audience. B2B PR also takes much longer to have an effect than consumer PR, as it is tightly linked to a business sales process, which can take months or even years to come to fruition. B2C campaigns often generate instant coverage from a press release or marketing campaign, whereas B2B strategies often involve a lot of behind-the-scenes work, whether prepping a major white paper, organising a panel discussion for a conference or gearing up for a new launch. Ultimately, successful B2B PR is about much more than media relations.
FOCUS ON SOLVING PROBLEMS AND BUILDING TRUST B2B PR boils down to one concise principle: Identify your target prospects’ fundamental challenges (or ‘pain points’), then create great content that shows how the reader can solve these problems. Often, this involves pulling together extensive research and commissioning new reports to highlight these challenges. For example, one of our clients specialises in
Edge computing that helps game companies lower lag and improve connectivity. We needed to show the widespread impact of poor connection speeds on gamers and how damaging this can be to the reputation of game studios and publishers. To do this, we commissioned research from 2,000 gamers and created an original report on how gamers perceive latency and lag. This unique research highlighted new problems and suggested ways to solve them. Ultimately, it’s no longer about ‘me’, ‘us’ or ‘we’, but
more about how you can help prospective clients solve their problems. Self-puffery and self-referencing are a big, fat no-no. Nobody cares about you. It’s all about what you can do to build trust and help people.
UNDERSTAND WHAT THE TRADE MEDIA WANTS The best way to get into the trade media is to share insight into something that readers aren’t aware of. This could be an existing opportunity you’re seeing or a new problem only you know how to solve. It could even be that you’re tapping into a trend building up a head of steam on social media. Once again, it’s all about building trust. High-value
content, such as an in-depth report, data or insight, also gives you the best chance of securing a backlink from a website Google trusts, which delivers serious SEO juice. If you have unique data and insight to share,
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that’s great, but you also need to extrapolate this and communicate to readers and your client’s stakeholders why this data and insight is important and how it impacts them.
CREATE GREAT CONTENT THAT INFORMS AND SOLVES PROBLEMS Great, engaging content lies at the heart of successful B2B PR campaigns. The best content comes from unique data and insight. Many companies in this space have SAAS (Software as a Service) platforms brimming with stats. Work with your agency to extract the stats and insights most likely to grab attention, then package them into different formats, such as blog posts, social posts, press releases, reports, videos and infographics. We’ve seen that investment in high-quality
‘evergreen’ content, such as a well-written and informative report, could drive prospects to your site for months. Great content is core to establishing industry thought leadership.
LESSEN YOUR RELIANCE ON THE MEDIA (SORRY, MCV/DEVELOP!) Suppose you base your relationship with a retained B2B PR agency on securing monthly media coverage from a tiny pool of outlets. In that case, it’ll likely end in bitter disappointment, as you simply won’t have the constant stream of news and stories to keep you in the headlines; plus, the pool of B2B games media is minuscule compared to how many consumer-focused press and influencers are out there. Don’t get me wrong, the media is critical, but you
need to develop what’s known as an ‘omnichannel’ strategy beyond the press. Research from McKinsey & Company says, “On average, a B2B customer will regularly use six different interaction channels throughout the decision journey”. This is why we’re seeing more and more clients building their ‘owned’ channels’ through events, newsletters, Linkedin and Podcasts. If you’re interested in the total mix, check out the PESO model by Gini Dietrich.
BE PREPARED TO INVEST Great content also requires excellent design, writing, video and audio production, all of which require proper investment. Also, if you don’t have a platform with data, then you need to create your own insight. Often, this comes from consumer surveys, but they cost money when you want to know the opinions of thousands of gamers across several countries. If you think you can do your design using AI tools like Canva, then great, but know that if it looks
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