Proactive PR: Definition, Benefits and Examples

A proactive PR strategy allows you to identify and create stories that you want to share about your business.  When it comes to digital PR a proactive strategy is often called planned PR and as the name suggests it revolves around planning stories that allow your business to be the centre of attention in the current news cycle.

Benefits of Proactive PR

Being able to plan your public relations allows you to put your brand in front of your target audience with a targeted PR campaign.  Proactive PR allows you to communicate your message in a deliberate and planned manner.  Proactive PR can help raise brand awareness, improve your website’s search rankings, position you as a thought leader and improve your authority in the industry.

Brand Building

Proactive PR can build your brand as you can plan targeted PR campaigns to get media coverage by sending a press release to the right journalists.  By building your brand you foster relationships with your customers and journalists.

Improved search rankings

As you land more media coverage through your proactive pr campaigns you can expect to earn backlinks back to your website.  As you earn more backlinks. search engines like Google see this as a vote of confidence and will begin to rank your website higher on the search results pages. As more media opportunities come your way you can expect better rankings on the search engines, but it’s not just your website that can benefit from proactive PR, you can too as you can build your own authority.

Improved authority

Using proactive pr you can improve the authority of your business and its key stakeholders.  This can be achieved through expert commentary or thought leadership style PR. While the same can be achieved through reactive PR, it’s important to use both strategies when planning digital PR campaigns.

Examples of proactive PR campaigns

Any campaign that is planned, researched and outreach is an example of a proactive PR campaign.  When it comes to digital pr and proactive campaigns an example could be where a digital PR agency looks through ONS data, extracts the data that makes sense to look at and then uses that data to tell a story.

A proactive PR campaign could also be a thought leadership style PR campaign where an expert shares their expert knowledge with the media to secure coverage.

One of our clients works in the home improvement space and we know that every winter we can run proactive PR campaigns around keeping heat in the home, getting rid of mould and protecting your home against the elements.

Knowing that these topics are going to be in the news every winter it allows us to share our client’s expertise with the media to secure coverage.

Proactive PR VS Reactive PR

Proactive PR is a great way of securing coverage for your business, it allows you to plan for bigger campaigns and as a result has the potential for more links and coverage.  Proactive digital PR campaigns can be more expensive and there is a risk of getting no coverage or brand mentions.

Reactive PR on the other hand requires less planning, can be done quicker and cheaper and opens your business up to more opportunities.

A good digital PR Strategy should incorporate both proactive public relations and reactive PR to gain media coverage for your business.