How Public Relations Helps Inbound Lead Generation?

Inbound lead generation has emerged as one of the most popular methods to boost a b2b business. In this method, you can directly focus on converting the interested leads instead of hovering for them across the market. The method being cost-effective assures you not only the best results but also maximum conversions. 

However, getting inbound leads isn’t easy. The process is complicated and requires hard work, even though the results are quick and efficient. It has its share of challenges where identifying the business stage and size becomes essential to achieve the desired results. This is where Public Relations can be a game-changer. It can influence the audience to take action, thus, improving lead generation.

What is PR?

The process of developing positive connections with organizations and individuals while creating brand awareness and maintaining a good reputation is known as PR or Public Relations.

Public Relations can benefit the sales process in a big way. It creates brand awareness in its own unique ways, getting people to talk about it and inquire about it while generating a buzz that gives businesses much-needed momentum, where prospects listen and believe. All this helps in closing a deal. So the ultimate goal of PR is to spread your message across your target audience and establish you as an industry leader.

PR is a useful tool for lead generation, which is best known for generating high-quality leads at low costs. But not everyone has the right knowledge to do it successfully. For a successful lead generation campaign, PR has to be integrated with it as one of its main channels.

While we look into how public relations help with inbound lead generation, let’s first start with the importance of inbound lead generation.

What is Inbound Lead Generation?

Inbound lead generation is an effective method of attracting convertible leads to your products and services. In this method, a business uses well-directed content to attract the customers, and the customers then approach the brand through these contents. The content is used as a tool for brand identification and creating a potential customer pool. 

The popularity of this method is ever-growing since companies can now know customer behavior better. And, when combined with Public Relations, they get to generate more leads, more sales conversions, and better profit margins. With a successful PR strategy in place, it’s a win-win for you and your prospects where it becomes a b2b weapon that businesses use to find maximum profit and success.

Why Do Inbound Leads Matter?

Here are some of the common reasons why inbound leads are so important and beneficial at the same time.

• Cost-effective – Having a sustainable inbound lead generation system helps you generate consistent leads without having to spend hefty amounts on expensive marketing campaigns. Well, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use other methods. It should be a mix and match of different techniques to achieve faster and better results.
• Shorter sales cycles – Sales cycles are shortened when your target audience already knows about the product and services you are offering. So your inbound leads are more likely to become your customers as they know it all and have shown interest in your offerings. You don’t have to make them aware of your products separately. They are educated customers.
• Less effort – When it comes to inbound sales, the process might be complex, but it only takes initial effort to reap the long-term benefits. There are no long and tiring sales cycles and no extensive lead management, which makes the entire process less cumbersome. 
• Increase your authority and brand awareness – All of the benefits listed thus far have to do with costs and sales, but this isn’t necessarily a company’s main marketing purpose. There are times when you wish to promote your brand, raise awareness about your business, or modify people’s perceptions of your items. Inbound marketing is the ideal solution for this because it not only helps you spread the word and raise awareness of your business, but it also helps you generate more leads and sales in the future. You may utilise social media, great blog articles, slideshows, infographics, videos, podcasts, PPC, and SEO to get your brand in front of hundreds of customers and educate them about your firm without them realising it. Take a look at what Hubspot has accomplished with inbound marketing when it comes to authority and perception. They put a lot of effort into educating people about it, and they’re now known as the “expert” on the subject. This, of course, has a good effect on their marketing tool sales.

How Does PR Help with Inbound Lead Generation?

Getting qualified leads is the aim of every business today, and public relations can help you achieve the same if you put in the time, effort, and energy in the right ways. Effective PR focuses on the buyers’ needs and skillfully conveys your message while maximizing your outreach. It has turned out to be the core tool of lead generation today. It drives the target audience’s interest in your offerings and influences them to take action. 

Your PR message should be curated to empower your audience and win their confidence so that they are convinced your product or service can solve their problem and you understand their challenges and needs. 

The right combination of PR and inbound marketing has the power to turn your B2B company into a lead generation machine.

Here are seven tried and tested public relations techniques that can help you generate more qualified leads.

1. Editorial Excellence : There is nothing better than having an excellent editorial outreach for maximum lead generation. If your brand or business has a constant appearance in editorials, magazines, TV, or radio, know that you have an excellent ground for attention. This attention is driven towards leads or prospects, hence creating brand awareness. Maximum editorial appearance means more website traffic and purchase calls from interested candidates, leading to more conversions and sales. Alongside better lead generation, your editorial outreach can single-handedly increase the conversion rates. When a prospect compares your brand with another brand and sees your company on a top magazine’s page, they will trust you more and prefers your brand. With an earned media presence comes brand awareness, credibility, and endorsements from third-party companies. 
2. Nurture the Earned Media Presence : When any company earns a good media hit with a famous outlet, they straightaway post this achievement on their website. But this is not all. You can get more out of it by taking the following steps:
   • When you share your achievements, share through popular social media channels. When you post about your accomplishment, ensure you link back to the outlet’s Facebook or Twitter account for maximum visibility. With this linking, you create awareness among the media outlet’s followers as well. As you share the news throughout social media, do not forget to reach out to your contacts personally. They, too, are great channels for news recycling and can spread the word.
   • Share that news across various editorials when you have something significant going on. Spread a word through magazines, sales materials, newsletters, and others.
   • Again, when you achieve something meaningful, you can display them creatively at trade shows and business conferences to add to your company’s reputation. This, too, showcases your products’ reach and how impactful you have been.  
3. Press Releases : Press releases are a great tool to generate leads directly from a target audience. When you issue a press release to declare the launch of a new product or service, don’t forget to give your website’s link in it so that it is easy for the consumers to make a purchase or know your offering in detail. Today, press releases are just not for media publicity but for prospects to take effective action. Compared to other modes of lead generation, press releases are more affordable, establish direct communication with potential prospects through different channels, and provide built-in analytics for maximum results. You can distribute your press releases through wired services found online, which helps attract more leads than usual. Once you launch your press release, search engine news sections, publications, and online editorials, pick them up, and link them back to your website, which improves your ranking and drives more traffic to your website. All this will lead to more queries and conversions from potential customers. Hence, better lead generation.  
4. Blogs : Posting blogs can make a huge difference in how your target audience sees you as a brand. Using the right keywords in your posts can increase your visibility online while delivering useful content. It is among the top public relations tactics for effective lead generation. Did you know businesses who regularly post blogs receive up to 67% more leads than those who don’t?
5. SEO : PR can improve inbound Lead Generation through SEO by:
   • Link building : In Google and other search engines, link building is still a significant ranking factor. Guest blogging is an excellent strategy to get PRs to help you generate backlinks.
   • Recognized Brand: Being included on big third-party sites can help you establish yourself as a trustworthy company in the SERPs, and having a well-known brand is becoming increasingly vital. Influencer marketing can assist you in accomplishing this.
   • Reputation: When people are trying to buy something on the internet, they want to know if they’re buying from a trustworthy source. They’ll frequently do a quick search to see if there are any reviews for that product or service. You can use editorial outreach to get your name in the press and establish yourself as a trustworthy source.
6. Regular Participation in Events : There are several ways to get involved in an event if you are interested. Firstly, your company or brand can act as a primary sponsor for the event. Being a primary sponsor attracts the maximum attention. If your company is popular among the event management services, your brand signage could appear throughout the event. You can also add your company logo and the website link to the event’s website. In this way, you get the chance to create maximum brand awareness at the live event. You can share materials or showcase your products and services live during the event. These actions will be highly beneficial in attracting potential leads and helping them connect with your brand. Another brilliant way to get involved in a business event is by letting an executive from your company be a chief speaker or guest at the event. It shows that you have a reputation in your field, which adds to the credibility and exposure of your brand. All of this results in increased lead generation.  You can also connect with potential prospects by attending a significant business or industry event. But in this case, you need to be sure that you can attract candidates by just randomly communicating with them.
7. Stay Connected with Your Contacts : Public relations have made making connections effortless, and in the world of PR, maintaining a solid and direct relationship with the customers is of the utmost importance. Consider leveraging your existing contacts as much as possible. Keep in touch with industry colleagues, media channels, brand partners, and others to generate leads. If you manage to team up with known people, you can promote their brand, and they can promote your brand mutually. You can team up to launch a business event or even pitch your ideas together. In this way, you make strong connections, where both can help each other by redirecting relevant leads. Again, this lets you maintain a good relationship with fellow industry mates who can be contacted during times of need.

Conclusion

There are many ways of lead generation, but public relations is the most widely used lead gen technique that assures faster results with better sales. It allows you to connect with prospects and customers directly without any filter. It helps you generate more leads interested in your product or service, eventually leading to successful conversions. It’s time you make it a regular part of your overall marketing strategy and reap its endless benefits.