By aligning your content with media coverage, you can influence search behavior and create a funnel from media to search to your website, resulting in higher conversion rates.
We’ve found that creating these funnels using SEO and content marketing combined with a digital PR strategy produces the highest conversion rates and most qualified leads.
Are SEO and content marketing part of your marketing mix? Are you feeling like your conversion rates are low? Is your SEO program just not delivering business results or simple conversions?
Then, with these three ways of optimizing your funnel, you can create a PR and SEO funnel that will change the trajectory of your entire program’s success.
Article Summary:
- Integrated Digital PR and SEO: Combining digital PR with SEO ensures a consistent message that guides customers from media exposure to website engagement and conversion, improving conversion rates.
- Funnel Optimization Strategies: Learn three ways to boost your SEO through content: 1.) Brand reports to capture media attention and drive web traffic. 2.) New market category guides to dominate search rankings and establish market leadership. 3.) Feature articles to trigger branded searches and optimize homepage messaging to convert traffic.
- Success stories: In this article, we highlight some powerful examples, including HubSpot's annual marketing report and Drift's conversational marketing platform, to show how targeted content and strategic media coverage can significantly increase traffic and conversions. We also show how Sweetgreen strategically uses media stories to align with homepage updates that improve the brand's search funnel.
Before we dive into the case studies, it’s important to understand why and how digital PR and SEO work together.
Why Create a PR and SEO Funnel?
According to Marq’s Brand Consistency Report, 68% of companies say that consistency in their brand message contributed to a 10%-20% or greater increase in revenue.
Optimizing your content for digital PR creates a consistent message that guides your audience from the medium to search engines, to specific web pages, and ultimately to conversion.
Media is at the top of the funnel, using it to drive demand and interest in your idea.
For example, create industry trend reports that identify opportunities or big pain points for your audience. Use these reports to gain media coverage, because the media loves data.
Press coverage drives searches for keywords that your website owns. These keywords could be your company name, product brand name, a new concept, or any keyword that you dominate.
The keywords you own will generate a much higher click-through rate (CTR) than other keywords.
For branded keywords, your site can see a CTR of up to 60%. Users who search for these keywords are more likely to send an email to get documents or contact information.
Instead of telling you how to optimize your content for these funnels, let's look at some examples.
These are three ways to optimize your content that will change the way you do SEO.
1. Brand Reports for Data Sharing
Optimize the names of your reports and use them in your digital PR data campaigns to create funnels from your data.
With this approach, you create a funnel from media through search engines to website conversions by owning a “state of the industry” report or creating your own branded research.
Often times, listeners will read about a report in the media or on a blog, hear it mentioned on a podcast, and then search for it on Google or click on the report’s link.
HubSpot and Conductor produce two reports that grab your attention:
HubSpot's current state of marketing
HubSpot produces an annual “State of Marketing” report that garners a lot of links and brand mentions.
The report covers a wide range of marketing topics and trends that can impact marketers' decisions, ideally influencing everything from how to use AI to which social channels generate the best ROI.
According to Semrush, the report URL generated links from 7,400 referring domains. A Google search with the search operators “hubspot” and “state of marketing”-hubspot.com revealed numerous brand mentions within the report.
Mentioning the report by your brand name encourages your audience to search for it on Google and download it from your website – a simple but effective funnel.
The current state of SEO for conductors
Conductor, an enterprise SEO software, has published the “State of SEO” report, which surveyed over 400 digital marketing, SEO, and content marketing professionals to identify actionable insights.
Conductor’s reports receive brand mentions and direct links on entrepreneur.com, generating clicks and branded searches.
Brand research is one of my favorite funnels because you can name your reports and focus on specific personas or audience segments.
2. Guide to new categories
This is my favorite approach to integrated digital PR and SEO because it makes the competition irrelevant.
“Category design” is the strategy of creating and leading a unique new market category or strategy. This approach involves creating foundational training content to help your audience understand the value of your approach and take advantage of it.
The cornerstone content should rank in search engines with the category name and use digital PR to drive demand and interest in the category.
Drift is a very successful example of this strategy.
Conversational Marketing with Drift
Whenever I participate in a planning session to identify or design new categories, I use Drift's example of category design.
Drift is essentially a chatbot, but the product is marketed as a “conversational marketing” platform that tailors chat experiences on your website and qualifies leads based on the stage of a buyer's journey.
Drift created a category called “conversational marketing” and, as you can see from the main navigation, positioned the company as a platform of conversational marketing platforms.
Drift was founded in 2015 and began developing the “conversational marketing” category shortly thereafter. A few years after the company was founded, users began searching for the concept on Google.
Drift continues to get high traction on Google for the term, ranking highly in their “What is Conversational Marketing” guide.
The introduction of conversational marketing has been so successful that HubSpot has followed suit and created a beginner’s guide, ranking just below Drift.
If you want to create a new category or drive branded search for your company, create a Customer Story Funnel.
3. Feature Article Homepage
Featured articles can drive a spike in branded searches, and optimizing your homepage messaging can move your audience further down the funnel to take action on your website.
Sweetgreen, a fast-casual restaurant chain that serves salads, is a good example.
In early May, publications like The New York Times ran articles about Sweetgreen's plans to start serving steaks, with the argument being that the “steaks” are part of Sweetgreen's mission to “be carbon neutral by 2027,” as the meat industry is a major source of carbon emissions.
News that Sweetgreen had added steaks to its menu led Google Trends to show that searches for the brand's name spiked 36% around May 7th.
When a particular user searches for your brand name, they will most likely land on your homepage. Have you ever noticed a sudden increase in traffic from your homepage, and an increase in conversion rates? In many cases, this is a branded search.
Sweetgreen updated their homepage banner to feature steak as the first image, creating a consistent messaging funnel for their audience and either converting when they visit the site or improving their recall of their new steak options.
Ensuring featured articles match the messaging on your homepage creates a powerful funnel when your audience searches for your brand on search engines.
Start Optimization
Digital PR with SEO can transform your content marketing strategy, leading to increased visibility, increased traffic, and improved conversion rates.
Websites can have a significant impact on audience behavior by aligning their content with media coverage through branded reports, innovative category guides, and strategically placed feature articles.
The case studies provided highlight the potential of these strategies to capture attention and foster meaningful engagement and growth.
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