August 21, 2024
Effective Goal Setting in…
Effective goal setting in marketing is essential to the success...
PR is important for B2B companies as it persuades your audiences exactly why they should buy from you. Effective PR connects and resonates with your target audience and aims to convince them to act. It also communicates relevant information to the audience about the company, product or person.
It seeks to:
Let’s be clear, the two have very different approaches. But, regardless of the product or service, both are selling to people, as we are all consumers. However, each audience is unique, so it is essential you know your targets.
For example, it’s a well-known fact that both King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne fall under the same demographic, when looking at age, income bracket, gender etc. But clearly both have a very different lifestyle. The lesson here is don’t define your audience by their demographics, look at the problem you are solving with your product or service.
In B2B, purchase decisions are frequently made by a committee, are longer-term, considered and require larger investment. Whereas in B2C the majority of purchases are impulsive, short-term, made by an individual and of low(er) value.
So, remember that your PR strategy needs to be tailored to the needs of each audience.
PR aims to build trust and helps to create longer-term relationships with prospective clients. It is also foundational in building your brand and boosting your credibility and integrity.
Looking at the sales funnel in B2B, the vast majority of your prospects and customers are not currently ready to buy. In fact, only around 3% are. For those that are not yet ready to buy, it could be 3-5 years before they are, but you still need to reach out to those prospects. It’s the role of your PR and marketing strategy to make sure they buy from you, and not your competitors.
Another goal of marketing should be to continually refill the funnel, as some prospects will inevitably fall by the wayside.
The Financial Director (FD) is always going to be more interested (and invested) in immediate or imminent sales. The bank balance is their measure of success. But those sales have all been prospects at some stage, they have all gone through the longer process of Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. So if you don’t catch the attention of prospects, you’ll never get them to progress along the sales journey and they may not buy from you in the future.
As mentioned earlier, PR is all about persuasion. So your financial department need to be persuaded that marketing is a worthwhile investment and will grow your business long-term. Take a look at what your competitors are doing and which platforms they are using. Do they tailor their messages, or is everyone doing pretty much the same thing?
If everyone is doing pretty much the same thing (think financial products like life insurance) why not dare to be different? By making your marketing memorable, you stand the best chance of being noticed. It might alienate some of your current audience, it might bring you new customers. But if the risk is standing still, it is a risk worth taking.
One way you can make your B2B brand memorable is through PR.
Combine all these tactics together in a solid PR strategy and you’ve found a way to stand out from your competitors. (If you’d like assistance creating a PR strategy for your business, Allotts is here to help.)
Do the people that are ready to buy your product really want to know the same things as the people that don’t really know your company? You guessed it, most definitely not! Look at it this way: it’s head versus heart.
When you’re ready to buy, your final decision is mainly made by your head. What you’re really looking for in this moment is to avoid risk; the risk that the product won’t do what you need it to, that it is over-priced, or will break down, or it won’t arrive on time. So you look for the very practical and functional aspects of a product or service. Because you have already arrived at the decision of who you’re buying from.
Your prospects are looking for something else altogether. They are deciding between different suppliers, and want to get to know you. They care about whether your values align with theirs and as a result their hearts take over the decision making.
The role of marketing, PR and advertising to some extent here is to take a more emotional approach. They aim to build a picture of what it would be like to work with you, or to buy a product from you. Weighing up the alternatives sounds like a cliché but that is part of the customer journey or the pathway to purchase.
PR targets the 97% of the sales funnel that is not in the ‘ready to buy’ position. It builds your brand including your reputation, trust and value. Links can be built into your PR to help your brand be found online which adds a further layer of trust, particularly when your coverage is unpaid.
A good story is key. Some examples include:
If you can tell it with names and numbers, all the better, and if you don’t know where to start…contact Allott and Associates for advice or if you’re thinking about working with an agency, make the leap.
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