In the good old days of traditional marketing, product marketers sat separately from PR professionals—both figuratively and literally. They owned product promotions, while PR was engaged right before a launch.
The advent of blogging, social media and influencers has changed this. Check out these six ways PR adds value (or even drive success) for product marketers when they work together as a team.
- Be seen. The PR effort of getting blogs and social media postings published can drastically improve a site’s SEO. That means your product/company page will rank better and attract more traffic (and thereby increase lead generation/conversion opportunities).
- Improve buy-in. Today’s customers are purchasing differently. They aren’t just looking for exciting and new features, but for a complete package. This has made story telling vitally important (where PR and blogging come in). If they buy into the story, they will buy into your vision and your solutions.
- Increase retention. Customers want to engage their solution providers for a variety of reasons, but chief among those include how to handle any challenges that may arise and what solutions they need for their journey. Here PR can help to highlight product roadmaps. By sharing best practices and examples, retention improves.
- Become a thought leader. Blogs offer a channel to show one’s expertise and thought leadership. If people are looking for answers, they will always look to leaders and not followers. It is a matter of perception and risk reduction.
- Be researchable. Customers usually do some research before purchasing. They do not want to get led, but want to lead sales. A blog or social media post offering key insights will be valued. It’s the same for journalists. Unless they are reporting on new products that no one has heard of, they are always looking for products that their readership knows and cares about. After all, for them it’s a matter of getting views and gaining traction.
- Get recommended. This can be difficult but blogging and PR can help. Once others recommend your products, brand equity, mind share and eventually revenues will follow. Your reputation as a solution provider will also soar. [bctt tweet=”Empowering your #PR team to work closely with product marketing simply makes good business sense”]
PR is no longer just about media relations. It is really about engagement. This results in a more direct connection to a company’s bottom line. Empowering your PR team to work closely with product marketing simply makes good business sense.
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