December 22, 2022
Communications, Content marketing, Digital Marketing, Public relations, Strategy
Length: 5-minute read
Quick summary: Most companies recognise the inherent business value that public relations (PR) and marketing efforts provide. However, not every business understands the true value that comes from delivering those services in tandem. Discover the key reasons integrated marketing communications will benefit your business and better prepare you for future success.
Public relations (PR) is an essential tool for business success, especially when it comes to crafting and maintaining a strong brand reputation and public image. The ultimate goal of PR is to help deliver a proactive program of media engagement that keeps organisation’s stakeholders, customers, and prospects up to date with important insights, news, and technology use-case examples from your business. PR consultants typically achieve this by liaising directly with key journalists and media houses in your relevant industry or general news areas.
However, PR can deliver much more value than direct media engagement. High-quality PR consultants will also support your business with crisis communication, employee and stakeholder communication and engagement, award submissions, government relations, social media community management, and much more. This makes them valuable partners to have on your side whenever your business wants to communicate a message, no matter who you want to communicate it with.
At the same time, while businesses generally recognise the value that PR provides to their organisation, often it can compete with the marketing arm for essential budget. Marketing is an equally important tool that helps to grow your share of voice and presence in the market, while also helping you specifically communicate your products and services to potential customers to win sales. When these budgets compete, it can result in lost opportunities for business, especially if the two programs and messages don’t align with each other. As such, integrated marketing communications is becoming increasingly valuable to businesses.
Ultimately, integrated marketing communications is the result of PR and marketing working together in tandem. Ideally, this would mean that PR and marketing campaigns are carefully aligned and created in relation to each other. For instance, media engagement can be strategically planned to complement any marketing collateral in market, to double down on any messaging that your business is distributing. This means that, any time a potential customer is searching for more information on your company after reading a marketing asset, they can be met with related news articles that expand on the story. This reinforces your messaging and can create a sense that your company is the thought leader in your sector; both of which can help encourage a prospect to take the next step in the purchase journey.
To achieve success with integrated marketing communications, organisations need to ensure they have a detailed integrated digital marketing plan in place that has been strategically developed with insight from both PR and marketing functions. This can be difficult to achieve when working with siloed PR and marketing agencies that aren’t used to collaborating, and can have different, competing agendas.
The solution is a fully integrated content marketing agency that can offer comprehensive PR and marketing services delivered by experienced marketing and PR consultants.
Companies increasingly recognise the benefits that integrated marketing communications can deliver to their business. As such, there’s been a rise in the number of agencies that promote integrated services. However, not every integrated marketing agency will deliver the same level of experience and success.
Often, PR agencies will say they can offer B2B marketing services, but they don’t have the breadth of experience and technical expertise needed to deliver effective marketing campaigns. And, they will often provide their marketing services as little more than an add-on to their existing PR, rather than a standalone campaign specifically designed to garner real results and generate marketing qualified leads for your business. At the same time, many marketing agencies will offer PR as part of their service but will run into the same challenges when it comes to inexperience and lack of deep industry understanding for the evolving media landscape.
The two fields have historically existed as separate schools of thought for a good reason: they’re not the same thing and they don’t work the same way. Specialising in marketing or PR will naturally have some crossover in the other field; however, true integration comes from equally specialised marketing and PR consultants working collaboratively to achieve the same goal.
Finding the right agency fit for your business can be challenging, especially if you’re not sure what to look for in an agency that offers integrated marketing communications. It can seem like a simple fix to find a generalist agency that works in PR and marketing and that talks the right talk. However, a specialised industry needs a specialised touch. Any marketing or PR agency that works for technology companies needs to have a comprehensive understanding of the unique challenges and trends that impact business success. The same goes for an integrated offering.
There’s a reason that enterprise business-to-business (B2B) companies are looking for integrated marketing and PR agencies that specialise in their industry. Increasingly, companies are looking for agency partners that don’t need the basics explained to them, especially as this can slow down their path to success. It’s essential to look for an integrated marketing agency that has a wealth of experience in delivering campaigns that achieve results for complex solutions, products, and services. This will demonstrate their experience within the industry, as well as their experience in delivering a campaign that works.
Working with a specialist integrated marketing communications agency can ensure your business is supported by a team of dedicated consultants that understand your business and your industry as well as you do. And, they’ll ensure that your PR and marketing strategies are carefully aligned to deliver the best value for your investment.
As part of Australia’s leading group of PR and marketing specialists, Recognition PR has decades of experience in building and executing powerful PR campaigns that align strategically with marketing objectives for business, IT, and consumer-facing organisations. To more about the benefits of working with an integrated marketing agency, download our latest whitepaper.
For more information on our services and how we can help your business develop an integrated digital marketing plan with optimal outcomes, contact the team today.
It can be difficult to know whether your PR firm is delivering a strong return on investment. We’ve identified 10 questions you should ask your agency to make sure they’re delivering the ROI you need.
The Recognition Group recently embarked on a jam-packed three-day company retreat to the breathtaking Spicers Hidden Vale in South East Queensland.
