What Every B2B Marketer Needs to Know about PR↓

I was talking to one of my favorite CMOs, David*, last week when he sheepishly confessed that while PR was technically under his umbrella, he didn’t actually know too much about the mechanics or how to judge its results. Day-to-day management was handled by a PR manager, and frankly, he didn’t even know how to gauge her performance.

You see, David isn’t alone. Most CMOs are strategists (as is required by the role) and even if they have execution expertise, it almost always falls under performance marketing or advertising (as the common folk refer to it.) Their background is the sexy stuff: Data, analytics, attribution. Big graphs with hockey stick moves. Can you feel the heat, yet?

Ask most B2B marketers about PR, and you’ll get comments like:

• PR stands for Press Releases, right? (It actually stands for Public Relations but yes, Press Releases are ONE specific tactic. Mostly outdated in 1998, but I digress...)
• Yes, analysts love us. (...ok, well, your customers love and trust their peers much more than the analysts, who were frankly a lot more useful pre-internet...but again, I digress.)
• I don’t understand why the NY Times won’t write about us. (You sell toilet paper to hospitals...oh wait, actually, that could have been a cover story during the pandemic.)

Note, I said B2B marketers because PR is a lot more respected by B2C companies. Why is this? Because L'Oréal knows that if their lipstick is chosen by Allure magazine’s top beauty buys, they will add TikTok influencers who will rush in and voila, millions in sales. They know if they sponsor an afterparty for the MET Gala, hundreds of celebs will get to try on their new shade. They know that exposure means sales. Oh, and they don’t go nuts trying to attribute every single lipstick sale because I mean...who does that? Oh, wait. B2B - that’s who.

I want to be really clear here, it’s not the fault of B2B marketers. It’s that the incentives are horribly misaligned. They don’t get points for creative campaigns or for creating a ton of credible content that makes their brand likeable. In fact, they often avoid the “B” word because...eww, how do you even measure that? They are often solely judged on “leads, leads, and leads.” Who cares what the cost of acquisition is or the fact that half those “leads” aren’t even qualified to buy or that the sales cycle takes almost a year. It’s the numbers, baby, the numbers! And, they get bonus points when they use their very shiny, very expensive attribution software to show how many of those leads came from the ads they are running. “Look boss, you gave me a dollar and I gave you two.” (No one stops to say - what happens if we spend $10 on something else? Would that give us $100?)

Even though, a Nielsen study a few years ago found PR is roughly 90% more effective than advertising in the decision-making process of the consumer, and expert content increased familiarity 88% more than branded content.

Poper Public Fairs found that 80% of decision-makers in businesses prefer articles presented in a series of articles, as opposed to advertising. (What do you prefer? Go ahead, I'll wait.)

What is PR?

PR has historically been crouched squarely between branding and communications. They are like the three misc toy buckets in the middle of the kids’ playroom. (Fine, you tell me where the one-armed leprechaun and half a train caboose should go. I’ll wait.)

PR for the longest time has been seen as “marketing-adjacent” but it is, in fact, very much not. In fact, if utilized correctly, it can be a CMO’s secret weapon. More on that in a bit.

Let’s look at Hubspot’s take:

“Public relations and marketing are similar in their actions and tactics, but their goals are quite different. The main goal of PR is to boost the reputation of your brand. On the other hand, the main goal of marketing is to drive sales.”

No, the goal of SALES is to drive sales. Most marketers today are asked to do sales rather than market. The goal of MARKETING is to create affinity, generate demand, and dare I say it...boost the reputation of your brand so prospects WANT to do business with you.

As the great Peter Drucker once said, “the aim of marketing is to make sales superfluous.”

If you are thinking to yourself that marketing and PR sound awful alike, you aren’t wrong.

Better definition:

Public relations (PR) is the practice of leveraging media channels to promote your organization and cultivate a positive public perception. PR is also the process of managing your organization’s brand and communications. It can be divided into earned, owned, and paid.

Let's look at some examples.

Owned media is your website, your white papers, and your webinars. Yes, content marketing.

Earned media is media relations, speaking, being a guest on podcasts, and LinkedIn fireside chats.

Paid media is exactly what it sounds like. Social media advertising, influencer marketing, and PPC.

Why Does Traditional PR suck?

Most b2b companies fall under two buckets. 1) They’ve never done PR because they think PR means press releases, and they usually do suck, so ergo PR sucks. 2) They’ve done PR and found it “doesn’t work” because either a) the firm they chose wasn’t the right fit or b) their expectations were to have PR behave like advertising and it intrinsically doesn’t work that way. (One common complaint I hear about the big PR firms is that while the “A team” sold them, unless you are Proctor and Gamble, you get assigned a C-team. This is why I’ve always been so gung-ho that every client of ours at Zen Media has a senior level team.)

Expectations aside, most PR firms have a myopic view of placements and analyst relations.

The problem is, they too see themselves as “marketing adjacent.”

Ask most traditional PR firms about sales enablement, and they will baulk.

Conversion optimization?

No clue.

How does PR work beyond just top of the funnel?

What funnel?

See, most PR firms have their roots in communication, which is fantastic but have added "digital marketing" as an afterthought to try and stay relevant. This almost always backfires.

Traditional PR is failing companies today because it functions like it's 1994. It isn't just traditional media or analysts that are driving the modern buyer's decisions. It's multiple stakeholders from investors to peer influencers.

What's needed is really sales-enabled PR. PR that understands how marketing works and can craft a strategy?that works at every level of the funnel.

While most traditional PR is focused on placements, the majority of the magic happens AFTER the placement - mostly on dark social channels.

That's ultimately the trade-off that occurs with earned media. Less control, more influence. Or, you go the advertising route where you have more control, less influence. If you really understand that control in this landscape is an illusion at best and greatly misguiding at worst, you immediately become a 10X better marketer.

Understanding how to leverage dark social, integrating your earned media strategy into your overall funnel, and focusing?on all the stakeholders—customers, employees, media, and investors is PR done right for the modern age.

In earlier years, people used to ask me, “Oh I thought Zen Media is a marketing firm. You guys do PR?” Yes, because PR IS and should be a key part of marketing and is the easiest way to drive quick wins. Not as an afterthought or as a precursor but as a strategy that’s baked into every level of the sales funnel.”

How do I measure PR?

There are two ways you should be measuring ALL your marketing. This includes PR. And, that’s quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitatively, you can measure SOV (Share of Voice), AVE (Advertising Value Equivalency), the number of branded search queries over time, acquisition costs, traffic, social shares, engagement, length of your sales cycle, pipeline velocity, and domain authority.

The numbers will help paint a picture but nothing will beat ASKING your customers. I highly urge you to add a “where did you hear about us?” field to your contact forms and please make it required. Don’t have a drop-down as this will just allow some to default to the first answer because...you know...they don’t actually care about your marketing effectiveness, just whether you can help them. Keep it a blank field and you will be pleasantly surprised!

Shama, why does this matter right now more than ever?

Uncertain times lead to more discerning buyers. And, more discerning buyers need more third party credibility. There is NOTHING more powerful than PR when it comes to building that third party credibility.

Are you finding that sales cycles are taking longer?

Are you being ghosted more often than before?

Leads are moving more slowly through the pipeline?

That’s what happens with inflation hits, a recession is looking probable, and everyone does the “deer in headlights” move because, well, that’s how humans respond to uncertainty.

Your job as a marketer is to create safety and provide guidance, and hope. It is to help sherpa your prospects and customers. It is to build trust.

Did I mention nothing beats PR when it comes to building said trust?

*name changed to protect the innocent.

I’ll be talking about all of the above on today’s LIVE episode of “It’s Not Magic. It’s Marketing” at 7 pm ET. It is free to attend. Leave your questions below or join us live. Registration is free:?https://zenmedia.com/its-not-magic-live/. You can catch previous missed episodes on the?podcast.

#pr?#sales?#b2b?#b2bmarketing?#cmoinsights?#marketers