What PR can do for B2B tech companies

Hint: You may need PR more than you realize

Today, your time will likely be filled with meetings with your direct reports to discuss matters of company performance, sales and finance. You may meet with prospective clients, sit in on a team-building session and try to squeeze in some personal and family time. This doesn’t leave much time to focus on PR.

If you think your business-to-business tech company doesn’t need PR, you are missing out on key opportunities to boost your visibility and grow your business. Worse yet, your competitors who use PR tools and techniques are getting the jump on you. It is vital to your success to learn more about what PR can do for you.

Build brand awareness using innovative PR campaigns. Your prospects must see you and know more about your product or service in order to be interested enough to make a purchase. Without taking the time to generate this attention, you might as well go back to cold calling and mass emails.

A good PR agency can help develop effective strategies and outreach efforts to expand your visibility. This can include social media initiatives and helping your company earn the kind of awards in your industry that get you noticed by other businesses.

Conduct product launches. When introducing a new gadget, there is a lot of work to do.

With help from PR, you can get buy-in from key stakeholders and attract media attention. This includes building buzz about your new offering beforehand.

Help organize crisis management. Many companies make the mistake of thinking they’ll never face crises, then get caught off guard and are unprepared when a crisis does occur. You must always expect the best and plan for the worst.

PR can make sure you’re ready with tools such as a comprehensive crisis management plan, a strong social media policy and spokesperson training. These aspects are vital because the best way to handle a crisis is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Provide media relations assistance. To get the coverage you want, you need to have great relationships with the journalists who matter most to your business. However, it takes time to build relationships with media, bloggers and other key influencers. Even when you see stories about the next big thing and it seems like the company or product just popped up overnight, rest assured that there was plenty of work going on behind the scenes to bring that article to completion.

PR firms are constantly pitching to and engaging with media. Therefore, when you have something special to promote, your PR team will know the best contacts and methods to get your story to the journalists most likely to show an interest.

Identify opportunities to make connections. You never know where your next client will come from, so it’s important to take advantage of every situation.

PR can show you how to capitalize on out-of the box projects and tools like special events, videos, blogs and speeches. Sure, many companies do these things, but distributing and promoting them the right way will have a bearing on how well they reach your target audiences.

Match your strategic goals with the right measurement tools. Are you looking to increase web traffic? Perhaps you simply want to increase awareness or improve the ratio of new to repeat customers. Whatever you hope to accomplish, it is important to tie everything together.

The right PR agency can help you determine and measure the correct metrics to learn what’s working, which areas need adjustment and which tactics aren’t producing the desired results. This is the best way to make sure you are on the right path to achieve your company’s objectives.

At Axia Public Relations, we use the right combination of media outreach, content strategies, special effects and measurement to get results for our clients. Contact us today or register now for our 60-Second Impact to learn more about how we work to reach, engage and inspire your target audiences to grow your business.

Lisa-G-bw-new-3 Lisa Goldsberry is a writer for Axia Public Relations with more than 15 years of public relations experience. She specializes in business, higher education and technology PR. Connect with Axia Public Relations on Twitter @axiapr.