In mid-2014, PR Newswire made a significant investment in developing a new demand generation program. Designed to score leads and automatically nurture prospects based upon their activity, the centerpiece of the program was the company’s website Knowledge Center, which featured dozens of new pieces of content, all aligned with buyer personas and various stages in the buying cycle.

Once the new Knowledge Center went live, the next challenge was the promotion of the new content. Sarah Skerik designed a comprehensive content marketing plan incorporating public relations and social media marketing tactics to attract qualified audience and drive leads, including:

• Earning visibility and search rank for the content by developing high-value articles for third party sites, such as Business2Community.com and PRDaily.com that linked through to related content.
• Developing a downstream content distribution strategy for the content, integrating digital press releases, blog posts and social content to generate qualified traffic for the web site.
• Leveraging popular evergreen blog content, by analyzing top performing blog posts and identifying those related to new KnowledgeCenter content. Posts were refreshed and a link to new content was embedded in each. Posts were then re-promoted via social channels.
• Developing a comprehensive calendar of supporting blog posts, along with sponsored and organic social promotion, to insure consistent cadence and cohesive messaging.

The results

The results were immediate and impressive.   Web site traffic increased significantly:

• 66 % increase in organic visits (via search engines);
• 144% increase in mobile traffic;
• 55 % increase in return visits, indicating a clear increase in audience engagement.

The new traffic was also well qualified, with a 22% increase in the rate of new leads generated. More than 1,000 leads were generated in the first 30 days, and more than 5,000 new leads were tallied in the quarter.

The tactics 

Take a look under the hood at the strategies and tactics that underpinned this successful campaign, including editorial calendar development and how evergreen content and social media channels were utilized to fuel visibility, with this deck:

And if you want to design a similar approach for your brand, contact us today.