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We all know content plays a critical role in your PR and marketing strategies – forming the foundation for audience engagement and ensuring the right messages resonate with the right audiences. But what about when it comes to events? Your events calendar is most likely full of exhibitions, seminars, roadshows and conferences. Do you consider a content strategy to be vital here? Does it influence your tactics?

The answer to both questions should be yes.

These events are not isolated instances. They should be tied together by an overarching strategy that supports the marketing and PR goals of your business. In the same vein you need to ensure your content strategy does the same thing; joining all events together with a unified theme across the visual representation, presentations, collateral and event communications.

Whatever that may look like, by developing content in advance, you can use it to feed into activities, guiding sales teams on the ground, providing insights for spokespeople to deliver during presentations, and supplying valuable information to customers and prospects pre, during and post-event.

Strategy: setting the tone with theme and narrative

A good starting point is to review the objectives for the business and the marketing strategy for the year – and develop a theme aligned to these goals and the audiences you need to engage and influence. The theme then helps you develop your narrative, what you want to say and how you want to say it. In its simplest form, this all about storytelling; taking the audience on a journey, by capturing and keeping their attention with a valuable message that resonates.

The narrative will inform the tactical selection and determine what types of assets are needed and what they need to accomplish. Importantly, it’s not just about setting the scene at the event with the right messages, your narrative needs to stretch across the lifecycle of the event.

Relevance: the heart of your assets

The permutations of content are endless, from social tiles, infographics, blogs and emails, to eBooks, whitepapers, guides, top tips and video snippets. But what remains the same is the value they bring to your end audience; the content needs to be relevant, demonstrate that you understand their industry, their challenges and have the solutions to address those issues. More than that, your storytelling needs to engage readers and be less about selling to them and more about helping them solve their business problems. This in turn will build trust with your brand and keep it front of mind when an opportunity arises.

Tactics: delivering the content

Your content assets will vary from event to event, dependent on the aims of each. To illustrate an example, for the launch of a piece of propriety research, you could use a news release to generate industry coverage supported by interactive social tiles to create awareness across digital channels and use select statistics for a direct mail campaign to prospects, to tease the upcoming launch and drive registration to the upcoming event. The research report could then be exclusively launched at the seminar during speaker presentations and interest captured (a lead generation opportunity) to receive a full copy. Finally, post event you could stage a webinar based on the key findings and supported with a series of blogs to continue to recycle the asset.

If the aim of your event is to further amplify your messaging, increase awareness and win share of voice at a busy show, you could use your narrative to create hype based on what you’re doing on stand and use interactive pieces of content like live demos and video, supported with social promotion live tweeting and blog content. Post event, you could release an exclusive eBook based on solving an industry challenge that’s linked to the key concerns for prospects.

Related: Event Series – Turning an event into a prime media relations opportunity

Related: Event Series – Getting the most out of your social media strategy at events

Related: Event Series Webinar – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Follow-on: moving beyond the event

The great thing about the assets you create as part of your content strategy is that they can be used before, during and after the event. They can be repackaged and re-purposed, and used for related (or follow-on) marketing and social media campaigns. Whether that’s giving prospects access to a hero piece of content, such as an eBook or whitepaper, or inviting them to a webinar or podcast and carrying on with a blog programme, your event content strategy can help you achieve the results you’re after, reinforce your messaging and guide prospects through the sales funnel.

Susan Richter, Head of Content

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Read our eBook, ‘Making the Most of Industry Events’, and click here to download.

Events eBook for B2B Tech Marketers from Whiteoaks International

Events are an excellent way of reaching your customers and your prospects — that’s a given. But they also represent a prime opportunity to engage with journalists and play a crucial role in the media relations mix, enabling you to build relationships and generate positive coverage.

That’s not to say you need to move away from the traditional tactic of setting up interviews for key spokespeople — but there are a number of alternative creative approaches you can use to interact with the media, introduce them to your spokespeople and brief them to ensure your business is getting the right messages in the right publications read by the audiences you need to influence.

Make it compelling

Much like how a content strategy guides your narrative and approach to events, your media strategy should dictate what you do at an event. Engaging with the media can be a powerful tool for your business, but the key thing to remember is that you need a reason to get them there. Journalists are news driven and looking for strong opinions and compelling content they can use to shape the news agenda.

If you have major news with significant industry impact such as an M&A announcement, for example, then going down the route of setting up exclusive pre-briefings with top tier press is absolutely the way to go. Briefing key contacts in advance ensures the journalist is well prepared and they can develop their story to publish as the news is launched at the event. The coverage will quickly amplify the story and adds additional credibility to the announcement.

But you could take that even further and host a press conference live from the event to officially announce the acquisition, with an interactive media Q&A facilitated by a leading industry commentator, to provide real-time comment and reaction to generate immediate hype and coverage.

You could also look to broaden your horizons by hosting a roundtable event structured around a key industry topic or the release of a piece of research, bringing in not just your own spokespeople but independent influencers and customer advocates and using this event within the event to own the agenda. Providing media with access to independent speakers gives an additional hook to attend and a greater pool of opinion for the journalist to access. This type of event could easily be tagged to an existing forum to save costs, including venue hire and travel for spokespeople.

Related: Event Series – Content comes first: reviving the lost art of event storytelling

Related: Event Series Webinar Summary – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Make it creative

A company’s own flagship event can sometimes be ruled out from a media perspective, with clients concerned about mixing customers and prospects with media attendees. However, creating a dedicated press track gives the opportunity to give journalists access to the most compelling content, for example, keynotes, customers and future looking technology updates. Arranging an exclusive lunch with the CEO or a site visit to a nearby customer for a chance to see a real-world implementation in action adds a different element to the agenda.

Of course, if you’re not going to have strong news for every event, you need to find creative ways to get that engagement and ensure you’re getting the best mileage out of your PR budget. The question is, how?

Consider hosting a breakfast briefing, taking place before the event, close to the venue. The two main elements here are making it easy for journalists to attend and giving them something of value once they are there. This could include views on upcoming trends, strong opinions on the industry or commentary on the future of the business.

Then of course there’s hosting casual drinks on stand or inviting journalists around for a swing by.

The value from these sorts of engagements is two-fold; first, while you may not have news to share, you’re still getting your spokespeople in front of journalists for an informal chat about the show, the industry in general and upcoming trends. Second, the conversation goes both ways. Just as journalists are discovering more about your company and your take on things, even on an informal level, your spokespeople gain an understanding of the journalist’s view of the industry, the future and what topics they are currently writing about or interested in.

These types of meetings are likely not to yield immediate media coverage, but they can help shape future engagements and provide ideas for future content and thought leadership opportunities.

Related: Event Series – Getting the most out of your social media strategy at events

Related: Event Series Webinar Summary – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Make it count

The success of your event is a culmination of months of hard work, but it doesn’t end there. Regardless of the engagement, whether a formal interview, a meet and greet, casual drinks or a press conference, it’s important to follow up with journalists, thanking them for their time, checking if they have all the information need – and you’ll be investing in that relationship for the future.

Charlotte Causley, Account Director

Deliver Integrated Campaigns

Read our eBook, ‘Making the Most of Industry Events’, and click here to download.

Events eBook for B2B Tech Marketers from Whiteoaks International

Whether it’s your annual flagship event where you own the event agenda, a leading industry expo where you will be exhibiting alongside competitors, or you’re attending a small local seminar, planning your social media strategy from the start will help give you a greater chance for success.

Engage, engage, engage

The first guiding principle when developing your social media strategy for events is focusing on how to engage with your target audience and not just broadcasting what you’re doing. While the latter certainly does play a role, overall it’s about using content that will resonate with customers and prospects to drive engagement, much like you would in your content strategy or in the material that you pitch to the media.

The second guiding principle is understanding the digital lifetime value of the event — this will always be greater than the duration of the event itself. Consider the size of what’s being announced and who’s attending. You also need to look at which platforms you own, when they should be introduced to your content, and what features you can take advantage of.

Strategy, narrative and your audience

Your social strategy should be designed to help you meet key objectives; sign up to an event, drive footfall to a stand, generate interest, create hype, or a combination. The key is to define the objective upfront, create a narrative and key messages that need to be incorporated in all your efforts throughout the lifecycle of the event.

Knowing who you’re targeting plays a crucial role when considering your social media strategy, so take a look at your existing social media following and determine whether you’ve built up the right followers for your event. If not, it’s not a problem, just be prepared to put extra effort and spend behind your social media tactics potentially with a hyper-targeted paid social media campaign to reach your desired audience(s).

Different support layers, different objectives

Of course, there are different levels of social support depending on the objectives for the event. For an intimate roundtable of invited clients at your own offices discussing industry challenges, for example, a pre- and post-event campaign isn’t necessary. You could tweet selected anecdotes or quotes from the evening as an awareness building exercise with some supporting images to bring the conversation to life.

Whereas for a major exhibition or tradeshow you’d need a comprehensive strategy that covers before, during and after the event. Again, there are various levels of support that can be included here; from building momentum and interest in the event as part of a larger content market campaign, to live tweeting with key takeaways to engage with any of your target audience who aren’t in attendance, to promoting assets after the event that visitors to the stand (customers and prospects) would gain value from to amplify your message and continue the dialogue.

Related: Event Series – Content comes first: reviving the lost art of event storytelling

Related: Event Series Webinar Summary – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Use your best ambassadors

There are always opportunities beyond your company’s own social media channels. For example, do you have any employees attending the event whose social media channels you can tap into? If you do, it’s a good idea to clearly brief your employees with how they can contribute to the social story, include key messages, event hashtags and a few gentle social media reminders on best practices. Do you have any customers or guest speakers with a good social media following that you can leverage as part of your PR, digital and social media strategy to further amplify your message?

So what does a typical event social support programme look like?

Before the event

Formulate the objectives, narrative and key messages in collaboration in your PR and marketing team
Drive awareness and build a buzz about the event through teasers about the speakers and content
Start to drip-feed your key messages for the event with the creation of an event landing page, video snippets or blogs which can be actively promoted across social channels
Create a suite of branded and interactive social media tiles will help to promote pre-event content and raise awareness to drive sign-ups.
Brief your team and external speakers, providing social media guidelines to help them amplify the event content

During the event

Engage with people attending the event by using the show hashtag
Blend your offline activities with online to create an integrated approach, run Twitter polls alongside speaker sessions for on-demand engagement
Share the event with those who couldn’t make it by telling them what’s happening on the stand, key announcements and presentation slots
If you’re at an industry event, include key insight from other presentations and what’s trending at the show balanced with your key messages.
Create content live from the show (e.g. demos in action or interview with key spokesperson) to generate interest from prospects and drive footfall
If you’ve got a big announcement planned, look to highlight it with live social media coverage or a video Q&A.

After the event

Promote content from the show and after thoughts for follow-up event activity. For example, uploading a presentation to SlideShare is great for your website SEO
Create content assets linked to the interests of the attending audience to use for post-event promotion and continue the dialogue
Report back to the business on key social metrics aligned to business objectives and new lead opportunities that have derived from social media

Related: Event Series – Turning an event into a prime media relations opportunity

Related: Event Series Webinar Summary – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Final thoughts

When it comes to events, large or small, never underestimate how many minutes there are in a day. The majority of your event’s social media success will be down to how much planning you’ve done upfront for each of the three stages I’ve outlined, but also be prepared for the unexpected and be ready to jump on that next social opportunity as it arises

Emma Walker, Digital Account Lead

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Read our eBook, ‘Making the Most of Industry Events’, and click here to download.

Events eBook for B2B Tech Marketers from Whiteoaks International

We recently released the findings of a landmark piece of independent research which investigated the use of Account-Based Marketing and Account-Based Sales approaches. Entitled, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’, in the first of this two-part blog series, we revealed:

The close alignment that exists between Sales professionals and Marketers;
Which communications options they each think are most effective;
How CRM systems are being used;
Whether those people we researched are working to an account-based framework, and;
The ways that both teams measure the effectiveness of marketing on lead generation.

Today we can share the concluding part of our research project and some further insights provided by the 200 senior B2B Marketing and Sales decision-makers.

Setting off on the right foot

As we reach the time of year where budgets start to be reviewed, refined and allocated and annual business plans and implementation strategies are signed off, it is the perfect time to ensure you have clearly articulated the goals and expectations you have for your marketing strategy. With three-quarters (76%) of the Marketers we researched working within an ABM foundation, it would be recommended that your next annual marketing strategy incorporates at least the beginnings of the journey to this approach.

Perhaps surprisingly for me, only 45% of those surveyed said that a persona-based approach to Marketing or Sales is a goal. For us, this is the ordinarily the foundation of an effective marketing strategy. By truly understanding your personas, you are able to visualise and put yourself in the shoes of your buyers and clients. Find out more in my recent article.

Our findings also suggested that while close rates and times mattered as a goal of their overall strategy to 57% of the group, both Marketers and Sales leaders were most focused on the slightly more qualitative measures of improving the quality and applicability of marketing plans to the overall business plan (71%) —rather than just quantity of leads. Understanding more about prospects also featured highly as a goal. This further underlines the importance of a sales and marketing strategy which both builds and develops a brand and also goes after leads and sales with short-term tactics.

Achieving impact from an ABM or ABS structure

With a strategy defined, the attention turns to how to achieve impact in day-to-day execution. While 76% of Marketers and 85% of Sales leaders said they are already working to an ABM or ABS structure respectively, dissatisfaction was higher than expected in terms of the impact it was having on their business. In fact, 60% of Marketing decision-makers wanted to realise a bigger impact, as did 79% of Sales professionals.

So, what’s behind the numbers? The top three challenges preventing both groups from seeing true performance improvements were:

A lack of knowledge (46%)
Less budget or time than ideal (45%), and;
Lacking the required technical infrastructure (41%).

To take the final bullet point a little further, almost half of Marketing professionals said that they didn’t have the right technology in place. And from our experience, this likely reflects the difficulties which arise in evaluating the number of tools available and needed for an integrated Martech stack.

Surprisingly, only 31% of the combined audience said that they didn’t feel they had enough support from senior management, suggesting to me that these decision-makers have effectively educated upwards as to the need for an account-based approach.

There’s little doubt that implementing and working to an account-based framework can be hard work and may feel initially unrewarding – but just like improving a Martech stack, it will be rewarding and helpful in the long term.

Suzanne Griffiths, Managing Director, Whiteoaks International

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Download our free report, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’ today, by filling in our contact form below. In the report you’ll discover:

How senior Sales and Marketing decision-makers are currently embedding ABM and ABS into their business;
Which marketing communications both leaders say supports the business most effectively;
The best ways for marketing tactics to demonstrate their direct impact on sales; and
An in-depth look at the goals and challenges that Marketers and Sales professionals have when implementing an account-based structure.

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Content is still king. We keep hearing it, we keep saying it. It forms the basis for almost all PR and marketing campaigns and is one of the most important ingredients to set a brand up for success in terms of building awareness, saliency and generating leads. But there’s a big caveat. To get your business messages across, impress your customers and prospects, and reach your communications objectives, it needs to be the right content.

Getting the basics right isn’t enough

Of course, it needs to start with good content — well written or spoken, cogent, relevant and smart — but that’s no longer enough. With so much content out there, being well scripted isn’t much of a differentiator. Yes, it’s important, and yes there’s a certain skill in doing it, but creating engaging content encapsulates so much more.

In the context of planning for a campaign, the variety of content must reach the right audiences with the right messages through the right channels. It’s about understanding their pain points, the industry they operate in and what they’re trying to achieve as a business.

Not all of this insight comes from desk research; in fact, your communication strategy is doomed to fail if this is your sole method. Instead, a critical part of campaign planning comes from talking to the people who know the audiences best. And that’s the Sales and Marketing professionals.

Different sides, same coin

The rivalry and discontent between the two teams has been well documented in the past — with much of it anecdotal. After all, it’s a better story to write about two groups at loggerheads. Yet, our own independent research into the collaboration and understanding between Sales and Marketing leaders, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’, yielded some contradictory results; 87% of the Sales and Marketing decision-makers we spoke to said they believed they were aligned with their counterparts. Catch the main findings from the research here and download the full report in the link above.

A Perfect Match: ABM & ABS – research by Whiteoaks International from Whiteoaks International

And that’s critical when putting together your content plan as part of an account-based approach to Sales and/or Marketing. Marketing adds value when it comes to the company messaging and the wider industry outlook; Sales on the other hand has the deep insights into customers and prospects in terms of their challenges and requirements. Both outlooks influence your content strategy and help you understand the audiences and personas that are being targeted in the overall campaign.

Down to tactical business

From strategy to tactics, the right content and understanding of personas helps shape the assets you’re creating; articles for thought leadership to educate and demonstrate knowledge; customer success stories for reinforcing proof points; blogs and vlogs to show both thought leadership and personality.

It also helps in determining which assets are better suited to the different stages (and aims) of the campaign journey. Long copy, like whitepapers and eBooks, is great for education and awareness, while shorter copy, such as blogs and social media posts, is ideal for reinforcement and attracting interest.

Don’t settle

Ultimately, having the right content (in terms of messaging, type and length) in place means you can start off your campaign on the right footing. And it’s worth remembering that good (ahem, really great) content doesn’t have to have a short lifecycle. It can be repurposed into other assets, used in different campaigns and can seed complementary social media plans. So while good content is… good, having the right content is even better.

In our recent webinar, ‘Partnering with Sales: A Marketer’s Guide’, I discuss much of this guidance as part of the broader content for marketers designing integrated marketing plans. You can watch the webinar anytime to suit you, here. I hope you find it useful.

Susan Richter, Head of Marketing Communications

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

As we stop to catch our breath and get ready to look back at 2018 and the developments in our industry, one debate that shows little sign of slowing is the ongoing challenge between PR and SEO and how the two disciplines should work together.

The reality is, is that there is no easy answer. However, it’s vital that we consider how to make the most of the synergies and benefits in coordinating PR and SEO as part of integrated marketing campaigns. Likewise, I think there is a need to provide a better understanding to our clients on what is achievable in helping brands be more visible and salient online, and how PR can truly support and deliver against this objective.

At a PR Moment conference in the autumn, a debate on this subject found some common ground but there are some key challenges that PR agencies must not be afraid to tackle head on and be prepared to have bold conversations about with their clients.

As part of the discussions, one of the clear advantages that PRs have over their SEO counterparts is that SEO professionals naturally think about how to please search engines, while PR and Marketing practitioners think about creating content that is interesting and exciting to audiences through multiple channels, including the likes of Google. Top tips articles, for example, is short, punchy content that can be used as a way to promote and drive traffic to your website, relevant for both prospective and existing clients. Relevant and updated content is still king, so the advantage for PRs who know how to tell a good story means that SEO will work better.

It’s essential that SEO and PR experts work closely and not in a combative manner. SEO is a way of providing an online legacy to every campaign – continually building upon and increasing campaign ROI at the beginning and over time. And to thrive, working with a content calendar where PR and SEO comes together can be invaluable.

Alongside this, there was one clear takeaway when trying to bring PR and SEO together to benefit working with the media. For example, clients may ask for back links in their content, but we have to remember that there is a clear differentiation between earned and paid media and we cannot treat both the same.

However, there are some ways to encourage journalists and media editors to include links in coverage, but before these are outlined it’s important to point out what is unacceptable. Do not waste your time asking a journalist if they will include a link without good a reason. It’s up there with calling a journalist to ask if they have ‘received your press release’.

So, how do you persuade a journalist to provide a link? Follow these simple tips and it will increase your chances greatly:

Provide links to a worthy report – for example, more information than a journalist can include in an article
Create a useful tool for clients or customers and tell your media contact about it – e.g. a budget calculator – something that people will want to use experiment with, etc.
Select terminology carefully – use words like source/credit to data to ensure your content has the gravitas it deserves.

There’s no doubt the debate about how to get the most from PR and SEO investment will continue for some time yet. However, the key thing to remember is that, done properly, integrated marketing is more important than ever. Together PR and SEO are more than the sum of their parts.

Earlier this year we set out to understand whether senior Sales and Marketing decision-makers working for B2B tech brands are truly operating within an Account-Based Sales (ABS) or Account-Based Marketing (ABM) framework. And if so, how it works best for them, what goals they have and the challenges they face. In our view, either structure can be summarised as a business-to-business (B2B) strategy that aligns both marketing, and/or sales resources and strategies, to categorise, build relationships and target companies or accounts into prioritised groups rather than on an individual leads basis.

The driver behind this research

So, why did we want to understand this area? ABM and ABS have become established buzzwords in the industry and within in the B2B technology space. We increasingly see the benefits of integrated, inter-dependent marketing and sales partnerships, co-ordinated with the same objectives from the top down. When that is in place, marketing communications professionals and their agencies can deliver true value for their brands. And, on a tactical level, we also wanted to know how companies’ marketing output influenced lead generation and which forms of marketing communications made the biggest difference. The result is what we believe to be the first study in the UK, examining both ABM and ABS, rather than just one or the other.

Critical to our intention was to understand the views from both Marketing and Sales leaders. To us, they are not functions to be viewed in isolation.

Highlights

This view is backed up by our research, with 87% of Sales and Marketing professionals stating that their department is very closely or closely aligned with their colleagues. This alignment directly challenges the myth that often rears its head: that Sales and Marketing teams are at odds, with different priorities, objectives and methods.

Our data shows that use of a CRM system is currently at 59% uptake for both prospects and clients and 88% for one or the other audience. This ability to capture, record and action information about both prospective and current client data, ideally in the cloud and complemented by a Marketing Automation Platform, goes much of the way to explaining why these two departments and their leaders are working in an ever more integrated way.

Yet, the CRM platform is only part of the story. The success of high-performing B2B tech brands operating in an account-based model to execute their sales strategy has, over the last few years, prompted some of those high-performing businesses to convert their marketing operations to run in the same way. In fact, 81% of the 202 professionals we surveyed said that they work to either an ABM or ABS operating model.

Our study shows that at a communications delivery level, social media and email marketing are viewed as the top two most effective ways to facilitate interactions with clients and prospects by both groups of professionals. Media relations, case studies and testimonials held stronger value for Marketers, demonstrating that more work is required by PR and communications experts in persuading Sales colleagues to understand their benefits in the overall marketing mix.

What really stands out from our research is that 89% of the 202 business professionals agreed that their company’s marketing efforts contribute to sales and lead generation. The value added was measured most widely by inbound sales enquiries to the website, the number of enquiries from social media channels and, interestingly, leads captured at events, either the company’s own or at industry conferences.

Our research continues

In a new blog focusing on the second part of our research project, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’, I look in-depth at the goals and challenges of those 202 Marketing and Sales leaders to implementing an account-based way of working.

Suzanne Griffiths, Managing Director, Whiteoaks International

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Download our free report, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’ today, by filling in our contact form below. In it you’ll find out:

How senior Sales and Marketing decision-makers are currently embedding ABM and ABS into their business;
Which marketing communications both leaders say supports the business most effectively; and
The best ways for marketing tactics to demonstrate their direct impact on sales.

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Every day we’re confronted with waves of content. Whether it’s push notifications on your personal device teasing you towards new content, advertising campaigns, browsing or discovering the web at your own leisure. Content is a 24/7 industry, 365 days a year. We know that due to the rise of mobile and superfast 4G – with 5G just over the horizon – we’re consuming more content than ever before. But just how much? IPA data shows that in the UK, adults spend, on average, eight hours a day consuming media. That’s almost half of most people’s waking hours. Unsurprisingly, watching TV/online video takes the top spot, taking up four hours 30 minutes of time every day. Social media accounts for almost three hours a day and the internet, just over two hours. And, as you may not be surprised to know, social media consumption increases to nearly four hours each day for 15-34-year-olds.

Social media landscape

Social media is no longer the new kid on the block, but the king of the playground with people spending more time than ever connecting, interacting, discovering and browsing. At an all-time high, 83% of the UK population use social media. So how can a brand in the B2B sector use social to its advantage? Tapping into the power of social media means different things to different organisations, and quite rightly so, depending on a company’s vision and business strategy. From snappy, informative customer service feeds, to ultimate brand and influencer feeds. But what unites them is the opportunity to reach a desired audience, grow the personality and voice of a brand and convert business. It gives an organisation the power to interact, engage and learn from its customers and followers. It also provides the opportunity to build trust – something which should never be taken lightly.

For any B2B firm, running a brand-owned social media channel across one or multiple social accounts, can be challenging. The need to keep them consistently performing at optimum and aligned to social and business objectives never stops. The trick is continuous testing, evaluating, learning and – the most important part – acting. By far one of my personal favourite aspects of social media as a communications method, is the analytics capability and the insights I can gather for our clients. It gives me, and other professionals like me, the authority to make a difference, demonstrate business impact and prove the value of social.

Content is key

There is perhaps a simple social media basic that is sometimes overlooked. Content. You can’t have one without the other. Content is the fuel that drives a channel and the channel is needed to share the message and amplify reach. Whether the content is a press release, blog, long-form video, or whitepaper. Social media thrives on content especially when applied with a native platform approach in mind.

It’s not as simple as just posting good content. Every post shared must be accompanied with an aligned social tile, such as a graphic, photo, chart, GIF or short video. It’s a ‘no brainer’; social posts shared with images have a greater impact. This is true for every social channel: tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than those without and Facebook posts with images receive over double the amount of engagement than those that don’t.

It’s important to remember that social tiles should, in most cases, be designed for each specific platform. The varying size dimensions should be respected, algorithms considered, and the imagery used should resonate best with the audience to encourage engagement.

Digital first? Or digital together?

Standalone digital campaigns sometimes have a place. If done well, they can reach millions of people at the fraction of the cost of traditional marketing activities. We’re starting to see more companies lead with digital-only campaigns, particularly in the B2C sector. I believe that B2B brands with a strong digital presence could follow suit in the not-too-distant future. This autumn, Marks & Spencer ditched its broadcast budget in favour of a digital only campaign – Marks & Spencer Must Have. By combining its social media activity with paid search, SEO and other digital tactics the campaign will certainly reach its desired audience.

Yet my view is that, for the most part, when well-thought through digital campaigns are partnered and layered with other marketing activities, more input will mean more results, and the campaign really comes to life. The holy grail of marketing is an integrated campaign. Easy to say, but sometimes harder to achieve. In the UK, research from Kantar finds integrated campaigns are 31% more effective at building brands. And messages are more effective when repeated. So, let’s consider, that eight-hour window again… When all external promotional avenues align one with a piece of content from a campaign, that’s manipulated, customised and designed accordingly, it’s no longer a small piece of content in an eight-hour ocean. It becomes a powerful set of messages. A memorable message with cut-through.

Ross Walker, Head of Social & Digital

Deliver Integrated Campaigns

The UK has long been and is still a hotbed of innovation. The sheer volume and diversity of disruptive businesses being started, invested in or sold here is testament to this.

London is often the epicentre, but I’ve had the fortune of meeting – and discussing growth strategies with – firms up and down the UK, from Cambridge to Cornwall, Edinburgh to Derry. It makes tech PR a hugely dynamic and exciting place to work in 2018.

Communications consultancy is one of those strategic support services that must be considered as to whether it’s relevant for businesses of all sizes, but it’s a particularly important question for businesses in scale-up mode for many reasons. Not least because it is a major investment for firms that might be far more inclined to put money towards R&D, staffing or premises first.

The first question any fast-growth tech company should ask themselves is “what do I want PR to achieve?”. This may sound a fundamental question, but too often it is ignored by businesses that embark on a PR campaign because they feel they should, or they have been told to by people outside of the company to do so. Worse, it often results in sending out a press release every once and a while to journalists who, with the best will in the world, have never heard of said company, receive (honestly) hundreds of similar news releases, and are therefore are far less likely to report on the announcement.

This creates a vicious cycle.

With no coverage generated, leading to no inbound phone calls, PR can be viewed as a waste of spend, and effectively kill any debate around ramping up budget for some time. For any marketing professional joining these firms, it can be a frustrating experience.

We believe there is a better way, as our credentials below explain. The starting point for all our campaigns is to define business objectives – and this is where it gets interesting for fast-growth businesses, as we believe PR should be fundamental to achieving that growth.

Whiteoaks International – Retail Creds from Whiteoaks International

We have worked with clients looking for very specific outcomes; building towards their Series A funding, creating a pathway towards an IPO, looking to double sales or increasing the number of channel partners on their books – and sometimes, all of these goals at once. Each of these objectives would require a very different set of tactical recommendations, using a number of different channels – not just PR. Importantly, by being far more targeted, the ability to measure outputs attributable to PR increases exponentially.

What’s more, the robust, reader-centred content needed to generate results in traditional PR, including media relations, should drive the content chosen across the marketing mix, including web content, social media and sales materials. This adds value to the business and increases overall return on investment in PR and marketing communications.

But don’t just take my word for it. Simon Draper, a serial entrepreneur who has grown and sold tech businesses for over a decade, co-founder of our client Hastee Pay, which is revolutionising the way individuals are paid and access short-term finance. He told me: “PR is a significant investment for Hastee Pay and has a tangible impact on our business goals, which is why Whiteoaks’ approach appealed to us. It isn’t just PR for the sake of it.”

For Hastee Pay, PR needs to be extremely targeted at the HR sector, leading to a specific set of tactical recommendations that deliver on this aim. Cyber security leader, Glasswall Solutions, meanwhile, has become known for its ability to provide unique protection against advanced and zero-day targeted cyber threats, and dominates the national and broadcast media whenever there is a cyber attack.

For businesses at an aggressive growth stage of their maturity, the perceived lack of transparency around what they are getting for their PR investment is also a huge stumbling block. These types of companies aren’t interested in buying a certain number of hours on a retainer; it just isn’t the language they speak.

This is why our approach of set fees for set deliverables, linked to clear performance commitments underpinned by a formal service level agreement, continues to resonate so well with the UK’s fastest growing tech firms.

Working on the business development side of our business, organisations we speak to tend to have had one of two experiences regarding PR:

They have never invested before – and therefore like the certainty that we can offer in terms of transparency and commitment to results. Oh, and if we fail to deliver what we said we would, they get their money back;
Or they have invested in PR before and been burned by the retainer-based approach, for all the reasons outlined above.

I would encourage any fast-growth firm considering PR investment to first ask themselves how it can aid their growth plans, not accepting any set of recommendations until the agency can directly prove a link between what they are doing and the company’s goals. It sounds simple, but fluffy PR justified through filling out a timesheet simply doesn’t cut it any more.

To hear more about the fast-growth tech firms Whiteoaks represents and discuss how we could help your organisation, click here to contact us.

Bekki Bushnell, Head of Business Development

Deliver Integrated Campaigns

When you’re currently operating from one country with a great PR or integrated marketing agency on board, taking the leap to an organisation that wants to expand to other territories is, well, a big leap. If your company fits or is about to fit this bill, there are some questions to ask yourself. How do you know when to expand your PR and marketing efforts to complement the business expansion? What are the indicators which tell you that multinational PR and communications is a good use of your time and budget in the short to medium term? This article sets out to help you along that decision-making process.

The two main options

If the following two routes sound familiar to you, you’re not alone. At a minimum level, you could consider distributing company news to international newswires from HQ and/or working with in-country freelancers. This level of international PR is hard work – translating or approving copy and managing that freelance network – but it’s relatively low cost, low risk and flexible. It may suit some companies at the beginning or test phases of international expansion.

At the other end of the scale, full-service international PR may seem like the next step. This route however best suits mid-to-large sized multinational companies, for many reasons:

To make it work, you need a local sales team, who can efficiently do the comparative job of your home country’s sales team;
An office or sufficient operational structure with a meaningful presence in each additional country;
The time and resource, in-house, to effectively brief, manage and deliver the PR and marketing campaigns; and
Budget – here, I’d say money does matter to a degree. Your company needs to have ‘enough’ money to allow each in-country agency to focus on making sure your business scales, reaches and achieves company goals in local markets.

Working with us in this way means that we deliver you our International Performance Management (IPM ), agency-agnostic approach. There are four different options, from working with some of the pre-selected, independently owned and managed WIN PR Group agencies, one of which is Whiteoaks, to mixing and matching us with other agencies that you may have an existing relationship with.

But, back to the budget.

For example, if you spend £5k per month in the UK or your home country on a PR and communications agency. A lot of prospective and existing clients tell me that they can allocate around £2k, maybe £3k each for example, for an agency in Benelux, France, Germany and the Nordics. You can choose to do this, but I think it’s simply not going to change anything. It’s not enough budget to deliver the same or similar effect that you already experience in your home country.
My recommendation is that you need to match your UK or home country monthly agency spend if you plan to expand into countries including those primary key European markets that I mentioned earlier. This also applies to the Middle East, Africa and some of the smaller Asia-Pacific markets
In the US and larger countries in Asia like China and Japan, I’d recommend doubling that home country monthly budget.

The genuine alternative

For fast-growth, innovative tech brands, that kind of budget is simply not achievable at this mid-point in their lifecycle, but an extra £2k or £3k per month can still present you with options to achieve change. Working with your UK or native country’s PR and communications agency to develop an integrated marketing programme where PR doesn’t mean only media relations, you can for example develop and execute:

A robust content marketing strategy, which works hard to re-purpose themes and tailor content for other countries local variances;
Campaigns and targeted problem-solving thought leadership in the trade media and for hand-picked contacts in the broader print and online press in English-speaking countries. Working from the UK to drive a client’s expansion in the US works well here, for example:
- - We’ve been working with Fraedom, a fintech provider for banks and global businesses, for the last 12 months, developing and delivering thought leadership programmes and research-driven news campaigns in the UK and the US
  - Retail technology and consulting firm, REPL Group, hired us this Spring to raise its profile in creating best-in-class workforce management and engagement, warehouse management and in-store solutions. Just a handful of months later, the company has asked us to expand our UK media relations and thought leadership programme to the US market;
Local social media;
Marketing emails and blogs driven from and effective content plan;
Cherry-picking attendance at events with stands and speaker slots; and
If your company is launching a product or service or wants to announce its expansion into a new sector or country, then of course there are cost-effective ways to do that centrally on an ad hoc basis with media relations.

I hope that in this piece, I’ve helped you to realise that there is a workable, high performance and cost-effective middle ground to managing international B2B PR with one or more agencies. If you would like to discuss the options in more detail, contact us here.

James Kelliher, CEO

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