Tag Archive for: campaign

How To Create A Successful B2B Campaign In 2023

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One of the reasons public relations (PR) is such an exciting role to work in is that to thrive in the industry you need to be dynamic and adaptable, and the same can be said for campaigns. When it comes to a B2B PR campaign, first and foremost, it’s vital to know your key messaging and desired outcomes before you even think about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and brainstorming ideas. Let’s explore the fundamentals to creating a successful B2B campaign.

 

First of all, what is B2B PR?

B2B is short for business-to-business and B2B PR is essentially a way of one business communicating with another business. On the other hand, B2C means business to consumer.

So, when it comes to creating a successful B2B PR campaign, what do you need to know?

 

Set objectives

 As mentioned at the start of the blog, before you do anything else it’s important to examine what the desired outcome of the campaign is. Raising awareness of the business is likely to be part of the campaign KPIs, or perhaps it’s a specific issue or topic that the business would like to champion. Maybe you want to build-up your email database, generate interest in an event or up for a webinar or event or increase social media followers. Whatever the campaign objectives it is vital that they are clear from the start.

 

Know your audience and how to target them

Now you have your objectives set, it’s time to delve into your target audiences. For some clients, they may want to reach the key decision makers in a business, for others, maybe it’s a specific company department they need to get in front of. A recent example of this is a campaign we did here at Source for Evolve 4 where we had two very different target customers, food manufacturers and primary schools.

In order to establish exactly who those key audiences should be targeted and therefore how we could create a campaign to reach them, we gathered the team at Evolve and Source together and ran a persona workshop. Though these kinds of workshops can be lengthy, they are important as along with objectives they form the foundations of the campaign.

 

Research and brainstorming for a PR campaign

 The fun part! Now it’s time to gather your team and have a brainstorming session. There’s no one size fits all approach to researching and brainstorming and every agency or business will work individually. A good rule of thumb to live by here is that no idea is a bad idea, give everyone the space to gather their thoughts and ideas, air them, write them down on paper or type them out – whatever works best. This shouldn’t be confined to the office, though. Many of us get our best ideas when on a walk, in the shower or during a conversation with a friend.

 

Channels to use for your PR campaign

 If you work in PR, you’ll have likely heard of the staple PESO model. PESO stands for paid, earned, shared and owned media channels, all of which naturally overlap to generate that integrated campaign. Analysing this model can help to determine which channels you’ll be using for your campaign.

 

Image from spinsucks.com

 

Execution and measurement

Skipping straight to execution and measurement, once you’ve set out what channels you’ll be using during your campaign, you’ll need to actually do the work – that goes without saying! Draft and distribute the press releases, pitching in the feature articles, generate the video content, the list goes on.

Once your campaign is complete it’s time to measure results. Measuring results in PR is famously a sticky point and will depend on which channels you utilised for the campaign and the desired outcomes. At Source we have tools in place such as Ace Media which allows the team to capture and track print and online media coverage, as well as brand mentions, audience and lots more. This is just one example of how we measure success for our client’s B2B campaigns.

There we have it, that was B2B campaigns in a nutshell. If you think our team could help you with your next product launch, profile raising activity or social media content then get in touch.

HOW POETRY CAN BE USED IN COMMUNICATIONS

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This article first appeared in Creative Moment and was written by Janet Hare.

Poetry has been around for thousands of years and has given the UK alone heaps of famous and infamous poets such as Chaucer, Keats, Wordsworth, Dylan Thomas, Robbie Burns, Sylvia Plath and many, many more.

Typically though it is known as a niche market, with long-form novels selling far more copies than even the most popular poet. Although Nielsen BookScan did report a 12% increase in poetry book sales in its 2018 report.

Most people see poetry as something they had to learn at school and were pleased to leave behind as they reached adulthood.

And it’s definitely not known as the dominant written form in our lives today. That accolade probably belongs to text speak, alas.

So, if that is the case, then why is poetry being used so much these days in marketing and communications?

Many big UK brands and their ad agencies have taken to using poetry in their broadcast advertising over the last 12 months or so. Nationwide and Co-op are two such companies., as well as EE and OVO.

Starting in 2016, Nationwide ran a series of ads along the theme of ‘voices’ which were designed to highlight the life and diversity of British society. The campaign was brought to life by 31 spoken word poets who lived and worked across the UK. They were given broad themes to work from and wrote original poetry under the subjects such as home, family, friendship.

The campaign apparently helped the building society grow its share of switched accounts to 20%.

It was during that year that I first saw and heard Matt Abbott’s ‘This place is ours’, his poem for Nationwide on what home meant to him. It totally held me captive whilst he talked about his Mum’s roast dinner and dressing gowns being worn all day in his Yorkshire tones. This was real life. This spoke to me.

The Voices campaign has been so successful for Nationwide that it’s still running now. In 2020 it even featured poems about the Covid pandemic from the likes of Matt Abbott and his partner Maria Ferguson, titled ‘A message to ourselves/myself in 6 months’ time.’ The Covid-time ads focussed on the theme of how things would be different in the future.

Nationwide The Voices Campaign

Image credit: The Drum

Since then, and particularly in the last 12 months, I have seen numerous other companies take to poems to express themselves in TV ads, such as the Co-op with its ‘Power of hope’ campaign which used a poem based on spoken word artist Sarah Adedeji, ‘All the people giving double’, about people’s struggles and double efforts during Covid. Even Coca-Cola has got in on the act using spoken word artist George the Poet in its TV ad marking the cultural significance of the pandemic.

So why? Why is poetry suddenly being used to communicate messages?

The answer seems simple. Empathy.

Advertisers and communicators recognise that people have turned introspective during the pandemic, spending more time contemplating. Contemplating what is important in life. And spending more time at home has given people more time to be aware of their feelings. They’ve had time to stop and think. Advertisers have recognised this. They have read the room and realised that empathy is where it’s at with good communication right now.

And it’s not only advertisers that have become aware of this. President Biden’s inauguration in the US didn’t just feature pomp and ceremony and politicians giving speeches and elbow bumps. It featured a young, black, female poet, Amanda Gorman delivering ‘The hill we climb’ poem she wrote for the occasion.

In the hours following the ceremony, social media erupted with astonishment at how powerful the poem was and how amazing Amanda, the US youth poet laureate, was in her delivery. The positive media coverage continued the next day and beyond. The impact it made was incredible.

Why did the Biden administration decide to use poetry for this world-stage event? Because they read the room and knew with all the turbulent times the country had seen, what they needed to do now to appeal to the population was show what hadn’t been shown before. Empathy.

I fully expect that Amanda Gorman’s performance will only further propel the use of poetry in communication and as an English Literature grad, that’s something that I look forward to very much.

Make Your Brand Stand Out From The Crowd

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If the phrase ‘we’ve updated our privacy policy’ sends a shiver down your spine, don’t worry – you’re not alone. The recent changes in GDPR laws have left few untouched by consent forms and promises of the sacred nature of personal data collection. But we’re not here to talk about the value of an opted-in database (worthy of a whole other post of its own, with our client Textlocal finding that 54% of opted-in SMS users will respond to a business text), but rather about the panic that ensued as the 25th May approached – and how this can harm your brand.

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