Adtech and Martech PR Should Borrow More from Content Marketing

Once upon a time, adtech and martech PR, like all PR, centered on earned media. PR agencies would connect clients with reporters, who would (I am led to believe) smoke a cigarette while chatting on the phone with the client or knock back a few martinis while getting to know them over lunch. Relationships formed, coverage abounded, and blogs and social channels were nowhere to be found. Earned media was the path to distributing content, growing awareness, and building brands. 

But in the face of a thin-staffed media and the emergence of other content channels, PR should borrow more from content marketing’s playbook. Earned media will never cease to be a useful PR channel. But adtech and martech PR agencies should see it as one channel among others, with blogs, newsletters, and social media taking equal part in communications strategies.

Here’s why adtech and martech PR cannot depend too much on earned media, why owned and shared media can increase PR’s value proposition, and how PR and content marketing strategies can complement each other to become stronger together than they are apart. 

Adtech and martech PR cannot depend on earned media

Every adtech and martech PR team has been there before: You meet with the client to develop content ideas, write a great byline, get client approval, and then wait for three months to see it published due to slow responses from reporters and delayed publication schedules. PR folks often understandably lament the frequency with which reporters ignore them. But with many of us having been reporters ourselves, we know that answering every PR person’s query is not a journalist’s job. Furthermore, journalists increasingly find themselves trying to run publications with a full editorial staff of two or three, making responding to every pitch or turning around bylines in a week not just impractical but counter-productive.

Yet PR agencies have not fully adjusted to account for the gutting of the media over the past few decades. To be sure, adtech and martech PR agencies do not exclusively seek to build their clients’ brands by placing bylines or earned coverage in AdExchanger and Ad Age. But I think it is fair to say that both agencies and tech firms center their PR approaches on earning the attention of editors who largely do not have time for them — and who will only have less and less time in the coming years. This should lead us PR practitioners to wonder whether we can achieve the same objectives we’ve traditionally leveraged earned media to meet via channels and strategies under our control.

The benefits of content marketing strategy for adtech and martech PR

So, you want to accomplish the objectives of PR — growing awareness, building audiences, generating leads, and moving prospects down the funnel by educating them about the problems your client solves as well as your client’s solutions. And you want to chase those goals via not only earned media but also channels where you can publish however frequently you desire. Enter content marketing, which aims to meet those same objectives by primarily leveraging owned and shared channels.

A basic content marketing strategy is familiar to PR professionals: Determine the client’s editorial mission and audience. Determine thematic categories of content the audience needs to know about and that are related to the client’s services. Identify relevant keywords in those content categories that have moderate search volume and that are reasonably easy to rank for. Build content around these categories and keywords, publish at a regular cadence, distribute via social media, drive blog readers to an email newsletter to capture leads, and measure progress month over month.

Here’s what I love about integrating this strategy into the PR playbook (especially for PR teams that already offer thought leadership content among their services): Not only do you control the cadence of your content deliverables, but you can also measure progress more easily and quantitatively than is often possible with traditional, earned media-centric PR. I’m all for the value of brand building beyond the simple metrics of performance channels. But I suspect many PR agencies developing thought leadership content for their clients would welcome the opportunity to prove they are moving the needle by driving traffic, improving keyword rankings, and most importantly, capturing leads. Quantitative progress is not the only progress worth pursuing, but it helps make the case for content’s value to B2B tech businesses. 

PR and content marketing are stronger together

I am by no means suggesting that adtech and martech PR agencies should give up on earned media. Absolutely, PR agencies should use their media savvy to build client relationships with journalists, analysts, and influencers. They should aim to secure coverage and get their clients published in media outlets, many of which command audiences much larger than even the most successful company blogs. Indeed, one powerful reported story may generate more leads and awareness than dozens of blog and LinkedIn posts.

But while continuing to invest in earned media strategy, adtech and martech PR should also borrow more from content marketing. Not only will doing so provide PR agencies with more control over their deliverables to clients, but also, it will empower them to justify their value via quantitative outcomes and optimize their approaches based on those quantifiable KPIs. 

Finally, for teams pursuing integrated content marketing and PR strategies, the workflows of the two converge and complement one another. For example, while developing a messaging playbook for clients, why wouldn’t you also research the keywords that could help them rank on search, whether the content delivering those messages ultimately lands in AdWeek or on the client’s blog? Both the PR and growth marketing strategies will be stronger for having been brainstormed together. 

Ultimately, for any company looking to leverage content to grow, the question is not whether content marketing or a conventional PR strategy is more effective. The question is how the company can leverage both to give itself the best chance to build an audience and capture leads across earned, owned, and shared channels.