Hey, PR manager, we must tell you something: the communications and marketing world has changed forever. Your B2B brand has a new audience and is talking to groups of people who understand business differently. Having broken the ice, we wanted to share our five tips to improve your B2B Public Relations.
It’s crucial, now more than ever, that brands adopt new approaches (and languages) when pitching press releases or news alerts to the market, regardless of if the desired channel to distribute such content is a media editor or a company’s social media site.
Our recommendations come after more than 16 years of experience working with media as reporters, editors, and later as PR and digital marketing consultants.
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Signalis’ Five Best Practices for B2B Public Relations
Be Humble and Avoid the Use of Excessive Adjectives for Your Brand and Products
Maybe in the past, it was good to brag about your company and your products, positioning yourself as your industry leader, but that is not necessary anymore. That part of the press releases gets deleted if an editor decides to publish your story.
Avoid adjectives when talking about your product, such as“powerful,” “great,” “superior.” Those are things that make editors say “meh.” It’s hyperbole, and people see through it.
Try a Different Approach
In the B2B world, we tend to be serious and formal. Storytelling, however, is one tactic that has started to make a career in B2B marketing. Even when you are talking to corporations, the decision-maker is still a person you need to engage with your content. This principle also applies to Editors.
But creating engaging content goes beyond writing the traditional corporate message. Add some humor to your communication or a human touch. For many marketing experts, talking funny is a powerful tactic in B2B marketing.
Become a Problem-Solver
In B2B marketing, we love to fill pages with technical features, forgetting the problems that we can solve with our technology.
Brands must produce content that addresses their customers’ pain points instead of putting so much effort into talking about technical features. Don’t forget that problem-solving is fundamental in today’s business environment.
Editors love problem-solving content, so if you can make a case where you clearly explain how their readers will benefit from the content you are pitching, you have better chances to be published.
Develop Your Editor (or Stakeholder) Personas
Nope, we didn’t write a typo. As you orient your sales efforts strategically toward specific customer segments, you must focus your PR efforts toward particular editors.
As the recognized speaker Iliyana Stareva suggests, at the heart of inbound PR (Signalis’ PR approach) is the stakeholder persona; editors are among your brand stakeholders. Identifying this person will allow you to understand the questions they have.
Sending your industrial press releases to indiscriminate lists of journalists in a database is like sending the same email marketing campaign to all your prospects regardless of the stage of the customer’s decision journey they are on.
In fact, in 2019, Moz surveyed 500 journalists to find that the worst pitching offense is when you send editors content that isn’t relevant to what they cover or write about.
How can you pitch strategically? Care to read what editors cover. Identify influencers (yes, editors are influencers) writing about your industry or the problems you solve, and focus on developing close and valuable relationships.
Of course, your PR agency or your communications team can do this for you but keep in mind that building trust relationships with media takes time.
Make Sure Your Agency and PR Team Adopt This Mindset
In marketing, all the projects and initiatives require buy-in both from your managers and your team. If the people working for you or your agency disagree with this approach, nothing will change, and you will have a hard time trying to implement this strategic PR approach for your news distribution programs.
So we’ve reached the end of our list. We hope you have enjoyed it and found it helpful.
Are we still very presumptuous in the way we speak about our business? Are we using the same tactics and a boring message? Are we working with our sales team to understand the problems our technology solves? Maybe you have some things to think about.
