the news release. However, it is important to strike a balance between including keywords and content relevant to your audience. If keywords are overused, search engines will reject your press release. By including links to your Web site in the body of the press release, we create additional backlinks that help optimize your site better and contribute to improving its rankings.

Submitting Articles
Submitting bylined articles to relevant online publications and Web sites can be a great way to not just strengthen your online presence and SEO, but also help to display your organization’s expertise and thought leadership, when someone searches for you online.

Again, the quality of links is important; getting placed in a top-tier publication will boost your search engine optimization much more. Creating profiles for your organization and listing your Web site URL on article directory sites such as Ezine Articles, Article Base and Scribd.com, will help optimize your site and establish your credibility as an expert in your field.

While submitting the article, be sure to include information about yourself and your business (including a hyperlink to your Web site in the ‘author’s resource box.’ This will help drive traffic to your Web site and expand your presence online.

Articles should also contain relevant keywords in the body of the article with hyperlinks that go back to your site. For example, an article on refinancing can include a hyperlink to the keyword ‘refinancing’ which takes the reader back to a page on the company’s Web site that talks about their refinancing services. It is important not to include too many keywords and to include links relevant to the keyword, or the article directories may reject your article, depending on their editorial submission guidelines. When people go to these sites looking for content, they will find your article. If they find your content useful and engaging, they will be more likely to follow through and visit your Web site.