It’s not a bad time to work at a B2B tech PR firm. Many industries spanning cleantech / climate tech, artificial intelligence and machine learning, SaaS, healthcare tech and biotech, adtech and marketing tech, cybersecurity and others are all flourishing.
Innovation is at its peak, until tomorrow and the week after that. This arc will only grow steeper, creating opportunities for B2B tech brands to thrive. This landscape means services – namely marketing and B2B tech PR – too will thrive.
So what can brands do to prepare to take advantage of an attractive media landscape next year? Here is a top 10 list for B2B tech PR execution in 2023:
- Identify and prioritize target audiences. Public relations and marketing efforts often start out so broad. Whether new or ongoing initiatives for a company, it’s best to simplify and execute a targeted approach. Do your best to determine target audiences you want your brand to reach. For example, one brand may want to target strategic partners, while another wants to reach customers, and a third seeks to engage the investor and financial community. Defining targets enables you to focus on what’s most impactful.
- Determine messaging and topics to speak to. Every brand should know its core messaging, including the value proposition of its technology and services. Corporate leaders should know important features of the technology inside-and-out, and feel comfortable conveying their impact and benefit to existing customers/clients. Once these themes and messages are established, an-house professional or B2B tech PR firm can incorporate into an effective communications strategy.
- Line up some announcements. Most brands should consider ways to make their own news an integral part of the above-stated corporate PR strategy. Examples of corporate happenings to leverage include hiring of new executives, corporate growth, strategic partnerships and customer acquisition, new products and technology breakthroughs, capital raises and more. Sharing these types of announcements with journalists – especially under embargo or as an exclusive – can help the brand achieve feature press coverage.
- Start paying attention with daily monitoring. It’s difficult to be on top of major news and customer trends if you’re not paying attention on a daily basis. First, assign someone at your company to make sure there are daily searches for your B2B tech brand on Google, Twitter and LinkedIn – every day. Then set up Google alerts or another notification to stay on top of trends that are very specific and relevant to your core business.
A strong B2B tech PR program starts with listening to identify opportunities to inform and engage journalists and their audiences, and then executing on that objective. - Leverage data. Data is integral to nearly every B2B technology brand. Whether related to customer and industry performance metrics, financial growth or technology milestones, compelling data should be prioritized in both content marketing (more on that in #8) and media relations. With necessary approval, those data points can be shared with the public and journalists to back up claims and demonstrate success and value proposition.
- Leverage case studies. Similar to data, case studies can be leveraged to showcase successful deployments of technology with customers and partners. Data will of course play an important role in sharing the story, but so too does the real-world example of your brand’s work in a commercial setting.
There is room for even bigger impact if your customer/partner is on-board for participating in the case study. Examples include co-authored whitepapers or blog posts, social content publishing, press releases with testimonials, and media campaigns where the customer/partner speaks with the media and gives a testimonial of the engagement. - Content marketing for organic search. To save you time, here is a long-winded blog post about why brands should care more about their digital footprint. One of the best ways to not only control but to optimize your digital footprint is to regularly publish quality content. Blog posts that are specific to your brand are ideal. Short videos that explain a nuanced topic or industry insight work as well. PR FOR SEO: Your ongoing media relations work will create editorial, third-party references to your corporate URL.
All of this benefits your organic search results! - Share your brand’s human side. Your brand is more than just your technology, it’s also your people. Turning your existing employees and colleagues into brand ambassadors is another way to grow your presence both online and in-person. Share anniversaries and hiring milestones on LinkedIn and other social channels, always tagging the appropriate member of your team. Solicit guest blog posts from your colleagues. Encourage philanthropic and charitable activity in your community, and shine a spotlight on those efforts via social media and your website.
- Set and measure goals. What good is a B2B tech PR program if you’re not setting clear goals and tracking efforts to get there? Media coverage and content publishing alone aren’t a goal, they’re the means for achieving specific objectives. These may include increasing website traffic and lead generation; securing exposure to financial and investor audiences; producing collateral material and touch points for the sales and business development team; or other end-games.
At the outset of starting a PR program, look back at what you were doing before. How much site traffic? How many inbound leads? What’s your current organic search position? Then, measure results six and twelve months later, if not sooner to determine your ROI. - Hire a B2B tech PR firm. This one is easy, just visit FischTankPR.com to learn more about our B2B tech PR firm experience and insights. We’re happy to share how our comprehensive media relations, content writing and social media approach achieves our client’s goals.
