Inbound PR

Chapter 4How to Do Inbound PR

The Inbound PR Methodology

As I was working on combining PR and inbound marketing, I thought there was a need for a visualization that explains the new inbound PR concept and how it relates to inbound marketing.

I decided to take the inbound marketing methodology and flip it into its inbound PR version (see Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 Inbound PR Methodology

The inbound PR methodology can be applied to any stakeholder group: customers, clients, media, suppliers, employees, and so on.

Because media relations is still such a big area of focus for PR (and often not done well) and because we've found at HubSpot that media articles are, at 47 percent¹, the number one source after word-of-mouth that influences consumer behavior we are going to use the inbound PR methodology for the media in this chapter. Under media I include not just traditional media people such as newspaper, TV, and radio journalists but also bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, and basically any influencer.

Applying the inbound PR methodology, what we want to do at the first stage—attract—is to bring the media to us. We do that by writing relevant content like blog posts, press releases, and social messages that are search engine optimized in order to be found. This is important because just as up to 80 percent of buyers make buying decisions without ever speaking to a sales rep, the ...