The Secret to Successful PR & Marketing Integration

When it comes to your brand, consistency is vital—so why are your PR and Marketing efforts out of sync?

The days of working in silos are starting to wane, and more companies are learning to embrace a model of open collaboration between departments to garner greater success. Your PR and Marketing teams should be no exception.

Change can be scary, but there are baby steps you can take to ease the transition.

It’s essential to make sure that everyone is aware of the goals you’re trying to achieve. Knowing what the common thread is can allow for consistent messaging, amplify your reach, create better SEO and search rankings, and improve relationships across departments.

For instance, when your PR team is putting together pitches, have an SEO expert proof-read it for key search terms to further its digital reach. You can have your PR expert provide insights when your Marketing team is crafting landing pages to ensure consistent content that supports their news release.

As your teams get comfortable, you can encourage cross-department meetings to get a better insight into what the other does or what projects are in the works. These same tactics could be applied to post-conference debriefings or spark “lunch and learn” sessions.

In a recent Forbes article, Robbie Wright made a good point about cross-training among teams:

“By developing an integrated knowledge base among your employees, they can better explain the fully integrated range of services you offer to your clients.”

There are many benefits to your PR and Marketing teams collaborating. Just a few include:

Integrated campaigns: PR can support lead generation and paid campaigns with their messaging

Sharing information: Marketing can inform PR about ways to encourage customers to close the loop, and PR can also listen to customers to back up marketing data

Amplify your promotional efforts: Marketing can provide materials and online resources to increase reach and engagement for PR events

Streamline content development: Syncing editorial calendars will allow for better communication between teams. As your PR teams keep track of trends and topics, Marketing can work on collateral that sticks with the themes in blogs, case studies, and more.

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