How to prepare for your digital media marketing outreach campaign

Research and preparation is key to creating an effective digital marketing outreach campaign and an effective campaign can give your brand great exposure, gain authoritative backlinks to your site to improve search engine rankings and drive traffic and sales to your website.

In this article we’ll take you through the fundamentals of creating a digital marketing outreach campaign, from research and preparation to the actual outreach process to help you maximise the coverage for your brand.

Research and understanding your audience

Before beginning your outreach process it is important to understand your audience; this includes existing customers, why your product or service appeals to them and how they search the internet for the things they consume.

Market research an important factor to any successful digital marketing campaign, and understanding your customer base is key to help you create relevant campaigns that meet their wants and needs.

Think like your customers and gather information on questions your customers are looking to answer, what information and advice are they searching for and what problems are they looking to solve. By doing this type of customer research you will find websites and publications that feature similar issues which you can then use in your outreach campaigns.

Prospecting for your outreach list

Prospecting is the art of finding websites, publications and articles that share your target audience. The places you will be primarily searching for are those websites and publications that have editorial content in your given niche, however pay close attention to the quality of the content and relevance of the website, as well as if they accept guest posts when building your outreach list.

Researching your competitors is a great way to see what types of websites and publications they are being featured on and what they are writing about; it can also give you information on who they are following in the industry. This is a great way of building up a list of potential and relevant websites quickly and can often give you a bunch of new websites to target.

Tip: Take note of the types of content that your competitors are being featured for. Whether it is image based, information lead, advice or tips, tailor your content to follow a similar format to maximise your potential coverage.

News and Google Alerts are also a sometimes forgotten resource when it comes to outreach campaigns. These resources are key to keeping up to date with your industry and gives you an insight into the current topics and trends being discussed, which in turn can help when creating your content.

In the same way that you are researching potential websites and publications to submit your content to, publishers may also be looking at your company for information on your products or services, so make sure that your own website content and blog are up to date and contain relevant information.

Starting your outreach

Once you have your content and potential website list it is time to start the outreach process. The most important thing to ensure is that you are contacting the right person within the website or publication, as this will ensure the best chance of a response.

It is also good practise to follow up on your emails within a few days as many editorial departments are very busy, and jogging their memory on a specific subject could lead to them using your content.

Emails should be clear, straight to the point and honest. Let the contact know who you are, what areas of expertise you have and why you feel that their audience would benefit from what you have to say. By offering information that is useful, interesting and insightful instead of being salesy, you will have a greater chance of getting published.

If you have a portfolio of published content already, you can also include links to it; this gives you credibility in the eyes of the contact too, and tailoring your content to a specific website or publication and providing unique content will also raise your chances of getting published.