Wherever you are in your business life cycle, you probably need more strategic public relations (PR). PR campaigns help businesses build your reputation, recruit talent and validate your brand to investors. For organizations looking for funding, showing that your brand is gaining traction will make investors more interested in having a conversation.
Public relations has seen a tremendous shift in recent years. Today, businesses are increasingly recognizing the value of highly targeted PR campaigns, which includes integrating PR with the business’ content and overall marketing campaign. Integration ensures brand messaging is consistent and helps you better establish thought leadership, build relationships and gain valuable coverage.
To properly execute this, you have to work with the right partner. On top of understanding how to implement this integration, your PR team also needs to understand that PR is instrumental in increasing enterprise value. This comes from a strategic focus on the big picture and how best to position your company for the future.
The one-size-fits-all approach of the past won’t move the needle anymore. PR now thrives on proper engagement, authenticity and transparency.
The Role of Authenticity and Partnership in PR and Marketing Strategy
With the saturation of ad-based outreach, audiences crave trustworthy sources. PR offers a credible, human approach to sharing stories. There’s always been an art of communal storytelling in PR where the team, client and reporters combine their life experiences and knowledge of the latest trends to create the narratives and discussions. But this art is more important than ever, as the customer journey has evolved alongside the digital experience, including how they consume media and stories.
Customers these days demand authenticity – it can make or break your brand’s reputation. Strong, people-centered content is the foundation of successful PR. People read these stories or consume these podcasts that discuss problems in their lives or something that interests them. It’s important to be able to keep that authentic enough that consumers––not just reporters––can engage in it.
As PR professionals, working and building relationships with reporters and journalists can help us put forward our clients’ most authentic selves and better address those problems that companies can directly solve. Down the road if your organization goes to sell or seeks funding, this strategy will pay off because investors and acquirers will look for potential and therefore want to see your brand’s expansion story. Two outcomes of a successful evolution are a strong brand image and loyal customer base, which you can’t achieve these days without authenticity.
Humanizing your brand involves an attack from two angles – one from a general marketing perspective and one from a press-focused perspective.
General marketing:
- Creating a genuine narrative that resonates with your audience and reflects your unique voice
- Ensuring honesty in your communications
- Consistently delivering on your promises
- Expressing empathy toward your customers’ needs
Press-focused:
- Tactfully building interest to press overtime
- Marketing your story to them, their interests and their readers’ interests
- Demonstrating your knowledge and relevance so you can transition from being an occasional source of information to being the go-to source of information
In order to accomplish all this, those running your PR campaign have to truly understand the industry and its nuances. Potential customers will lose interest if they feel the content doesn’t accurately represent the key issues affecting their world. This is why applying an account-based marketing (ABM) concept to PR is so important. In a world where buzzworthy AI and the numbers game are taking over, we’re often not stopping to realize they’re not even the most effective resources. Through personalized content executed by actual humans, ABM drives deeper engagement and more meaningful interactions.
Every industry has its own distinctions, including cybersecurity and fintech. For example in cybersecurity, there are unfortunately frequent opportunities to promptly respond to news stories about cyberattacks against large organizations. In fintech, putting out thought leadership pieces on privacy, fraud prevention, market trends like interest rates or policy changes, and technological advancements and AI can resonate with audiences.
Key Topics by Stakeholder
When it comes to targeting individual roles in your PR campaign––each with their own varied titles, expertise and backgrounds––they all have different interests for what they want to read. Tailoring your content and their opportunities to these specific audiences and the reporters covering their industries will ultimately deepen the impact of your efforts. Applying the right tone, timing and media approach is important too.
Treasury and Finance
- Cash management strategies and forecasting
- Geopolitical or domestic risks and their impact on financial operations
- ESG pressures and sustainable financing options
- Regulatory changes affecting tax and reporting
CISOs and CIOs
- Continued experience working in the digital realm (What’s different? What’s the digital risk? Where is the cyber world going moving forward?)
- Application and API security concerns
- Attack surface management strategies
- Integration of AI and automation
CEOs
- Importance of being a team leader in business operations
- Evolving corporate role and a CEO’s impact on business objectives
- Regulatory compliance and its effect on the overall business strategy
- Importance of cross-functional collaboration with other C-suite executives, customers and more
Investors
- Impact of cybersecurity on company valuations
- Emerging challenges and geopolitical tensions affecting investments
- Importance of ESG metrics in investment decisions
- Market trends and their implications for investments, highlighting where momentum and demand are
When attempting to attract new investors and new board members, speaking their language and building interest in your business really go a long way.
The Importance of Relationships in PR
Audiences are being bombarded with messages nonstop from many different sources, making their attention span shorter than it once was. The ability to nail the right formula of messaging and timing comes from strong relationships with outlets and journalists. Through them, you develop a deep understanding of media cycles and what topics are at the tops of minds depending on your audience.
Cultivating press relationships requires time. It’s so much more than simply managing a running list of contacts. There’s nothing strategic about pitching the same piece to every outlet in your little black book. You have to build an extensive network with options for your specific industry. A large network opens up opportunities for more positive and frequent media coverage. It also creates access to new and diverse audiences, and support from media allies during crisis situations.
Success Story: Helping Turn the Leader of a Company into a Leader of the Industry
Method Q has worked for years with the CEO of a cybersecurity company to build his professional brand. We’ve executed a PR campaign that has helped establish him as a thought leader in the industry, opening up new opportunities with Forbes, Fast Company and more.
Here’s a breakdown of our approach:
- Lead media training with the CEO, getting to know his goals and how he wants to be portrayed
- Develop his personal brand, identifying how to present him as the leader of not only the company, but the industry as a whole
- Tailor his media content to reflect his work at the cybersecurity company and also his personal interests and his decades of work with MDR and identity in cybersecurity
- Forge relationships with reporters on behalf of the CEO
- Prep the CEO for speaking engagements
- Write C-level think pieces on interests and topics of expertise once a month
- Choose the best media opportunities that both demonstrate the CEO’s thought leadership and reach his target audience
Through this strategic approach, we elevated his reach by 75 percent in just one week.
Choosing the Right PR Agency for Today’s Demands
In today’s crowded media landscape, your brand has to stand out. It can’t do so through traditional, generic or short-term PR tactics. Having a sustainable plan gives your business actual goals – what you want out of your campaign and how you can achieve it. Sustained PR efforts gradually build trust to create a stronger brand image.
The problem is many companies don’t know the best way to tackle this. That’s why it’s imperative you find a PR partner with the experience and connections to see ROI. A PR agency can help scale outreach to markets where you didn’t otherwise have touchpoints, especially in niche markets. By targeting specific industries, such as technology, healthcare or finance, tailored content can resonate more deeply with your intended audience. This approach not only increases website traffic, but also generates more qualified leads and press inquiries.
By tracking ROIs like website traffic, MQLs, press inquiries, media mentions and engagement rates, you can see the tangible impact of blog promotion PR services. Taking it one strategic step further, combining ROI tracking with full marketing and brand strategies, you can get as many eyes on your content as possible. So when choosing the right PR partner, make sure you pick one who does full-service marketing and can see what your company’s big picture is outside just what is written on the page. With a focus on your long-term goals, you can not only increase your business’ value in the present, but also make it more appealing to potential investors or acquirers in the future.
Integrated campaigns help with this, they just perform better. Many studies find that integration drives significantly more engagement, conversions and ultimately, an increase in revenue. But you have to work with a team with PR professionals who understand what you’re trying to project to the world. It all has to come together perfectly with the right approach.
Method Q provides clients with integrated marketing and PR campaigns so you can achieve optimal results. To learn more about our approach and how we can help your business, click here to set up a free consultation with one of our experts.