The term PR is often used to represent ‘public relations’ – the process of establishing key relationships and managing the reputation of your construction brand with all organisation stakeholders. Public relations involves a vast range of communication strategies, ranging from corporate advertising and speaking events, through to media relations and programme planning.
However within the construction industry, we commonly use the term PR to represent ‘press relations’ – the activity of developing and maintaining good relationships with key industry publishing houses, to enhance brand awareness, demonstrate thought leadership, and to promote a particular product or service.
Therefore this post has been created to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘Press Relations’, and how it can be implemented into an overarching construction marketing strategy.
Why Press Relations?
We believe that this topic is particularly important due to the way in which the relationship between construction brands and key media outlets has changed over the years. Today the online world has meant that construction brands are able to publish content themselves and engage with consumers across a variety of online platforms. Therefore, construction brands have transformed into the content publishers. This means that media outlets are required to work harder to collaborate with brands, supporting them with their internal content marketing strategy by forming close-knit content partnerships.
So how can an effective PR strategy benefit your construction business? We’ve outlined the key reasons below, some of which you may not have considered:
- Increase your brand awareness
- Build a positive reputation within the industry
- Attract key prospects & influencers
- Increase online domain authority & search visibility
- Promote any construction marketing campaign
- Establish yourselves as the go-to expert & thought leaders
- Contribute to business objectives & lead conversions
The Relationship between PR and Content Marketing
We strongly recommend that in order for a PR strategy to be effective, it is led by an engaging, structured content calendar.
The graphic below demonstrates the importance of high-value content marketing for your business, helping you to identify the reasons as to why content is required for your business, as well as to brainstorm what type of content will best support your marketing goal.
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With this in mind, our version of the ‘push and pull’ strategy demonstrates how content is the ‘pull’ driver (a tactic for enticing customers towards your construction website) and promotional activity is the ‘push’ driver (how to push this content at prospects during different stages of the construction buying cycle).
You can see how PR is included as an effective ‘push’ tactic, supporting your existing content marketing in order to ensure your voice is heard in the right places, at the right time. For more information on this, our blog post discusses the ‘push and pull’ approach in a little more detail.
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If you’re interested in finding out more about how PR can be used as part of a larger, integrated construction marketing strategy, our new guide details exactly how to choose the right publication houses to work with and ways to successfully manage the process going forward.
You can download your free copy here.
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