Universal Tips for Great Business-to-Business Public Relations

The traits that form the foundation of great business-to-business public relations campaigns are universal. What’s true in the United States is also true in Canada, Mexico, South American, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. This is where The Hoyt Organization has partner agencies as part of the Public Relations Global Network. Uwe Schmidt is from THO’s German partner Industrie-Contact AG. Schmidt illustrates some of the universal tips for doing B2B PR work that supports everyone. It supports the  media, clients and clients’ clients.

Business to business communication is essential.

After 40 years of agency history, there are some key learnings I’d like to share. We find that one of the best PR tools are case studies. Let’s clarify first how we in the German market define a case study. It’s definition is an article showing a solution (product/service) of a client of ours in use by one of their clients. The objective in publishing a case study is to show proof of the quality of the solution in practice.

German trade media love those pieces of journalism. I assume it is similar globally. Typically, we do not have to pay the media for those pieces, except in certain industries, where media is almost asking. The best tips on how case studies make all involved parties happy is in the below outline. This includes the media, our client, our client’s clients and us.

Make the media happy

We first identify top target media that is ready to accept the case study as exclusive content. We do not distribute the case study to other ourlets. Otherwise, we’d hurt exclusivity and jeopardize the good relationship with the selected media.

After the initial placement, we might try to place the article in another media with another readership. This usually works. We rewrite the case study to avoid duplicate content.

Make the client happy

The next learning is about the client and communicating business to business. We very often see that on the client’s side the PR/marketing team is not well supported by the product managers who would normally play a key role for us to get sufficient information on the products and services and to open the door to their clients.Product managers often see the PR team’s activities only as a waste of time. They do not always understand how important a good clipping in a top-notch media can be.

We recommend to sell the idea of a case study as a piece of sales material internally first. This means after the case study publishes, we ask the media for copies that can be used as a sales tool. A case study officially published by a top outlet convinces readers much more than product brochures. We recommend publishing a summary of the case study on their website and set links to the page of the media where the case study publishes. The same can be done through blog and social media posts or by introducing the case study via an e-newsletter.

Make the client’s clients happy 

Prior to interviewing a client’s client for a case study, we prepare questions in advance and give the interviewee enough time to develop the answers before we meet them. This preparation in advance really helps make the interview meeting easy going.Sometimes the interviewees do not understand that we are PR guys who will ask for approval before publishing the case study in the media. They take us for real journalists who can do what they want with the interview material. To avoid this misunderstanding, we always determine explicitly with the client that all content and visual materials will be subject to approval.If no on-site appointment is feasible, the interview questions can often be clarified through a phone call or in writing. But we definitely prefer face-to-face interviews as it normally leads to better results.

Being on the customer’s side also helps us getting good pictures. For that reason, we bring our professional camera equipment and do the shooting after the interview.Even without an on-site appointment, we make sure that we get good on-site pictures and photos of the participants by booking local press photographers. They know well how to shoot in company environments and their fees are very reasonable compared to photographers who do advertising shoots.

Make us happy

Working on a case study brings us closer to our client, spending more time together for background talks and learning more about the business. This way we get to speak not only with the same people of the PR or marketing departments, but we also get in close touch with product managers or even the CEO. This very often helps us to understand the client much better and can lead to getting input for further activities.Last but not least, getting case studies published in the media are not only a great reference for our clients, but also for our agency. We show them to prospective clients when we try to underline our B2B capabilities. Trust me, it works.

By Uwe Schmidt: Uwe Schmidt is CEO of Industrie-Contact AG, a leading PR firm located in Germany’s media capital Hamburg and a member of PRGN since 2002. The agency celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2019.

The original article can be found on the PRGN website here.