In a perfect world, our business-to-business (B2B) clients would all have big-name customers who want to do joint press releases and have a steady flow of company news to share. Spoiler alert: This rarely happens.
All B2B PR professionals are bound to hit a few roadblocks on the path to success, and when you do it’s important to think creatively and strategically in order to find a solution that will help your client meet their business and communication objectives. After all, that’s what our clients hire us for.
Every client’s situation is unique, but some challenges are common across B2B verticals and industries. Below are three common challenges among B2B PR clients and examples of solutions that the Communiqué PR team has implemented in the past to overcome them.
1. No referenceable customers
Customer references are one of the most powerful marketing tools for B2B companies. Positive references show prospective customers how others have benefited from the service and help establish trust. Reporters are also much more open to covering company news and writing feature articles when they can interview a customer about their experience. However, many business customers are averse to serving as a customer reference, particularly in industries that involve sensitive information such as financial services, marketing analytics, and healthcare.
If your client is having trouble securing customer references, first offer to provide guidance to help them negotiate with the customer. As PR professionals, we are more adept at explaining the benefits of PR and can suggest a variety of PR activities that will give the customer more control over the messaging, such as bylined articles or case studies. If the customer is still not comfortable serving as a reference, start brainstorming other ways that you can prove the value of your client’s product or service. For example, offer reporters aggregated customer data to support current trends or ask a trusted industry analyst to provide a quote for a press release.
2. Lack of company news
The easiest way to keep your client in the news is to maintain a regular cadence of company announcements. However, many B2B companies do not have a steady flow of company updates that they can share publicly.
If your client does not have news to share on a regular basis, focus on newsjacking instead. Newsjacking is when you capitalize on a trending news topic to insert your client’s point of view into the conversation. To execute this strategy, monitor trending news stories and when a relevant topic appears, immediately reach out to journalists to offer your client’s expert opinion. To do this successfully, it is important to act quickly because the lifecycle of a news story can be very short. Be sure to set up and nail down key messaging beforehand so you and your team are prepared to speak with the media upon request.
3. Over-allocated reporters who cover too many beats
As newsrooms continue to shrink, the reporters who remain are stretched thin. Gone are the days when every technology topic has a dedicated reporter writing stories about it every day. Now there is often only one reporter covering everything from Amazon to the latest big-data startup. Reporters today are covering more beats than ever before, and they no longer have time to cover every product update or company announcement.
In order to catch reporters’ attention, find a creative angle that fits their beat or aligns with an industry trend. If the news is complex or falls into a niche, make it very clear why it’s important and how it impacts a broader audience. When available, provide other assets to support the story such as statistics, customer or analyst interviews, and images. Strive to make reporters’ jobs as easy as possible by providing as many elements of the story (including a compelling angle) as you can.
B2B PR can be challenging at times, but finding creative solutions to work around roadblocks is fun, intellectually stimulating, and incredibly rewarding when you succeed.