So, You Were Featured by Forbes… Now What?
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Let me guess… you read my recent blog post about how to get your brand featured in Forbes and now you’re sitting there happy as can be because YOU GOT YOUR BRAND FEATURED IN FORBES!
Take a second to give yourself a pat on the back, do a little happy dance or pour yourself a celebratory glass of your favorite adult beverage – what a huge accomplishment! However, now isn’t the time to rest on your laurels. In fact, now’s the time to ensure you maximize the impact a mega-placement like this has not only on your PR initiatives, but on your comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
Related: How Awards Can Benefit Your Company
Too often PR veterans and digital marketing professionals alike overlook invaluable ways to leverage and repurpose media wins. Ensure these placements generate the maximum exposure and awareness for your brand, as well as benefit and boost your cross-channel marketing efforts with the following checklist:
Annotate In Google Analytics
After your placement is live, log into Google Analytics and create an annotation. Annotations offer a quick and easy way to track notes in Google Analytics by date, so you can mark important events (i.e. live coverage) and attribute jumps in data. With PR placements, it’s most important to annotate so you can attribute spikes in direct traffic.
To create an annotation, go to any report and click the down arrow on the tab at the bottom.
Add To Your Website + Press Page
As we know, securing top-tier media placements increases your brand’s credibility exponentially since a reputable third-party is essentially vouching for your business. Consumer’s trust these top-tier outlets and look to them when making the purchasing decisions.
As a result, make sure the homepage of your website is updated to include the logo of the outlet that featured you. It’s a best practice to have a “Featured On” portion where you can place these logos and wear them like a badge of honor. Additionally, add links to your placement on your website’s press page to drive additional eyeballs to your feature.
Promote On Social Media
Throwing PR wins into the social media mix is always a good idea. These placements diversify your posts and help to ensure that your existing audience doesn’t grow tired of your content. Promoting your PR placements on social media also helps to nurture your audience and shows them the momentum your business continues to gain, which in turn encourages customers to purchase again and extends their lifetime value.
Incorporate Into Your Paid Social Ads
With a tool called Snip.ly, you can use your PR placement as a cold traffic ad on social media to prospect new audiences. Since the placement is essentially a third party endorsement, Snip.ly gives us a way to market to consumers without it looking like they’re being marketed to.
Related: Which Social Advertising Channels Should You Invest In?
The best part? We’re able to place a pixel on the placement, so once a consumer clicks through the ad, we’re able to re-target off of them with more converting ads. Additionally, you can create unique CTA’s (call-to-actions) at the bottom of each Snip.ly-generated ad, which drives consumers even deeper into your marketing funnel.
Add To Relevant Email Campaigns
Just like you’ll promote on social media to humbly brag about your placement, the same can be said for the value of incorporating into your email marketing sequences. Continuing to demonstrate the innovative and industry-leading nature of your brand via third party PR placements is a surefire way to nurture your existing customer base. Including these placements also has the potential to be the thing that pushes an on-the-fence consumer over the fence to ultimately convert.
Incorporate Into Your Paid Media Ads
Your PR placement can and should be incorporated into your Google Search initiatives with review extensions. We all know that there’s nothing better than a good review and customers turn to these reviews when searching for products online. Review extensions allow you to repurpose your media write-up and share it with potential customers in a line of text beneath your ads on Google Search.
Related: Getting Started with Digital PR: What Public Relations is All About
By knowing that a respected third-party source agrees and endorses your brand, potential customers will be more inclined to click your ads and engage with you.
Monitor Keyword Rankings
After your placement goes live, be sure to note the anchor text of the followed link(s) included and connect with your SEO lead to monitor these terms’ rankings over the next few months. In certain cases, top-tier media placements, coupled with ongoing SEO tactics, have the power to move keyword terms from page two to page one in the SERP (search engine results page).
Wrapping Up
Getting your brand featured on Forbes is a major PR win, yet the benefits of this placement extend much further than PR alone to virtually every other digital marketing channel. Guarantee that your efforts are rewarded by integrating your PR placements into your cross-channel marketing efforts to maximize your brand’s exposure, support channel-specific marketing goals and ultimately drive consumers to convert.
Still a little fuzzy about where PR fits into your comprehensive digital marketing strategy? We’d love to give you a hand!