Thinking about boosting brand awareness and increasing customer engagement and investing in B2B PR to do it? If so, it’s crucial you develop a B2B PR strategy at the start of the process as trying to do PR without one is a bit like driving a car and randomly trying to find your destination via a variety of routes. Before any business embarks on a PR campaign or even thinks about investing in PR they need a strategy to help them to achieve their goals.
Five steps to creating the perfect B2B PR strategy
Here are five steps to consider when putting your strategy together – you can either do this yourself, or ask a PR agency to help you:
- Customers and prospects
Who are your customers and prospects? Sounds like an obvious question but working out who you want to see your brand and how to reach them is the first step towards creating a successful PR strategy. Are you customers and prospects likely to always be in the same or might your target audiences change as your business evolves? It’s important to think about the future of the business and where it’s going! - Key messages
Do you know what you want to say to your customers – think about how you’d like your brand to be portrayed and what the business story is. - Key targets
Are your customers more likely to read about you through social feeds, or in the regional, national or trade press? It might be a combination of them all but identifying key touchpoints will help decipher the type of messages and content you need to share. - Industry landscape
What’s going on in your sector or in the wider business landscape that might have an impact on your customer and your business? This could have an impact on when your PR campaign should start. Also how do your competitors boost their brand awareness? Keeping an eye on the competition could help you identify how to position yourself differently to stand out from the crowd. - PR goals
What are your PR goals? Do you want to see your senior team positioned as thought-leaders on relevant industry topics or do you want to do PR to help drive recruitment? Perhaps it’s crucial that your business is regularly profiled in a key industry trade publication, or to drive traffic to your website. Think about what you want to get out of PR and the sort of stories or content you need to create to achieve your goals.
Sounds straightforward doesn’t it, but sometimes when you’re so close to the business it can be hard to decipher what your PR messages should be and how you’d like your brand to be perceived. If you’re thinking about B2B PR and would like help with your strategy then get in touch.
