Your Integrated Agency Trifecta:

To own your brand online and dominate your digital marketing strategy, you need to do everything right — everywhere. Or, at least, that should be the goal.

Integrated communication is the best way to align your various marketing channels with your brand messaging. It ensures all of your activations are working in tandem to uplift each other to push the needle in a positive direction for your business goals. By bolstering your PR program with effective content marketing strategies, you can take charge of your brand name and reputation in the digital sphere. Masterful control of your owned channels can ensure consistent messaging between them (and consistency is a key component in building trust with your target audiences.)

The concept is simple: cohesion. But if the execution sounds complicated — that’s because it is. Whether you’re at the helm of a fast growing startup or overseeing a marquee brand with established digital properties, an integrated agency is your best bet. 

At Trust Relations, we either offer the right integrated marketing solutions to meet our clients’ needs, or we reach into our rolodex to connect you with someone who does. That way, your brand is always in good hands with the right tools at your disposal to meet your unique business needs.

Here, we’ll cover two of the must-have strategies to complement your PR program: search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. 

SEO: Your Key Messaging and Keywords Should be Integrated.

It’s 2023, and most brand leaders, board members and business executives know that SEO is a necessity for any company webpage. But SEO is an art, and it takes years of careful testing, observation and experience to master the nuances. The rules change constantly, and as search engine results pages (SERPs) become increasingly complex with innovations in image search, the death of cookies, and AI improvements, SEO is no longer an area of marketing where general marketing practitioners can “wing it.” 

SEP is so crucial because it is the function of search marketing that can make your brand more discoverable online. When used with the paid strategy of search engine marketing (SEM) it can help your brand outrank the competition on the SERP.

To be as effective as possible, SEO must be integrated with your marketing and PR objectives. SEO and SEM can target a highly specific audience (the people who are searching for specific terms related to your brand). Targeted ads give you the ability to supercharge your marketing efforts. But to execute that strategy, your SEO manager must have a deep understanding of who you’re trying to reach, and which key message points those potential customers need to be receiving. 

A website without strong SEO fundamentals is a missed opportunity, and an SEO program without a strong strategic messaging infrastructure is a wasted effort. The two must be integrated. The best PR agencies and integrated marketing agencies can help you get the best of both worlds to ensure your customers find you online. 

A solid messaging foundation, combined with an effective SEO campaign, can help you improve your brand reputation and rank on the first pages of various search engines — and that visibility can, in turn, increase your credibility among the journalists your PR team is pitching. This combined approach is the key to boosting your visibility and credibility in the digital space. 

That’s why it’s essential to work with a PR agency (like ours) that has experts on staff and other close contacts in the SEO space. With your SEO strategy defined and your team churning out results, your PR program can “double-dip” by infusing your future messaging documents, articles, press releases, and blog posts with target keywords to support your SEO campaign. The result is a cyclical, integrated strategy wherein your PR program defines your key brand messages, your SEO partner helps your website to rank for those messages, and your PR program doubles down to support consistent use of your keywords.

Social Media: It’s Time to Complete Your Integrated Marketing Trifecta.

Social media is more than just claiming your brand name on various social media platforms and posting your product updates. Your social strategy should be as should be approached with specific goals around your desired outcomes — and SEO and PR goals can and should be among them. Social media can be an asset to your SEO framework, by supporting your backlinking strategies, pushing new eyes to specific landing pages, and driving conversions. 

The best PR agencies will help you to build a cyclical and cohesive SEO framework, in alignment with your broader brand goals. That might look something like this: 

1. Your agency connects you with experts to craft social media posts that act as a conduit to “hook” new potential clients and draw them into your website.
2. When potential customers land on your desired webpage, your agency partners have already worked together to ensure your site is so user friendly and optimized that users stay on the site, further boosting SEO. They can also see the media coverage your PR team secured, boosting your credibility. 
3. Your agency employees niche search optimization strategies for specific platforms — such as search optimized YouTube video tactics or keyword-packed posts on X, to keep a steady influx of webpage conversions.
4. Using feedback on your website performance, social media performance, and PR messaging goals, your SEO partner fine-tunes your website to reduce your bounce rate and stay abreast of search engine updates over time.
5. Your online presence (and media coverage) demonstrates that your brand and its thought leaders are reputable and widely respected. As your brand visibility and credibility increase, your PR efforts might begin to see the benefits of a strong online reputation, findability and cohesive brand narrative. After all, most reporters will Google a new brand and do their due diligence before engaging with you for an interview.

In short — your current and target customers are already online. A well-thought-out and well executed social media marketing campaign, integrated deeply with your PR and SEO goals —and broader business objectives — can help you reach the right audiences.

As PR and marketing become increasingly integrated, it’s imperative that your owned media channels share a deep cohesion with your earned media objectives. In fact, 90% of professionals agree that PR and marketing are integrating at such a rapid pace that the two will eventually become intertwined —  and we’re among them. 

The crux of integrated marketing is that it adheres to your core identity and delivers that message with cohesion, trustworthiness and accuracy. If your PR partner can’t help you make the right industry connections with social media agency leaders and marketing agency experts to facilitate a synergistic SEO, PR and social media trifecta — you’re missing out on potential opportunities and potential customers. If you’re lacking in that area, we are here to help! Reach out to us any time for a consultation.