The B2B Public Relations Playbook
The integration of earned, shared, owned as well as paid media, that focuses on all of the buyer’s needs while also satisfying the media is defined as B2B public relations. Even when all of these three needs have differing interests, a good PR professional can balance between them.
At its core, B2B public relations is all about building strong relationships. This is done by earning the trust of the target audience through valuable content from the company and industry experts, which is also used to demonstrate credibility with the audience. There are several ways that companies can achieve this, and all of these ways can work together when done correctly.
The first way is with earned media, where the audience learns about the company and its products or services through a third source, such as a story in a media outlet. Then, through the company’s website, or through blog posts or white papers – all of which are considered owned media – the company can demonstrate its industry expertise. These two outlets can then reference each other – such as citing the recent media placement in the company’s blog posts.
With paid adverts, also known as paid media, the company can get that content in front of an even bigger audience, and then finally, with the shared media, the company can draw in others to the brand through the content that’s shared on the profile. All of this means that press releases aren’t the be-all-end-all of public relations, especially B2B PR.
For companies to create that content, they have to create buyer personas for the products or services of the company. These will allow the company to better understand the target audience and develop a strategy that’s going to cater to the audience’s needs and interests. With it, it will also enable them to create personalized messaging that will highlight the parts of the product that will interest each target audience the most, so that the campaign will have a bigger impact.
B2B-focused companies should also always take the time to understand all of the weaknesses as well as strengths of the competitors in their industry. Aside from that, they should also analyze all of their marketing initiatives, media coverage, as well as target audience to get a better understanding of the field.
After that, the company can further establish itself as a thought leader as well as a subject matter expert in the industry, by providing statistics and data from internal sources or a data study provider. This way, the company will be able to generate even more media coverage as well as website leads and broaden its reach.
Once all of this is done, the company should also establish some key metrics and measurements to be able to track and see the performance of each PR tactic that has been employed, as well as improve any underperforming strategy.
