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| Dan Garza |
Growing numbers of tech companies are trying to recruit PR pros adept and skilled at building brand and increasing market awareness.
Some want PR pros to elevate their brand presence and execute strategic PR campaigns. Others want them to build a brand that inspires trust and stands out in a crowded market. Still others want PR pros who can develop compelling storylines and write bylines and op-eds.
However, grasping those marketing objectives and how to go about them is foreign to many PR pros, as they continue to pursue the conventional practice of only putting out random press releases.
Go to most any technology vendor’s website, click on newsroom or press releases, and that’s what you’ll find: just press releases and lots of them. Some announce quarterly earnings or executive hires, while still others announce new products touting features never seen in similar competitive products.
Press releases are important to technology vendors for several reasons. However, marketing isn’t one of them. As one Silicon Valley marketing executive so aptly put it, “Press releases don’t work for us.”
When potential customers check out those press releases, they shake their heads. They’re disappointed because they’re not finding more in-depth answers to their current or short-term issues and challenges. Basically, press releases leave customers wondering, “Is that all there is?”
Customers demand more
Today’s engineering and purchasing customers demand comprehensive technical and educational content on which to base their buying decisions. They want to know whether or not a technology supplier understands their problems. Is the vendor perceived to be a technology leader? Or does it just offer mediocre technology that’s available at other vendors or a re-hash of older technologies?
What about leadership? Are the executives well-known and respected in the industry? Do they know the industry and the technology? Are they credible? And how stable is that vendor’s leadership?
A recent IDG/Foundry research report focused on similar questions posed by Information Technology Decision Makers. It stated: “… fulfilling the potential behind any promising product starts with customer engagement. That means developing a deeper understanding of your customer at hand. In this case, knowing how IT decision-makers learn about your product, what kind of content value they actively seek throughout the tech purchase process and how you can better influence the buying decision.”
Random press releases distributed periodically don’t answer those concerns.
Only a narrow avenue
In most cases, marketing and PR rely on press releases to give them the only narrow avenue to showcase technology and new products. They do so by piling on a press release and hyping the product, touting every new feature and function to the point the press release becomes a glorified data sheet.
Most tech trade press editors tolerate such content simply because it provides them news and details of industry technology advances. But with customers, it rings hollow, again with the question, “Is that all there is?”
Consequently, press releases and random press mentions do very little to build a technology company’s brand and market awareness or create industry thought leadership.
Conventional publicity practices might be okay for some consumer businesses. But in the technology world, it’s a considerably different story. With technology’s dynamic nature, a company’s marketing operations and strategic PR should be inextricably intertwined. That is a must to assure that the company’s technology and products are constantly at the top of customers’ minds.
The basic problem for many tech companies is following the traditional gap between sales and PR. As such, they’re worlds apart. Conventional PR does its thing, and marketing and sales rely on emails and phone calls to customers and potential customers.
Sustaining strong customer engagement
In these two instances, a well-thought-out strategic PR plan is required to capture and sustain strong customer engagement.
This means chief marketing officers, marketing vice presidents, sales executives and PR pros must change their mindsets. It involves re-thinking their conventional marketing and sales plans and digging deeper into how to implement a strategy that significantly advances customer engagement, elevates the company brand and builds greater market awareness.
The PR pro, in particular, needs to expand their plans beyond press releases and press mentions. They need to develop, embrace and execute a well-organized press strategy in collaboration with their marketing, sales and executive colleagues.
Thought leadership is one tech PR example that many companies are embracing to reach, maintain and sustain brand and market awareness. Case studies are another effective customer engagement PR program. Their effectiveness relies heavily on how and what you include in the content. Potential customers want to read about issues or problems others are having and what steps they took to resolve them. That’s the basis for a customer success story or case study.
Moreover, they want to know what actions another company took to reach a technology decision. Thus, a section in the case study allows you to explain—without hyperbole—specific features or functions of your technology that were instrumental in solving a customer’s problem or problems.
Thought leadership and case studies are powerful PR tools. But byline articles represent the linchpin for a strong PR strategy and can serve as the underpinnings for all PR initiatives. The main reason is a proactively developed byline article initiative carries strategic content that can be minimally rewritten and used for other strategy supporting PR assets, such as case studies, thought leadership, white papers, webinars, press briefings and others.
A byline article or op-ed initiative hands you a tacit, third-party endorsement simply because the industry trade press is highly credible and have massive audiences. Moreover, those byline pieces give your company credibility and customer trust, as well as an aura of technology leadership. Also, business press editors and market analysts search for byline articles and op-eds to get technology updates and possible leads for their articles and presentations. Finally, with each published byline piece, your company’s reputation and industry authority increase.
By implementing these powerful strategic tools, PR pros can overcome the press release roadblock, collaborate with their marketing peers and help capture that elusive brand and market awareness for their companies.
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Dan Garza is a marketing PR professional and veteran observer of Silicon Valley PR.
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