by Thomas Franky, Associate Director of Fortune Technology *
Every B2B Company wants to be perceived as a leader in its chosen market space. This also happens in Indonesian B2B industry. However, considering media landscape of Indonesia today, many B2B companies find it very challenging to communicate their businesses to Indonesian market, especially for IT and technology B2B businesses. From our experience in partnering with IT and technology B2B companies to communicate their brands, below are 9 communications tips that B2B PR practitioners need to understand in order to successfully communicate their B2B businesses:
1. Make it personal – How can we make dry business communication personal? There are two ways to make your PR effort personal. First, manage the tone of your communications – focusing on the human side of your target audience. Communicate in the spirit of a person talking to another person, not as a company talking to nameless and faceless prospects. The second part of being personal is to base your PR effort on a key executive who has special and acknowledged expertise in your chosen market and try to speak their language.
2. Make it fun – One of the most important activities in growing a business is growing relationships. Sales trainer/author Jeffrey Gitomer puts it this way in the Sales Bible, “All things being equal, people prefer to do business with people they like. All things being not so equal, people still prefer to do business with people they like.”
That describes the psychological principle of persuasion known as “liking.” Making your communication and communicator in fun mood will also help you to get better result since it is “people doing business with other people, not companies”.
3. Make it unique – A unique selling proposition is what your business stands for. It is what sets your business apart from others as a result of what your business stands about. Instead of attempting to be known as everything, businesses with a unique selling proposition stand for something specific, and it becomes what you’re known for.
Make sure your PR strategy is in complete alignment with your differentiation and unique selling proposition. People notice uniqueness far more easily than me-too-ism. Uniqueness also sells, and it often sells at a premium price.
4. Make it sticky – Stickiness refers to messages that are memorable. The Stickiness Factor suggests that there are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable, first with a unique and powerful message, and second with a good message repeated over and over again.
5. Self-promote – Your official website is always the best media to communicate. Having user-friendly and resourceful official website will allow you to get customer understanding about your products or services better. Get your name out there with public speaking, presentations, podcasts, articles, blogs, LinkedIn, etc that will also help you to boost your brand awareness toward the market. It helps your company when you create your own brand and establish thought leadership.
6. Align with key search terms – Having an official website is not enough. Having a sleek design, user-friendly and resourceful information but without people actually visiting your website is the same as adding salt to the sea. Coordinate your search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click strategies with your public relations messages. Include key search terms in the text of every press release. With the traffic coming in through your combined SEO strategies and public relations messages, and your rightful responses; you can use your official website as your own lead-generator.
7. Use social networking – Beside SEO, social media can help you to drive traffic to your official website. A social media connected website can help you to do the communication jobs easier. On top of that, there are many social media tools available to help you move the needle of public perception, and gain far more awareness among your target audience. For example, a blog is a great way for reporters, editors, and analysts to find you and get the word out about your company and products.
8. Get published – There is something about the written word that adds to an individual’s credibility and reputation. Conducting media relations activities (press release distributions, media interviews, press conferences, etc) will help to keep your company name, brands as well as your products/services available on the media for all people to read. Media relations can also help your brand to build its reputation.
9. Persist – Many companies practice just enough media relations to say they have done it, but a paucity of Media Relations activities will have little or no impact. A press release every six months is not going to cut it. Send news out on a regular basis or the (old) news section of your website will make you look stale.
Optimized public relations can have an enormous impact on awareness and lead generation, and even more so if you think outside the box.
* Thomas Franky is Fortune PR’s Principal Consultant for telecommunication, information technology, and consumer electronics industrial practice. His resume includes handling clients such as: D-Link, Seagate, PLN, Nimbuzz, Freudenberg, BuzzCity, and ZTE.
Copyright 2013 PT Fortune Pramana Rancang
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