On Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Waddington. It was an inspiring dinner of intellectual curiosity and thought-proving stories and conversatios. I think we both learnt a lot from each other.

Of course, we spent most of the evening talking about the PR industry and our experiences over the years and I kind of got to pitch my concept of Inbound PR and how the inbound methodology is the perfect fit for PR.

There are two main reasons, I said, why inbound is the perfect fit for PR:

1. PR people are natural content creators and storytellers.
2. PR people suck at measurement.

If you are familiar with the inbound marketing methodology, you will see that content is at the centre of inbound (refer to this page to learn more about it). And content is something that PR people do better than anyone in the creative industry – marketers, advertisers or digital experts.

However, the single biggest challenge that PR pros have been facing since forever is measurement. Just google PR measurement and you’ll see tons of articles explaining how AVEs don’t work, we need a new set of tools, how PR hasn’t adjusted to the new era of digital and metrics etc. (See here, here and here for example.)

Inbound makes measurement possible. Inbound also doesn’t work without content.

But there’s even more.

In an effort to introduce you to this new Inbound PR model and convince you that the concept works, I’ve listed below the 17 reasons why Inbound PR makes so much sense and should be adopted.

17 Reasons why Inbound PR Makes Perfect Sense:

1. PR people are natural content creators. (Click to tweet)
2. PR people are lousy at measurement. (Click to tweet)
3. PR people know how to build relationships with publics. (Click to tweet)
4. PR people know how to engage their publics with the right content. (Click to tweet)
5. Inbound PR gets you to become your own media company. (Click to tweet)
6. The way we make decisions and buy things has fundamentally changed – we are more sophisticated, we do our research online, we check recommendations on social, we read and get information, we compare vendors and products, we barely speak to sales reps. We make decisions based on the content we read and actively come across. (Click to tweet)
7. Inbound makes you searchable and most importantly findable. (Click to tweet)
8. Inbound gives you the whole arsenal of tools to nail digital – blogs, social media, keywords and SEO, email, landing pages etc. (Click to tweet)
9. Inbound pulls people in – it’s about attracting them to you or your business with the right content, at the right time, on the right channel. (Click to tweet)
10. Customers will come to you, rather than you having to chase them or “push message” to them. (Click to tweet)
11. Same goes for the media – with inbound, you can position yourself as an expert and thought leader and the media will seek out your opinion and come to you, rather than you having to pitch all the time.  (Click to tweet) I call this Inbound Media Relations.
12. When you create the right content and put it on your own channels, bloggers, celebrities, YouTubers and other influencers will find you. If your content is fascinating, if it’s worth remarking, they will share it. (Click to tweet) The word about you will spread via their messages, which are actually endorsements of you, your content, your stories, your work, your business. There’s no better sales pitch than other people’s recommendations. 
13. As PR people understand content, they can easily use all organisational materials, adjust them and reuse them for inbound. Any info piece can so become an inbound content tool – turn your press releases into blog posts, infographics, videos, whitepapers, ebooks etc. and use your own channels to promote them and generate leads, rather than relying on the media as your intermediary to drive awareness for you. (Click to tweet)
14. Inbound is about educating people and helping them make decisions. (Click to tweet) If you offer them the right content and in the right amount at the right time, they will end up choosing you. 
15. PR people are uniquely suited to do this and run lead nurturing campaigns because they understand the links of content and are natural storytellers. (Click to tweet) They can so create a logical buyer’s journey that gently guides people with the right stories from awareness of the product/issue to consideration of potential solutions and eventually to making the decision of the right provider/vendor/product.
16. It’s one thing to create all that content, but it’s another to put it in front of the right publics – PR people know how to do this as they are relationship builders at heart, so content promotion and audience engagement falls naturally to them. (Click to tweet) And even if you have the best content in the world, without promotion it’s not going to get you much traction. Inbound gives you all the channels to promote your content – through blogs, emails, landing pages, social media etc.
17. And coming to the nitty gritty, inbound allows you to track all of those activities and how your content performs. You get the conversation rates on your landing pages, you know how many visitors from your website become leads in your database (contacts that you have their email address so that you can further engage with them) and you can also track how many of them turn into paying customers. Inbound PR enables you to measure the real ROI of your efforts. (Click to tweet)

How do you like this new concept of Inbound PR?

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