What clients expect from a PR agency today

Print and/or Online?

Something is changing. And very rapidly. Our clients, especially the recent additions, want to have another type of PR than was previously offered. Before when a client was told we’ll manage a placement in the Handelsblatt, the Wirtschaftswoche or the Welt, the client would have enthusiastically answered, “yes absolutely”. Today the reply would be, print or online.

Of course, it goes without saying that a client today would be pleased to be placed in the print edition of the Handelsblatt. In secret, the edition would actually probably receive pride of place in the company. But nowadays, it appears that even more clients are happy to receive an online clipping in the handelsblatt.com. At best with a backlink. If this is always a realistic wish, remains to be seen. For some clients, a backlink in a well-established specialised industry journal (SEO) would be worth it’s weight in gold.

Now this is the true new currency of the PR business:

It is no longer primarily about achieving awareness in significant target media publications. The customer ultimately wants to land at the top of Google rankings, in order to be easily found on the internet. And in turn, online clippings do help even on well-ranked websites. How well-ranked a website is can be quickly be determined, for example, over the domain authority.

Industrie-Contact has anticipated these changes and offer graded PR:

• Print
• Online
• Online with a strong focus on SEO optimization
• Online with focus on bloggers

For SEO optimization it is worth knowing which Google search algorithms are currently (and this changes constantly) most in use. When a domain has several backlinks originating from trustworthy sites, you can also improve your trustworthiness and therefore also increase your authority rankings. This is also known as inherent trust.

But this is certainly not only about backlinks. Also mentioning your own company in a story, for example in the handelsblatt.com without backlinks, is extremely worthwhile and gets accordingly ranked by search algorithms.

Bottom line:

Clients today benefit significantly when taking into consideration all of the three levels pertaining to modern PR.

And on the topic of Bloggers, we will cover next time …

More information

Google Algorithms: www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/algorithms.html

MOZ: Domain Authority