IN THE KNOW
Using PR to Win New Business in the Recession Twist and Shout! By Phil Turtle, Managing Director, Turtle Consulting
What we both know that they’re actually saying is: ‘Look, we’re sort of managing at the moment. OK, so the order book’s down, margins are low and advertising is really expensive so we couldn’t afford it even if we wanted to.’ And of course they’re quite right - so why didn’t they just say so? Well to be fair, when your nose is hard
“We don’t need to advertise. We know all the people we need to communicate with.” As a management and marketing consultant, I guess I hear this from directors of companies on a weekly basis. Either that or “We can’t afford to advertise.” Nearly always, they’re directors of averagely performing companies. The funny thing is that they know, and they know that I know, they are talking rubbish!
to the grindstone, you don’t really have the time and energy to stop and spend time thinking laterally. And of course, believing your own defence statement gives you one less thing to worry about. And yet, the order book’s still very
thin and margins are tight and there are many active competitors. This may not be too bad when the economy’s reasonably buoyant. But when the pendulum swings the other way, as it has now, either you’re the supplier of choice in your marketplace (and you suffer a bit of margin erosion), or you’re much lower down the pecking order and your margins get decimated.
You don’t know everyone
Even though you and your sales people may know the most relevant decision makers in your customer base, and ‘some’ key prospects, they aren’t the only people who need to know about your company. And I’ll guarantee that most of them don’t know half of what your company does or is capable of. Even in existing long term customer
relationships, people move and retire and new people come in. If they don’t know your company, they’ll tend to favour familiar suppliers. And it doesn’t have to be your direct contact that changes. It only takes a customer’s MD to query a lack of competitive reviews. ‘Why aren’t we using so and so?’ he’ll ask, mentioning the name of a higher profile competitor. Of course he doesn’t know that even though they’re always splattered across the pages of the trade magazines, they can’t do left handed gimbal plates as well as you. But why should he - you’ve never tried to tell him and the competition obviously has. So all of a sudden, your long term relationship is no longer secure and you find yourself being asked to re-bid for work.
38 NETCOMMS europe Volume I, Issue 6 2011
www.netcommseurope.com It’s big companies, too
A classic example of a company being caught out by believing their own ‘we know everyone’ mantra was former international car and truck brake manufacturer Ferodo. They did indeed know many of the right people. Unfortunately, that didn’t help when several of their major customers decided, almost all at once, to relocate their R&D functions to Germany. Suddenly, the Ferodo people knew no-one. Even worse, the new decision makers didn’t know anything about Ferodo. I was brought in to implement very rapidly an aggressive advertising, PR, direct marketing and high level sales operation. In this case, the damage was successfully limited but it was an expensive exercise that could have been avoided by ongoing low key, low cost business-to-business promotion centred on PR.
Who needs to know you?
There are various groups of people or ‘audiences’ whom it is in your best interest to make aware of your company.
They vary from the ‘must know a lot about us’ specifiers and decision makers to the ‘must think we’re a decent company’ directors, who sign off the purchase requisition. And all of these people need to know why your company is good to work with.
We still can’t afford it!
Advertising is not the only way to gain awareness and it certainly would be a very expensive way to communicate with all of the people you need to reach. It certainly has its place in the marketing communications mix, but there is a more cost effective way for businesses to communicate with other businesses and that is PR (public or press relations).
Business to business PR
B2B PR, as it is sometimes known, is completely different to the sort of PR you hear about with celebrities, paparazzi and champagne. It’s even legal, decent and truthful! There’s a total culture difference and thankfully, editors of trade magazines are not out to sell copies based on sensationalism - they’re in the business of providing high quality,
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