For B2B companies who want to be seen as thought leaders in their market space, B2B public relations is a great way to shape and sustain a brand’s image. It’s a proven marketing strategy that helps cultivate a positive reputation while increasing brand awareness. It also often helps achieve marketing goals more effectively and less expensively than other traditional marketing efforts.
If you’ve heard how vital PR can be to your B2B marketing goals but are unfamiliar with how or why it works so well, this post is for you.
B2B PR Fundamentals
Every business has objectives it wants to achieve. PR is a useful tool for:
- Increasing revenue
- Gaining traction in your niche
- Building name recognition for startups
- Increasing investment opportunities
While many people use the two terms interchangeably, PR is not the same as advertising. Advertising is paid media; public relations is earned media. Or, as the saying goes in marketing, “advertising’s what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for.”
A recent survey from market research firm FocusVision found the average B2B buyer looks at 13 pieces of content before making a purchase. Integrating your brand’s content marketing into its PR strategy is a terrific approach and one that gives your audience insight into your expertise. Perhaps most importantly, it helps build trust in your brand and encourages readers to share the content with others.
How Does B2B PR Affect Marketing?
As a creative endeavor, PR can make a marked difference in your B2B content marketing success. Research by the Content Marketing Institute shows more than 90 percent of the most successful B2B content marketers say their organizations value creativity and craft in content creation and production.
B2B customers focus on expertise. Their purchasing decisions are driven by logic and a need to be educated. Where traditional PR marketing strategies use strictly promotional material, integrating PR with content marketing adds valuable information for your B2B customers. An added plus — The content supports your SEO efforts, attracting high-quality leads, and converting them to buyers.
There are countless B2B PR examples out there to learn from. One company that does an excellent job in weaving PR and content together is Salesforce. The cloud-based software company regularly hosts webinars on its products and services. It also creates blog posts and articles offering insight into diverse topics like channel sales and the customer experience. Informational, entertaining, and educational, these techniques make for a great marketing and PR folder. One of our clients put PR to good use in their B2B content strategy by issuing monthly press releases that also tie into their email campaigns and thought leadership content each month.
B2B PR Takes Center Stage
It may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to PR, but content can help your brand deliver its industry expertise and knowledge to your audience. A consistent content strategy that integrates PR is a wonderful supplement to your other marketing and advertising efforts. It also helps increase your website’s ranking so more people can readily find your business.
Want to hear more about how integrating PR into your B2B content strategy can increase your brand value and drive positive marketing outcomes? Winger Marketing has more than 30 years of success in helping our B2B clients create effective integrated marketing and public relations programs and campaigns. Let us do the same for you.
