A Quick Guide to B2B Best Practices
Public Relations (PR) has evolved quickly the past few years as the balance of power has dramatically slipped from the hands of traditional media. The best journalists are leaving for corporate jobs. Investigative journalism is extremely rare and most technology news coverage go as deep as the press release for market fact. News cycles are frequently measured in minutes and hours, not days; news now competes with social media sites like Twitter.
No longer do the media hold all the power, though they are still important influencers. Influencers have now come to include anyone who has a well-respected blog, newsletter, conference, or consulting practice. In the tech space, the dominance of Forrester, Gartner, and IDC has been eroded by new influencers like Altimeter and Constellation.
Every market has an ecosystem of influencers. It is critically important to continually engage with influencers, especially when you don’t need help. Fortunately, it has never been easier to engage influencers. You don’t have to get someone to a meeting or on the phone to engage. A tweet, comment on a blog, DM, twitpic, and video are all ways to engage in new ways. It is very much a two-way street. Successful PR professionals will know how to help the media and influencers make a connection or write a story. They feed valuable, timely information to the right person with a long-term mutually beneficial relationship in mind.
Here are 5 critical PR moves your company can make to join the most influential conversations.
1. Find the company voice and create a mantra around it. Meaning, create a simple value proposition everyone in the company knows, breathes and sells. Don’t overwhelm us with the details of your software, the processes of removal, or the credentials of your technicians. Focus on the customers problem and guarantee it will be solved.
2. PR is a massive collaboration effort with the entire company! Once we have a succinct core message we can position more company team members to act as advocates. There is a huge opportunity for each team member to share with their personal social media networks as well as offer field experiences for the company’s channels. Work with your PR team to create a policy on how individuals at the company can communicate about company news. Encourage all to show enthusiasm and be proud of progresses at work.
3. It is important to keep coming back to PR goals overall. Most companies are fighting for awareness to stay top of mind. It is important we tie measurement to our specific goals. I look at web traffic, number of inbound links, ratio of new to repeat visitors, branded searches, fans, followers, tweets, retweets, comments to posts, likes... you name it. From my experience, the most important part is consistency of measurement. When you use the same metrics over many periods in a consistent way, you can see patterns and trends that lead to better insight into what's working and what isn't. The whole PR team needs to embrace the idea of continuous learning.
4. Like marketing to verticals, PR should organize influencers into tiers. For each tier, we design a communication program specific to that group–-frequency of communication, method (face-to-face, email, video conference, etc.), and messages. All influencers are not equal. It’s important to treat them differently. The top tier might get a monthly call from the CEO or your Head of PR and a face to face meeting. The next tier might get quarterly briefings via telepresence and a monthly email.
5. Campaigns must be amplified across all channels. A great idea can work across social, email and live channels. Don’t forget that infographic, video and interview. Reach out to influencers with exclusives and ways that personalize your campaign for their audience. Break down the silos in your marketing organization.