Positive press attention for a B2B business is incredibly valuable, boosting your visibility and reputation at the same time. With the right PR strategy in place, your brand can achieve bigger traffic streams, more qualified (and more consistent leads), and eventually greater revenue generation.
The question is, what steps do you need to take to get more positive press and get it more consistently?
Start With a Strong Foundation
For starters, you should have a strong brand foundation. You should have a thorough understanding of what your brand is, what it stands for, why it’s unique in the competitive landscape, and how it should appear to your target audience.
On top of that, you should develop a high-level PR strategy; in other words, you should set goals for your PR efforts, devise tactics to take advantage of profitable channels for your brand, and lay out a game plan for how to capture more visibility.
All your efforts to get more positive press will benefit from this existing infrastructure.
Do More Newsworthy Things
Want to be in the news? Do more newsworthy things!
Newsworthy actions and events immediately give you an opportunity to write and syndicate a press release; in some cases, you may not even have to go through this effort, allowing external publications to cover your story on your behalf.
These are some of the most newsworthy things that a B2B business can do:
- Create new products or services. Can your business create a new product or service? Can it somehow upgrade existing products or services? Whenever you make a change to your lineup, make a concentrated effort to publicize it.
- Win awards and competitions. Another option is to win major awards or competitions. Does your industry recognize top innovators in the field? Is there a major competition that your business could feasibly sign up for? These are massive opportunities for name recognition and overall prestige.
- Open a new office or location. It’s an expensive move if it’s just for PR, but opening a new office or location is especially newsworthy. If you’re on a budget, you could also stage a grand “reopening” after making some renovations or changes.
- Partner up, merger, or acquire. You can also easily get in the news if you partner up with another business, merge with another business, or acquire a business. Your partner will benefit from the visibility as well.
Practice SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) increases your visibility within search engines, making your business easier to find and therefore easier to talk about. While SEO itself is somewhat complicated, it can be reduced to a few main components:
- Onsite content. Develop high-quality content for your website to build your trustworthiness, credibility, and optimization for specific target keywords.
- Technical SEO. Technical SEO is all about tweaking and upgrading your website so that it performs better. Google and other search engines prioritize websites that load fast and work well on mobile devices.
- Offsite content/link building. You’ll also need to support your efforts with the help of offsite content and link building. This is one reason why PR and SEO strategies synergize so well.
Do Good
An easy way to get more press in the modern era is to do good things on behalf of your business. In addition to getting your name in the press, you’ll build a more altruistic reputation.
- Volunteer. Consider organizing a volunteer effort. You and your employees could volunteer at a local homeless shelter, plant trees, or clean up a major area of the city.
- Donate. If you don’t feel like volunteering, or if you have some extra cash to spend, consider making a major donation to a local charity.
- Practice sustainability. A whopping 99 percent of major U.S. companies now publish annual sustainability reports, and consumers care about sustainability now more than ever. Anything you do to reduce waste and energy consumption will be seen as a positive.
Get Involved
Your business can also earn more positive press by getting involved in local events. Consider opening a booth, volunteering your time, or helping to promote the event to piggyback off its existing visibility.
Network and Build Relationships
Finally, be prepared to network and build relationships with journalists and major news organizations. If you consistently provide value to people who work in the press, they’ll be much more willing to get your opinion, mention you by name, and generally support your desire for positive press coverage.
These strategies can help you get more positive press in the B2B world, though not all of them are perfectly reliable or cheap. If you have a good PR strategy and a good PR management partner, you’ll be in a much better position to succeed.
