Why You Need Inbound PR

When we think about what's happened over the past two decades, there are two key things to consider:

1. Our consumer and purchasing behaviors have changed, almost unrecognizably.
2. If you don't have an online presence, your brand doesn't exist.

Let's take a closer look at the first one.

The way we are influenced is very different today than it was a few decades ago. It's because we now have the power to let brands influence us or equally to not let them.

The process that we go through now to make decisions and buy products has fundamentally changed as well. We used to rely on direct sales and direct mail, TV and magazine ads, or media endorsements. Twenty to thirty years ago we didn't have the Internet; we couldn't really do much research on our own. We got our information from TV and the radio, and we relied on salespeople or the media to educate us on products as there was nowhere else to learn about new things or to find reviews. We also didn't need much convincing as the array of choice for products and services wasn't as extensive as it is today.

That's no longer the case.

We are a lot more sophisticated and empowered with hundreds of tools and technology. Essentially, our buying or decision-making process is a lot more conscious than ever before.

When we have a problem and need to solve it, the first thing we do is to go online and search for an answer. We go to Google or Facebook search, we type our problem, we check out websites, blogs, and brands. We check out vendors' social media presence; we chat to friends to get recommendations on social (even Facebook has this as a feature in the news feed); we dig deeper into specific brands and compare their offerings. And, oftentimes, we don't even need to speak to a salesperson, because we've done our due diligence and managed to convince ourselves on our own about what we need. Of course, if it's a bigger purchase, for example, an enterprise software decision, then we might rely on sales experts. Generally though, we educate ourselves through the content that we find, and we make our decisions on our own based on the content that we actively seek out.

Here's where the second key point comes into play. If I can't find your brand online when I'm doing my research to solve my problem, you basically don't exist. If you haven't used inbound PR or marketing to create and strengthen your own online presence as a business, I'm going to ignore you and ultimately not buy from you. I might even not find you to consider you in the first place.

In addition, we don't like when someone interrupts our research and content consumption process (like ads that we skip or fully disable). But we like to be engaged, enticed, and drawn into something interesting.

And that's what inbound is all about. It's about attracting people with the right, remarkable content that they would like to see when they need it.

Two decades ago, there were fewer journalists, fewer media outlets. Now there are thousands and thousands. Back then, the only way to get into the papers or on TV and radio was through the traditional media. Now you can use your own website for news and YouTube channel for airtime.

The Internet and social media completely changed the media landscape. They enabled a new era of two-way conversations where everyone can publish stories and reach a global audience in real time. This empowerment of individuals to have their demands heard has led to a fundamental shift in how brands are expected to behave and communicate, online and off-line.

As Brian Solis's Conversation Prism illustrates so well, we are at the center of our own universe (see Figure 3.1). I am the most important person in my life. And brands have to catch up with me. Brian Solis calls this “Digital Darwinism,” where digital moves faster than a company's ability to adapt.¹

It's not just consumers anymore, though. Brands today have too many stakeholders and interest groups that build up a huge social graph. Employees, vendors, investors, and suppliers have become a lot more vocal. The media does not just consist of journalists anymore; it's bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers—all influencers that can have loud voices, big followings, and the ability to influence consumers and their behaviors.

To top this, anyone can be an influencer today. Think about Michelle Phan—a famous beauty vlogger (or YouTuber if you prefer) from Boston. When she was 17 she started with a personal makeup blog, then transitioned into doing YouTube makeup tutorials. She now has a highly influential voice with over 8 million subscribers, billions of views of her videos, and makes millions. Her net worth is $50 million because brands are killing it to work with her!² And it all started just as a hobby.

Even journalists build their own brands; for example, in the autumn of 2016 Facebook started offering online courses for journalists that focus on three areas: discovering content, creating stories, and building an audience.³

The influencer landscape is not just immense but a driving force in today's digital era.

All the changes that have happened to society are also driving the world of business and how it needs to adapt. The same applies to PR and, as we've uncovered so far, some of the major reasons why PR needs to go inbound include:

1. Consumer buying behavior has not only changed but is harder to influence.
2. Brands need an online presence because otherwise they don't exist in the eyes of consumers or the media.
3. There are so many influencers and stakeholder groups that traditional PR activities like press releases are not enough.

The changes in technology and consumer and influencer behaviors lead us to believe that traditional PR is outdated.

Outbound PR—in which PR practitioners simply draft press releases and e-mail them to their entire media list—doesn't work. Shift Communications, a PR agency that I'm a big fan of, did a research study using Google Analytics data and found that there were 1,092 press releases being sent every day.⁴ That adds up to almost 400,000 press releases in 2016. But barely anyone clicks on them or reads them because they are not targeted.

What's more, with that many influencers out there, if PR people were to only do media relations, they wouldn't be able to reach the huge number of stakeholders and influencers—or publics—that we have today. No wonder PR people far outnumber journalists. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are 4.6 PR professionals for every one journalist in the United States; according to a Canadian census, that ratio is 4.1 to 1, and according to a research study in the United Kingdom by the PRCA, the number is almost two PR pros for every one journalist.⁵

However, the one-to-one-to-many approach that was prevalent before, that is, the client-to-PR-person-to-all-journalists approach, no longer works because no one pays attention. There's too much noise to cut through.

The biggest reason why you should be doing inbound PR is that outbound PR interrupts. It's pushy and not relevant to our needs or experiences. But an inbound PR approach is because it attracts and is targeted to a specific stakeholder group. It's about being human-centered with content that is relevant, remarkable, and created for a specific audience and its needs.

The Inbound PR Concept

As mentioned, I come from a PR agency background. After three years in the industry, I was asked by HubSpot to join its agency consultants team in its Europe, Middle East, and Africa headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It was a big move for me, not just personally by having to move from one country to another, but professionally as well by having to switch from one practice area to another.

Even though I was focusing on inbound marketing, I never lost my love for PR and continued researching and writing about it.

Working with over a hundred different agencies from across Europe during my first six months at HubSpot was eye-opening.

I realized that those coming from a PR background were doing very well with content creation but their colleagues from marketing, web, digital, or advertising were struggling with it.

On the other hand, PR people didn't fully grasp this “start with the numbers” inbound mentality. Their other counterparts had no issues with it because this is what they had always done—data had always stood at the center of their business.

So these two things—content and measurement—really got me thinking.

I then researched the different channels of the PESO model (paid, earned, shared, owned) and, as we've discussed so far, none of them work without good content. Content lies at the heart of all media channels and content creation is PR's real strength. But business results and ROI don't come without data, which is inbound marketing's real strength.

This got me thinking about what PR does and what inbound marketing does, and I simply connected the dots.

Inbound PR combines the best of two worlds (public relations and inbound marketing) and alleviates PR's biggest weakness (measurement) and inbound's biggest challenge (content).

What sets inbound PR apart from traditional PR is the ability to measure results.

PR has always been known for its inability to show the real ROI of its activities—you can't really tie a dollar value or a number of new customers to an article in a magazine. With inbound, quantifying efforts is possible; you know very well how your blog posts or online press releases perform with regards to views and shares. The same goes for your landing pages and the conversion rates you get there; you know how many people open your e-mails and click on the links in them. You can track the entire journey of those website visitors and know when they become customers. There are even ways to figure out how to bring people from press releases to your website and track them. What better way of proving the return on PR activities than tying each activity to a customer?

Having made this realization, I started experimenting with the concept. I began writing on my blog, LinkedIn, and Medium and people were responding positively. They were sharing and commenting that it makes sense. I was invited to write various guest posts for other blogs and publications. I was even invited to write a chapter for #FuturePRoof, which is a PR management book, a collection of the essays of over 30 global PR experts.

The moment it totally made sense that inbound PR was a thing was when my pitch to speak at INBOUND—the biggest inbound event in the world with more than 19,000 registered attendees in 2016—was accepted. I had spoken at quite a few other smaller events on the topic but when this talk finally happened, it was the ultimate success of inbound PR in practice. I used content to develop the concept; I used content to share it with the world through various PESO channels, including multiple events, which is a more of a traditional PR activity; and I used my HubSpot software portal to track everything. It's the ultimate application of my own inbound PR concept. And now you are reading its book.

In its very essence then, inbound PR is the combination of both practices—the inbound marketing methodology and traditional PR—and makes PR relevant again in our inbound world.

Benefits of the New Inbound PR Model

The main problem for brands today is the ability to stand out amid all the noise. The mass of information that's freely available and easily findable in the online space today pretty much has no end. Cutting through the information overload clutter is hard to do.

Drafting a press release, sending it to journalists via a mass e-mail, and expecting wide coverage can't help here. It's a myth of the past.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't be using press releases anymore or reaching out to journalists. It means that as a PR pro you need to adapt to the new world of content and online activity.

You need to focus less on the media and more on the publics, on the people that you want to reach—your stakeholders.

Then you need to use the tools, the channels, and the content formats that these people would actually like to find, read, watch, and then share.

This is the only way you can drive awareness and attract customers, the media, and other influencers. This way you can stand out and build lasting relationships with various publics.

If you are out there, you are searchable and findable; you are available and engageable.

Inbound PR gives you the whole arsenal of tools to do digital: blogs, social media, keywords and SEO, e-mail, landing pages, and so on.

By regularly writing and publishing on the various PESO channels, you use the power of your own content and own web presence to not just build but to own your reputation.

Creating your own news will drive inbound interest and traffic to your website. And if you have multiple content pieces that are remarkable, people will spend more time on your website wanting to learn more about you, downloading your e-books from your landing pages, and subscribing to your newsletter or social feeds. They will become genuinely interested in what you have to offer and the next time you send them an e-mail, they will actually open it, read it, and click on the link in it. If you do this right, they might even get in touch with you asking for your help. This not only applies to potential customers, but also to any type of media representatives—from newspaper journalists to influencers with their own blogs or YouTube channels. In adopting this approach, you become your own media company.

Inbound PR is not just about using the media, it's about you doing your own PR with your own content on your own channels. You no longer need an intermediary to build your reputation because you can use your website, blog, and social media platforms to tell your stories and engage with people. The motto here is: have them find you rather than you chase them.

Why PR Agencies Need to Adopt Inbound PR

When asked what the world of PR will look like in five years, Iwona Sarachman, PR director at AmRest, said: “PR should reinvent itself; we are still rooted in conventional ways of thinking. If we don't do it, we will die out like dinosaurs” (Sarachman, 2016).

That's a scary thought.

But a valid one, because PR agencies have been known for not stepping up and owning new tools and technologies. They also haven't yet figured out how to disrupt the traditional PR business model where measurement has always been a challenge (“you can't quantify PR activities as they're all qualitative”) and become data-driven agencies. PR pros today have unfortunately also been found to lack creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking.⁶

PR agencies (and agencies in general) always say that they don't have the time to invest in their own PR or marketing activities because they need to make their living out of advising and implementing such things for clients. This is a vicious circle, however.

Remember the questions from the Introduction? Let's go over them again:

1. Do you blog?
2. Do you use social media?
3. Do you have a landing page on your site?
4. How much time do you invest in doing PR for your own agency?

And again, you're probably asking yourself, “Why do I even need any of that? We have our clients, our team is busy, we can't invest time and money into something that won't bring us much result.”

Yup, sure. For now you do. What about the future, though?

Far too often I hear, “We just didn't have time to blog this month, there's just so much going on with our clients.” And I'd hear the same thing the next month and the next month.

Again, not having time for our own PR and marketing is one of the main challenges for PR agencies.

But this is the wrong way of thinking.

Why?

Because it's all about credibility. Why would I buy what you are trying to sell to me when I can't see you doing it successfully for yourself?

It's time to start practicing what you preach and become your own best client.

You need to become your own case study that you show to potential clients during pitches, and they'll be fascinated by your dedication to not only deliver this for other businesses but also do this for yourself.

It also builds trust. You want to create content for my business? If I don't see you creating content for your own business, then I don't believe you can create content for mine. It's that simple. Prospects and clients will trust you more because whatever you are offering them, you are using it for yourself, too, and following your own advice.

The best thing: if you want to try out new channels or experiment with some new tools or initiatives, do it for your own agency first to make sure it works before you do it for your client. You don't want to make major mistakes when you are working for clients, do you? Take the risk for your agency, not your client.

In addition, when you try things for yourself, you innovate. You develop new ideas and figure out new service packages or agency processes. In our fast-paced world you need to be constantly innovating to stay relevant and not die like a dinosaur. PR agencies are actually on that dangerous path, because according to the 2016 PRCA Digital PR and Communications Report, the main service that clients expect from them is still only media relations.⁷ With inbound PR, we've discussed how PR covers all the PESO channels, but when you are not doing this on behalf of your own agency, no client is going to believe that you can do more than just media relations for them.

Especially when you are just starting out with inbound PR, building a case study with the results for your own agency is faster and easier than waiting to achieve this for your first potential inbound PR client.

It's time to challenge your thinking and behavior and to start doing what you tell your clients to do. Practice what you preach. This will not only drive more credibility and trust in your capabilities but also improve your client relationships and most importantly generate new business.

Be your own best client so that you can serve your clients best.