Content Marketing

Why Does a PR Firm Offer Content Marketing Services?

For our clients, a content marketing strategy typically means the creation of various forms of content developed to be relevant to a company’s most valuable audiences, usually customers and stakeholders. Skillfully crafted blog posts, bylined articles, videos, images, and more can help the organization attract, engage, and inform those all-important audiences.

But content marketing isn’t an end in itself. Its goal is to build a relationship with prospects by answering their questions or solving problems, with few, if any, commercial messages. Good content should give more than it receives, because it works over the long term to build engagement and loyalty, or to spur inquiries about a business service or product.

Google’s recent algorithm updates have outdated dubious link-building schemes in favor of high-quality, original material that is shareable and engaging – exactly what a good PR campaign should deliver.

For companies new to content marketing, we sometimes start small, with a first step as simple as reusing PR placements in a direct-marketing campaign. An executive speech can be adapted into a blog post or series, and a bylined article can become a slideshare presentation, for example.

What to Expect from a Content-Marketing-Focused Agency

A comprehensive content marketing strategy is informed by both business goals and the needs of prospective customers. As a content-strategy focused PR agency, our process typically begins by helping clients think through their goals, resources, and internal capabilities. Then we study the people we want to reach, not just as customers or prospects, but as individuals with specific needs, problems, influences, and reactions to their environment. The final step of our content marketing services includes development of an ongoing content strategy and plan to create the most relevant and shareable material and maximize its use by customers and prospects.

At Crenshaw, we refer to PR, SEO, and Content Marketing at the “PB&J” of online marketing. Each has a different goal, but they work well together and each enhances the other, since the best content marketing programs are integrated into broader communications campaigns. With the help of a content marketing agency, editorial coverage generated through a PR campaign – which we call “earned media coverage” – as well as the “owned media” produced by a business can work together in a 1+1=3 fashion to enhance SEO, engage prospects and customers, and build credibility.

To find out more about our approach to integrating PR and content, contact us.