How to use inbound PR to drive sales (and more)

*Every quarter, we hold a Lunch and Learn session for our clients where we share interesting insight and angles on doing business in the creative industry. Our head of PR Gill led our first client Lunch and Learn of the year on using PR to drive sales.*

 

### More trust, more sales

People are sceptical of advertising. If you’ve got a TV slot or an ad in a magazine, people know you’ve paid for that space to tell them how great you are. But because PR is earned, people feel that your message has been validated by someone impartial – a blogger, vlogger, journalist, celebrity, or reviewer perhaps. It makes your message more trustworthy and your proposition more believable. Emirates knew the value of this kind of earned coverage when they (youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84WIaK3bl_s text: upgraded this vlogger’s ticket to first class).

(image: https://assets.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/30160904/Picture11.png alt: Picture1)

*An oldie but a goodie. You’ve probably seen this illustration doing the rounds before. (Credit: Liquid Agency)*

### Good PR is about quality content and quality content attracts people and potential customers to your brand

Making a sale doesn’t mean it’s time to stop engaging with your customer. For example, did you know that around sixty-five per cent of people check reviews before buying something online? Ask your audience to write or tell a friend about their experience with your product or service. One sale can lead to an advocate who creates more quality, shareable content that starts the whole PR cycle off again, and again, and again.

(image: https://assets.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/30161040/Picture11.jpg alt: Picture1)

### Get personal and emotional

Insight is always at the heart of a good PR campaign. What keeps people up at night? What content do they really want, but doesn’t exist? By doing your research, you can identify gaps in your market. Areas you could fill with content to position you as the answer to their problems and make people want to engage with you. If people don’t care about you now, tell them why they should. Think about what Compare the Market did for insurance by introducing a cute, cuddly meerkat to grab attention, and creating a whole (youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG8OuftpraA text: world of Meerkovo) to interact with, after insight showed people were turned off by talking about insurance.

### There’s a correlation between creative and effective

If you want people to talk about you, get them excited. How can you attract their attention? Content that’s attractive to audiences is also attractive to media, vloggers and bloggers. Remember the Missing Type campaign for National Blood Week? Brands, businesses and buildings took blood-type letters out of their names to raise awareness of a shortage of blood donors. Before long, the public were joining in by editing their names on social media. If don’t get creative, you get lost.

(image: https://assets.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/30161254/paddy-power.jpg alt: paddy-power)

### Join the dots

Once people start to engage with your brand online you can remarket to them and again this should rely on quality and creativity to ensure you build relationships that convert to sales.

It’s why we’re a full-service agency – we know integrated campaigns make real business sense because every area of your strategy joins up and tells the same story. It makes you more visible, and you engage with people consistently and persuasively. All this leads to trust and, as we know, trust leads to sales.

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*Want to know more about how PR could help you build trust and relationships, and achieve your commercial goals? Or are you interested in coming to our next Lunch and Learn? (It’s about email marketing and it’s on 30th June.) Email *(link: mailto:have@superdream.co.uk text: *have@superdream.co.uk*)* or call 01527 573 770.*