Digital marketing and PR work hand in hand to support business success. While serving different purposes, both are valuable and when used together, they are a dynamic duo.

PR is a strategic way of managing a company’s public perception and building brand awareness. Through focused messaging, earned media allows an organisation to promote business news and create a distinct thought leadership voice, ensuring key audiences see, hear or read about a brand in the right way.

It can be hard to measure the effectiveness of earned PR – in fact it’s a never ending debate for the PR community – but it is often measured through factors such as sentiment analysis, the quality of publications in which coverage is secured, and the potential reach. While it is rarely designed to directly generate leads – not least because it is hard to track a lead through the journey and evidence it – earned media provides a halo effect, generating credibility and benefitting wider marketing efforts, including digital.

Digital marketing uses owned and paid online channels – such as social media, email, search, display adverts and websites – to also build awareness. Importantly, it is more targeted towards generating leads. Where it departs from PR is that it can drive measurable actions such as sales, registrations or downloads. It is therefore far easier to attribute results directly to marketing efforts.

In other words: digital marketing reaches audiences directly and amplifies performance through paid and owned channels, whereas PR aims to foster a more organic image through recognition, using the dependence of journalists and media outlets.

While previously these disciplines may have remained separate, in recent years they are increasingly being used together as part of the wider communications mix, with the three main roles for digital marketing being:

Targeted reach to specific audiences

Digital marketing campaigns use a number of precise tools to gather data-driven insights based on real audience behaviour and conversations, ensuring that campaigns reach the right audience in the right way.

Social listening has a big role to play in this. Platforms such as Brandwatch allow us to dive into online conversations that help us to understand what audiences are interested in and identify trends that matter, removing the guesswork. This insight can then be used to create campaign ideas, content angles, and headlines that cut through the noise and truly resonate with those we want to engage.

Consistent brand awareness

Digital marketing plays a vital role in building brand awareness by helping organisations reach the right audiences at scale, across multiple channels.

The online world is vast – and a hugely influential force in today’s world. In 2024, nearly all Generation Zs and Millennials (98% and 97%, respectively) in the UK used social media, followed by 92% of Generation Alpha and 86% of Baby Boomers. For many of us, it is one of our go-to sources of information.

Its omnipresence means that messages can be shared far and wide. By using social media and targeted advertising, brands can stay visible, consistent and relevant, reinforcing their identity over time.

Data-driven insights also allow marketers to refine messaging, measure impact and ensure brand’s stories cut through in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.

Re-engage audiences

Digital marketing is a powerful tool for re-engaging audiences by delivering timely, relevant messages. Using data and behavioural insights, organisations can create personalised content that refocuses attention, reinforces value, and encourages audiences to reconnect with a brand.

A well-known example of this is Spotify, which uses listening data and behavioural insights to re-engage users through its annual Spotify Wrapped campaign.

Throughout the year, Spotify collects data on users’ listening habits, and at the end of the year, it sends a personalised in-app experience and email summarising each user’s unique music journey. This reengages inactive users, boosts engagement, and ultimately improves return on investment.

Together, digital marketing and PR create a powerful communications ecosystem that builds credibility and drives measurable results. PR shapes reputation and trust, while digital marketing amplifies those messages and converts attention into action. When strategically aligned, using both makes for a highly-effective communication approach, and successfully supports business goals.

Case Study: The Longitude Prize on ALS

Investing in digital capabilities is a must in 2026 – and the results speak for themselves.

The Longitude Prize on ALS is a £7.5 million global challenge prize to incentivise researchers and innovators to use AI to identify the highest potential drug targets for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND).

Run by Challenge Works, part of Nesta, it is the third in the series of modern-day Longitude Prizes – international challenge prizes that incentivise and reward innovators to develop solutions to global challenges.

It launched in June 2025, and our role was to amplify the prize by creating a high-profile media moment. This was supported by a highly-targeted digital strategy, to raise awareness of the prize, drive traffic to the website, encourage sign-ups, and build visibility in key regions.

​Our approach:​

• Audience-first strategy: we used social listening and stakeholder insights to define 4x key segments and tailored messaging, to ensure our content resonated.​
• Multi-channel activation: we crafted LinkedIn paid campaigns, display ads in industry journals, and a six-month organic content plan.​
• Monitoring & optimisation: we used GA4 and GTM tracking with UTM links to monitor conversions and use this data to refine creatives and targeting approach for the next phase of the campaign.​ We didn’t just “set and forget.” This campaign involved ongoing analysis to understand what was working and what was not.

​Key results:

• 9M+ impressions across 99 countries. ​
• In the first month of the campaign, we doubled the number of page followers​.
• Over 82,000 clicks to the website from LinkedIn alone, with all sets of ads performing over the LinkedIn benchmark​s

Over 200 people registered interest in the prize from 25 countries, including teams from Harvard, Stanford, Oxbridge, various healthtech companies and leading AI companies.

Together, digital marketing and PR create a powerful communications ecosystem that builds credibility and drives measurable results. PR shapes reputation and trust, while digital marketing amplifies those messages and converts attention into action. When strategically aligned, using both makes for a highly-effective communication approach, and successfully supports business goals.