Traditional PR Worth the Effort?

Original Question via Linked In:

I have a client who is a little different than my average client and I want to vet an opinion I have about what they are doing with the experts to make sure I don’t steer them down the wrong path.

This client is a fairly small company. The target market for their product is heavily geared toward a scientific community. They have been using PRWeb to distribute the few releases they do every year. Generally, these releases have been around their R&D work, awards, or presentations they will be giving at big conferences. They don’t get much pick up from these releases. Given the nature of the work they are doing, they could certainly generate more press releases but it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.

It seems their time and money would be better invested in more “hands on” techniques of getting their message out. E.g.

- A company blog would be a better way to get the links back to their web site. They could still release their news through the site but do it in a way that’s more engaging.
- They could build their Twitter following of scientists interested in their work and get the word out that way.
- They could engage on the forums that the scientists are on to develop these relationships and get the message out.
- And, using a more traditional approach, they could continue to write articles for the publications.

Do you agree or is there something I’m missing about the traditional PR process?

Blue Collar Sales Response:

Melissa,

Good question, good answers.

The efforts you and your respondents describe are perfect for drawing interest from what I suspect is a tight knit community. The following idea could be added to the mix as one channel is never enough.

I would enhance the overall approach by using these efforts to focus on building a house list. You would have to include a call to action that encourages other scientists and their targeted market to register, or opt in.

Of course you would want to implement technology to accept these ‘subscribers’ via the web and a back-end system or list service to manage the group. I would then leverage a ‘bulletin’ style approach to email or notify that house list of discoveries, research, etc.

This house list, because of its clearly defined scope could become gold for your client in a variety of ways.

By leveraging one of your communication types as a bulletin, you free yourself form the amount of content and regularity of a newsletter. This could be a unique addition to press releases articles, etc. You can send out a ‘bulletin’ whenever there is news!

I would have a goal for the size of the house list based on the field and additional calls to action or offers for pass along’s to build the list and make every effort create viral communications within the tight knit community.

I think, as opposed to a widely cast net for general public social media you would want to create a semi-private intellectual exchange with an allure of exclusivity and value.

I believe this could be a very affordable yet likely a little longer term addition to your plan.

Just an idea.

Good Luck and Great Selling!

Blue Collar Sales

From Linked In – Brian Carroll’s (InTouch): On Lead Qualification: Steps to Convert Inquiries into Viable Sales Leads

Brian,

As always your points are well made.  When marketing tosses poorly qualified registrants “over the wall”, sales becomes wary of future leads until fully vetted and the separation between church (marketing) and state (sales) continues.

Of course the type of product being sold, length of sales cycle, level of complexity, sales cycle costs, price, etc. all play a part in this dance.

One of the most significant challenges has always been in closing this gap between Marketing and Sales. Sales is charged with delivering on quota; marketing is charged with creating the collateral that you mention and programs or campaigns to generate demand that result in high scoring ready to buy leads.

Sales 2.0 in my mind means that the tools and technology can, when leveraged correctly and collaboratively, close that gap.

I believe a more symptomatic problem is the fact that most folks are still focusing on the specific person who raise their hand with that registration.

Rarely in B2B where the product is complex and the selling/evaluation cycles are long is that single person responsible for the purchase.  Typically there are layers of approval and several buying factions who will determine product requirements.  Even though most of us know this, sales still phone hounds that individual and marketing cranks up the email offer machine.

When the economic buying power is limited by general market conditions as it is today and both sales and marketing teams are tackling the lead scoring and nurturing process at the specific individual level several things start to happen.  Pressure builds for marketing to DELIVER more leads with similar pressure for sales to DELIVER pipeline/revenue.

How many times does the conversation occur where marketing says to sales, “just tell me what you want me to do, what campaigns can I execute in your territory?” and sales says “just give me what you’ve got, calling them is better than calling cold.”

When the Marketing Funnel that you mention is light on “ready to buy” leads, or well nurtured high scoring leads, something has to be passed to pass along to sales even though they are really just registrants.

If the Sales pipeline is light on active evaluation cycles the sales person begins to do their own marketing i.e cold calling, emailing, or they simply pass the pressure along to those that are evaluating products.

In this Sales 2.0 world these two efforts must become unified.  In my mind Sales 2.0 does not only mean that we have the tools to Socially Network, Track, Nurture, and Email to discover leads.  It also means that we have the tools to discover, detect, and solve likely challenges being faced by our prospects.

From a pure prospecting point of view, I believe that there is significant value in both sales and marketing discussing the campaign trending data particular to an individual target at the company and industry level.  This information typically resides in marketing before an individual “lead” is ever identified.

If there is evidence that  many people from a specific company or industry are hitting your web site and consuming your collateral offers then that is an indication that the company or industry is looking to solve a problem. If sales and marketing understand who the most active targets are at the prospect company or industry level they can develop and communicate even more pertinent value and actually earn the right of entry to prove to the prospective company that the problem can be solved.

From a marketing perspective they can find more contacts that might be interested in their nurturing educational offers.  Sales can focus on discovering specific business issues and decision makers where the product can deliver value.  Collaboratively, sales and marketing can create and execute  a penetration strategy that is focused and valuable to both the target company and the pursuing vendor.

Even though we operate in a Sales 2.0 environment the Sales 1.0 method of discovering a prospect that has the need to buy and creating a willingness to evaluate your products is still the rule that creates the gold.

Thanks again for the great posts.  I enjoyed your book and appreciate your contributions.

Regards,

Scott Benedetti

BlueCollarSales.com