In recent years, holistic marketing continues to be a trending, and successful, approach to formulating an effective marketing strategy. A holistic marketing strategy means developing strategies that consider all steps in the customer journey and all possible marketing tactics to reach and engage your target audience through a variety of channels.
An important factor that keeps a holistic strategy well-rounded is an intentional B2B public relations (PR) plan. PR is an effective way to supplement your marketing efforts by leveraging the positive opinions of your brand from trusted third parties, such as trade publications and industry experts.
Having a PR strategy that spans these channels benefits your brand by getting your messaging out to new and existing customers and drives audience behavior. Good B2B PR goes beyond just driving brand awareness for your company—it can share messaging as to why your brand matters to your target audiences, driving new opportunities and influencing purchasing decisions.
So how do you develop an effective B2B PR strategy?
Step 1: Set & Understand Your Goals
A great PR campaign starts with the big picture. Define your goal: be a thought leader and utilize your team’s subject matter experts, introduce new products and innovations to create new opportunities and leads. Then work backwards from that goal to define what steps need to be taken to meet goals and objectives.
For example, you may decide one of your end-goals is to establish your business as a thought leader. Then determine a set of tactics that can get you there such as educating through webinars, creating whitepapers, securing speaking opportunities and participating in podcasts.
Always be sure to set goals that are measurable, realistic and align with your brand’s values.
Step 2: Determine Key Messaging
Next, decide what your company wants to say to your target audience. Then, make it impactful, memorable and educational. Great messaging is what will draw in your audience and engage them to make your PR strategy shine.
Impactful B2B messaging drives engagement and helps your brand stand out from competitors. Be sure to have clear calls-to-actions (CTAs), compelling insights and strong positioning that fits with your brand goals. These factors will maximize your brand’s voice and ensure effective messaging.
Also be sure to have consistent messaging throughout your entire holistic marketing strategy. By applying consistent messaging across your marketing channels, you can build up your brand awareness. When possible, always refer to your brand guidelines, brand story and message house when crafting compelling messaging to ensure consistent branding and messaging across all channels.
Step 3: Decide Your Target Channels & Key Media Contacts
Once again, setting goals is incredibly important to the success of your B2B PR campaign. Define your ideal channels to reach your audience and desired media outlets and/or writers who you’d ideally like to pick up your content.
When it comes to channels, a common approach to choosing your channels is the PESO model, which stands for paid, earned, shared and owned media. Some categories of media may be weighted more than others depending on your goals, but it is heavily recommended to incorporate a balance of these media types in order to reach your audience in various ways.
Of the types of channels, earned media is particularly important in building credibility around your brand. Paid and shared media may appeal to you because you can garner large reach and get your messaging in front of more of your audience, but earned media often has more of an influence on generating opportunities and purchasing decisions.
Strong media relations are critical to the success of your B2B PR campaign. Pursuing and maintaining positive relationships with news outlets, journalists and bloggers can help your business gain access to their platforms to promote your content.
Get started on building media relations by first creating a targeted media list identifying specific outlets and reporters that cover your industry, vertical, trade, demographic and/or region. Always keep your business goals in mind when creating this list.
This is where the experienced team at ColinKurtis comes in. With our expertise in establishing media relationships, we can lay the groundwork to promote your business to the most relevant media outlets in the food & beverage, nutraceutical and nutrition industries.
Step 4: Implement & Monitor Measurable KPIs
To best determine the success of your B2B PR strategy, identify key performance indicators (KPIs). Some examples of measurable KPIs include:
- Media appearances or pickups of your news
- Inclusion in industry interviews and subsequent articles
- Number of earned impressions
- Leads and new opportunities
- Website traffic
- Other engagement such as webinar attendees, video views, etc.
Continuously monitoring your KPIs will help you understand where you are winning, whether your efforts are paying off or if your plan needs adjustments. Your PR strategy doesn’t have to be set in stone; make adjustments as needed to optimize your company’s success.
Leverage 25+ Years of PR Experience
Developing a B2B PR campaign to fit into your holistic marketing plan can be a complex process, yet so rewarding when planned and executed correctly. The ColinKurtis Media Relations team is here to help.
We offer a range of services including connecting your business with key media outlets to build relationships, building tools to identify new opportunities and drive inclusion in feature stories, proactively creating and distributing press releases to keep your company in the headlines, organizing engaging events, monitoring and measuring your media coverage and results! With over 25 years of media relations experience, we’re confident we can build or enhance a successful B2B PR strategy for your company.
To get started, contact Mitch Robinson at Mitch@colinkurtis.com or call 815-965-6657 EXT. 1.
Blog post from:
Carrie Livingston
Vice President, Media Relations
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