Making the Group: Carving out a Leadership Position in Tech PR

I blogged last week about the PR and branding connection, and the importance of weaving the facts that describe your product or service into a good story.

Last week I also described a client type who seemingly has no interest in brand building but wants to use PR exclusively to keep the sales pipeline flush.   Inevitably it is the people infected by this type of thinking who are irked when their company or product is not mentioned in roundups of their spaces.

"When reporters are writing about our space and mentioning our competitors, we need to be there too," they say.  Then they want us to go out there and make that happen by putting pressure on the media, often with little precious "air cover" from their side.

My response is that it takes more than your agency keeping after the media to ensure inclusion in roundups.   The media is under no obligation to mention every competitor in a given market segment when they write about it.   Bloggers have even more latitude to write whatever they want, as they generally don't make claims to fairness and journalistic integrity.

Making the group -  the top three or four players who tend to get mentioned in roundups on a market space - takes hard work and time.

Consistent outreach, and regularly meeting and speaking with right reporters are the most basic components of this.  But calling and briefing reporters may not be sufficient to get coverage in their stories.  A drumbeat of news is a great way to demonstrate that clients are on the move and making progress in the marketplace.    The media needs to see that the client is doing great work and convinced that they are a leading vendor when they rattle off the top two or three names in the space.  Augmenting news outreach with a steady stream of story ideas in which you position the client in the context of the hot issues and trends helps towards this end as well.

So, proactive thematic outreach combined with routine contacts across the media list and promotion of news will help to build mind share and coverage and help your clients make that vaunted short list.

It is by no means a science.   It is more a matter of perceptions and brand.  You could have the strongest balance sheet and highest sales.   But if the media is not aware of the great work you are doing and what your brand stands for - if they don't see you out there in the marketplace, with announcements that show traction and progress on technology, product and business fronts - then you have no right to expect them to mention you in related articles.

So it is more a matter of digging in for the long haul, not expecting to be annointed as a leader in the early stages of a program, creating a drumbeat of news, and making sure the story resontaes, and is breaking through and being heard, understood and appreciated.

Comments

[Leo Valiquette]

It ain't rocket science, there isn't a magic bullet or a secret sauce. Just hard work and persistent effort from the PR side. Most importantly, it's about cultivating relationships with key media by offering something that suits their needs, which, of course, necessitates the research to identify and understand those needs. The client example you cite demonstrates the importance of managing expectations. Educating the client about the media is as important as educating the media about the client.