B2B PR – commodity, or gold dust? PART TWO

In Part One, we looked at B2B PR’s identity crisis caused by the rise of Social Media, free press release distribution and corporate short-termism due to the recession. In fact all is not as bad as it seems, PR is reinventing itself as the creator of online brand discussions and the guardian of content-creation, moving away from commoditised roles such as unquestioning information distribution (a role which even the world’s largest music and print moguls are discovering how to monetise).

If content creation and stewardship are the services required, then Social Media is B2B PR’s best friend. Here are Five reasons Content is more valuable than ever today;

1. Sales Teams need stories
   Selling on features was always tough. Features without clear benefits are irrelevant in this market. Benefits need narratives. Who cares if your car has traction control – until it saves your family’s life in a blizzard, then, all your friends want it.
2. Customers need proof points
   Budgets these days do not allow customers to ‘take a punt’ on technology working. Real examples of the success of others, not BS, is what counts. Almost all of Positive Marketing’s new business is won via referrals. Writing up success, is seldom straightforward, as any PR professional knows, often this requires negotiation between two sets of communications professionals. Once approved properly though, this content is tailor-made for Social Media.
3. Content requires writing
   Writing is, or used to be, a core skill of PR professionals (despite the dyslexic juniors we have all witnessed hiding in large agencies). Online writing requires even more precision and brevity. Once it may have been acceptable for amateurs to ‘knock up’ content for brochures. Online, comparison to the competition is a click away. This requires professional writing.
4. Even Microblogs need feeding
   Some believe Facebook updates and Tweets are the new newsletters. This is just not true; it is difficult to see how 140 Characters (minus a shortened URL) replaces in-depth explanations of customer proof points, product descriptions or targeted offers. ‘Feeding the best’ of today’s Real Time brand monitoring presents a challenge tailor-made for switched-on PRs.
5. You pay for it any way
   Search Engine Optimization may attract eyeballs, but what happens when the attached brains land on your page? Satisfying them requires persuasive, compelling content. A Home Run for PR. Why not try reducing your SEO costs by 25% and invest that budget in a great writer? Your SEO will benefit from more sticky content and customers will be more engaged with your brand for longer.

In the concluding blog of ‘Commodity or Gold Dust?’ we will look at how to exploit the new gold rush for content with examples of creative content which work today. If these Five Reasons resonate, positively OR negatively with you, please feel free to leave a comment. If you want to learn more about how Positive Marketing is helping more and more B2B marketing teams to deploy effective Content, email our Chief Goldminer at pmaher@positivemarketing.org.

Devil in your details

Having just met seemingly every ‘Lead Generation’ provider in the UK tech market (email me with specific questions), I have my finger on the pulse of B2B marketing.

Some offered ‘boothspace’ at ‘virtual conferences, others real-life events at swanky locations to schmooze CIOs. Almost all offered that staple of modern marketing tactics, the White Paper download programme. This, we were told, was the surest way to get interest in the company’s technology. With extensive ‘lead nurturing’ a sales team could hope to convert these ‘leads’ to a sale some six months’ later, we were promised.

There is very little magic here. The exchange of, mostly valid, email addresses has long been used to stuff a Salesforce, Netsuite or Microsoft-stored sales funnel. In fact, the providers are so confident they will even guarantee leads.

But given the plethora of phishing scams and the general level of ethics in a recession-hit tech marketing community, why do so many IT professionals willingly give their details away in exchange for a little self-interested technical education? Is it not a little ironic IT professionals trade privacy for knowledge? Is it even worth trading your ’spare’ Inbox access for some technical knowledge?

Could it be the Social Media wave, which promises so much, has left us complacently staring at tsunami of future security issues and unwelcome marketing advances? Facebook is increasingly used as an entry points for the unscrupulous, as Britains’ top spy found out. But when we catch up with the folly of telling every burglar smart enough to surf that we are ‘away for the weekend’, will the ‘Lead Generation’ industry be able to offer guaranteed results? Perhaps those swanky dinners are best all round.

(PART 3 of 3) Reclaim and Recast content to forge Social Media PR success

In the first part of this blog series, contending that Content is central to online B2B PR for the Social Web, we looked at how decimation of traditional journalism, the rise of free press wires and plateau of SEO all conspired to make B2B PR redundant in the downturn.

In the second post, we looked at why rather than weakening the case for professional media consultants, the need for smart content was making traditional PR skills more important than ever.

So here are five real-life examples of how to use those content-creation and re-assembly skills For The Win in B2B Social Web marketing.

1. The Case Study reinvented – Case Studies, as we all know, can take an age, some requiring ten or more sequential ‘waterfall’sign-offs. But moving pictures tell a thousand pixels and better yet, once it is ‘in the can’ it cannot be ‘wordsmithed’ by third part corporate PRs. Once embedded onto Web-sites and into slide decks this is some of the best testimony a B2B PR team can bring.
2. Linkbaiting – Blogs (like this one), White Papers and Webinars should be prose written by pros. But with the speed of media today, no one can wait months for this content or pay tens of thousands of dollars. Who knows best about deadlines? Yep, the PR team.
3. Slidesharing – Presentations (like our 5 minute pitch) are one of the reasons that customers show up at real-life events and online Webinars but these are also great assets for online PR, especially when combined with Social Media Releases (see 5 below)
4. Real Time Brand Monitoring – Competitive intelligence and Lead Prospecting has never been easier thanks to tools like Tweetdeck. Some enlightened B2B companies, have even appointed dedicated Social Media Directors, for those with more modest means, there are always enlightened PR agenciesJ
5. The Press Release reinvented - Social Media releases, which can look more like database entries than narratives, have been slow to catch on in Europe. Perceived as useful for pumping Google rankings, B2B PRs who can use this new format will likely prosper.

With all this change come Social Media opportunities for what was once called B2B PR to grow as a discipline. As the legendary UK-based founder of Mega VCs, Apax Partners, Ronald Cohen, asserts in his flawed, but noteworthy book, any adversity can become strength, if you use it to learn and move on stronger. The current downturn in B2B PR is an opportunity for strategic realignment and we should take back our position at the heart of strategic marketing.

Agree or disagree violently? If you want to make a comment, feel free to do so or ReTweet if useful. For a quick and free chat about your B2B awareness strategy email directly to pmaher@positivemarketing.org.

Slideshared – B2B The New role for PR

B2B PR – Commodity, or gold dust? PART 1

Last week, pitching to a prospective PR client, it was clear just how much content creation is needed for Web 2.0 media relations to fly. Differentiated, relevant content is the modern equivalent of gold. If, like me, you have worked in ‘traditional communications’, you learn that the more senior you get, the less you touch content. Facing inwards, not outwards, this is a world of meetings, messaging and crisis avoidance; days filled with PowerPoint and Excel analysis, not content creation using Twitter, Vimeo or WordPress.

PR is at the crossroads. B2B PR especially is in danger of becoming a discredited function, where original content is perceived as having low business value (think Facilities Management or Auditing as opposed to ‘Talent Management‘). However, producing gobbledygook with clockwork efficiency is not Thought Leadership and it is no coincidence that there are lots of press release templates in Microsoft’s Word these days.

Exciting, even contrarian, PR ideas, deliver differentiation and creates sales. So why has PR today become a plumbing function? Here are five dumb reasons for the disrespect and reasons for PR to still be cheerful:

1. “Why pay for real mailing lists?” (aka Free PR wires)

A lot of Web content and functionality is now ‘free’. If you disregard the fact that you get what you pay for, you can boost your Google ranking with ‘robot’ site listings.

Reason for cheer – Hardly anyone reads or cares about, reads or believes these press release reprints. This is low-level PPC fraud not PR.

2. “Why wait for brand discussions to develop, when we know Clicks make Sales?” (aka PPC)

Thankfully, a fallacy that is dying out. PR had its head in the sand when PPC started stealing its thunder (and budgets) but this debate is moving on thanks to the Web traffic attracted by Real Time Comments on influential blogs like Scobleizer.

Reason for cheer - No brand was ever built on Clicks alone.

3. “We’ll do PR on top the Day Job!” (aka Staff cuts)

Smaller marketing budgets mean PR is cut or outsourced [Disclosure Positive Marketing occasionally benefits from the latter] But PR creates content for the ‘In the News’, Customer Success Stories and several other sections of Web-sites that sales guys point customers at when they are closing deals.

Reason for cheer - PR is wising up and selling.

4. “Why wait for permission to publish?” (aka Embargo-busting)

A key part of ‘Corporate PR’ was to stops stories coming out until the company was ready. The Real Time nature of the ‘River of News’ on Twitter means more, not less, perception management is needed to brands.

Reason for cheer - PR can reassert its importance here (unless you are Habitat).

5. “Our Investors are not paying attention to our numbers” (aka The economy is down)

A sure sign of the downturn is a reduction in proactive media outreach (although the press release production line marches on). With fewer ‘good news stories’ to pump, it is easier to trot out ‘back-slapping’ partner releases than thought leadership.

Reason for cheer -  This short-termism is great for those taking calculated risks to influence news-hungry media today.

Next time, we will discuss why PR content may be a commodity (just like gold) but is about to become yet more valuable. In Part 3, we will look at how to exploit the confusion over just what PR is good for anymore. Mean time, feel free to Retweet, leave comments or debate directly at pmaher@positivemarketing.org.

Discuss amongst yourselves

Breaking workforces into sub-groups to brainstorm and then competitively defend ideas is standard team-building practice. Such workshops give employees a sense of inclusion and, tellingly, are often used in mergers to avert moral issues. The recent Microsoft/Yahoo announcement is one big sales job in need of a focus group, now that the market has reacted negatively – much to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s obvious annoyance.

A little experiment I conducted on LinkedIn (you need to register) proves that the blogosphere is not yet convinced either. The LinkedIn Answers I got are exactly the sort of issues that a Binghoo ‘Focus Group’ needs to connect with right now. Staff retention loomed high as a concern for Carol and Steve, even in these times of IT market consolidation. The emphasis on ‘now’ is important. I know first-hand how disruptive mergers are for key personnel (no matter how well-intentioned or received by the stock market). Address communications too late and any chance of keeping key players is lost forever.

Collaboration is the future for marketing – whether you are selling products or the benefits of a merger. Savvy marketing teams, including the B2B marketing agency Wunderman, have long recommended ‘conversational marketing’ as a way to build preference for brands. Pre-Web, advertising aimed to ‘interrupt’ buyers while they were away from their desks. But this will not create buyers in today’s highly-online Attention Deficit world.

Many companies, such as SAP, are busy creating online communities to nurture such discussions. Even though, the Terms of such communities forbid slating their sponsors, they show commitment. Such discussions are long-term persuasion projects. No sane advertiser expects customers to drop every other thing they are doing online to consider buying something they never heard of before. Start a conversation though, they may become intrigued, possibly convinced, and so persuaded to, spend (or even stick around at your company).

A recent Razorfish study looked at when the new constituency of ‘online conversationalists’ matters most in the marketing funnel. It shows that the time when independent bloggers, Tweeters and contributions (to sites like LinkedIn) matter most is during the awareness phase of marketing. That is early on. So although it is a ten year deal, the Binghoo management team needs to start conversations with key staff, customers and prospects, rather than persist with the ‘brave face’ PR they attempted so far.

The importance of blogs is too often exaggerated and even prone to abuse (see this story about Crocs shoes and journalism entitlement). However it may be smarter to carry on the discussions in public now than have to pay for team-building workshops and morale-boosting in the face of a staff exodus down the line. Otherwise it will be resumes, not just Answers, that are being posted on LinkedIn.

Let us know if you agree or disagree, on here or via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Innovate or die trying

Can the also-rans of Search challenge the leader? Will Yahoo! and New-Best-Friend Microsoft out-innovate Google, which according to today’s call enjoys 92% market share in Europe? It seems clear fewer marketing folks will be working on the problem. Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz hinted at job losses.

Already this month, two former marketing colleagues were, separately, acquired. While the valuations look good short-term, these two gobbled-up marketing executives will (if they are lucky) get a fat cheque and then start work on someone else’s vision of the future. Technically, they were out-marketed by the acquirer.

Just how hard do marketing teams work to avoid being ‘taken out’ by their current shareholders? Looking critically at the marketing of my friends’ acquired companies, both independent for nearly two decades, not hard enough. Both held dominance of very erudite niches and were known by ‘everyone in their village’. Neither made their offerings relevant and attractive to the widest possible audience.

One decision-phobic but charismatic, founder approved the best-looking White Papers that engineers could write, but no outreach (no events, customer case studies or media briefings – just lots and lots of Analyst Relations). The other ex-marketing team retained the same PR agency for over a decade and was a notorious spammer. Neither understood innovation. Repositioning these companies was a tough, ultimately unwinnable, challenge. So how easy will it be for Binghoo! to take two teams, reduce the workforce and challenge for top spot? Tough.

The culling of under-priced technology firms by acquisition, or like MS/YHOO by collaboration, is an obvious move at this time in the cycle. We should expect more acquisitions in the tech space short term. But it remains to be seen if two Davids can take on one Goliath. If Google’s, like-it-or-not, innovative marketing can really be beaten, I will bet it will be more likely by new pretenders than forced marriages.

Innovation led by the Old Skool?

Just back from visit to my home town, the claimed birthplace of Marxism, Rolls Royce, computing, Marks & Spencer, atom-splitting and railways. Things have changed in Manchester.

Most obvious are the discretely shuttered high-end shops on South Deansgate. Remaining estate agents in the parade stick out in a gap-toothed grin in the rain. A dozen expensive red metal wedges get wet outside the Ferrari showroom. I wondered when this town, which has waxed and waned more than most, will see its next boom. Rather like the high tech industry, fathered here, some sort of rebirth has got this way to come.

Perhaps the answer already exists. A bright new poster at the Trafford end of Deansgate (the end nearest to global brand Manchester United’s ground) proclaims ‘Welcome to Manchester’. The renaissance of the only team in the Premiership founded by a woman, is an example of an underperforming brand receiving much-needed overseas investment and dusting itself off in the bad times in search of better.

Meanwhile, amid tech industry despair that start-up funding has dried up, maybe the ‘Old Crew’ will also be the catalyst for new hope. Microsoft has finally responded to the decline of its core markets, challenging its decades-younger rival, Google and collaborating with others like Yahoo! Software As A Service, has finally lured the once sceptical European goliath SAP to act like a David and serial speed-dater, Oracle has waltzed another fine San Franciscan filly up the aisle.

In times of boom, innovation comes from the disillusioned, the hopeful and the nimble. Down times signal the revenge of the patient. Most likely the Next Big Thing is already coming to a software company and perhaps a town-centre near you, but it may be incubating inside the survivors – because only they write the history books.

When the Googling gets tougher

Google is still making tons of money in the recession, announcing Q2 revenues up 3% and profits of some $1.48B. It is not alone, thanks to government bailouts, Goldman Sachs seem to be doing alright too, earning more than twice as much as Google did this quarter, despite the recession.

Which industry would you rather be in? If I knew how, I think I would sell bonds right now.

The Search Engine giant, now controversially also in the Operating System market, needs to keep moving. With Microsoft Bing, there are more Search Engines to ‘organically’ point users at content and more will follow. Perhaps recognising this, marketing execs are getting used to spending less on clicks and this is a one-way trend. Why would you pay more, even in a rising market, if the supply goes up and the results are unclear?

The tectonic plates of online marketing, just like investment banking, have shifted. As previously noted, click-throughs, though easy to count, are a poor way to deliver a brand experience and a worse one to guarantee sales. Web-browsing was called browsing for a reason.

As you can see from this recent Google Webinar slide, Google agrees. Accurately describing a journey, where prospective buyers dip in and out of the ‘River of News’ along the traditional Awareness/Preference/Choice journey this is more like the game we marketing folks all need to play.

As the Online marketing industry continues to mature, Positive Marketing has always believed, the role of content creation and online brand-building was never just a question of which Google Analytics ‘jocks’ you choose. What use is a ranking when the quantity of clicks is not the point? Perhaps we should leave the rocket science and number-crunching to Goldman Sachs and put a little art back into attracting customers to brands with quality content.

Feel free to disagree or just share bond tips here or directly at pmaher@positivemarketing.org

Who guards the guards?

Social Media has become anti-social media. When the UK’s most senior spy cocks it up on Facebook, it was only a matter of time before the naivete many display about social media was called into question.

Now it seems both the legal profession and some ambulance chasers sense corporate fees. Such spoils would be very welcome for our litigious friends at ‘Big Legal’ whose earnings are treading water like a sleeping shark. Their learned advice may be well-meaning (publish only what you would be happy for your parents to see), but this changes the game completely. Their firms may reap what others sue for.

Lawyers see Social Media as tasty

Being discrete and staying legal may be getting harder though. Some claim Facebook recently made it less-straightforward to protect parts of your privacy. The world’s largest social media site says it was just being more sociable (or was that fend off Twitter?). Either way, corporates and specifically IT departments have a key role in this debate.

A former colleague, now in a senior European B 2C marketing role, had to beg her IT department for Twitter access and was refused Facebook at her corporate desk. There is now a heated debate about a, presumably resource-hungry, SaaS graphical design application. If the head marketing honcha can’t get to these ‘tools’, how about the PR team, or product development – or even sales?

At least until someone owns the rules of engagement, this IT-led innovation risks being taken over by HR folks and lawyers. Depending on how we play it, we may never get to the Brave New World envisaged by Cisco’s Nick Earle and Andy Mulholland of Cap Gemini in their 2008 book ‘Mesh Collaboration’. The fun may be over. Anyone got any suggestions?