INBOUND ACCELERATOR

Integrated marketing and public relations rely on balancing a content triad — using earned, owned, and shared content to reach audiences and drive awareness, lead generation and sales. So how do you maximize the “earned” component to access audiences without spending money on advertising?

For B2B businesses, particularly in information-, knowledge- and technology-heavy industries, the answer is in high quality thought leadership articles placed with trusted industry media. That is the approach JONES and QPS took to gain the global CRO (contract research organization) valuable exposure without a huge investment in paid advertising.

Successful content or inbound marketing requires working from an established strategy to create comprehensive campaigns that touch on all content distribution channels to reach the most potential sales prospects and engage them in ways that generate qualified leads and closed deals.

While I love sharing recent successes of my clients (such as these top-notch PR and marketing efforts by QPS and West), it is also rewarding to look back and reminisce about some of my first clients, and how what I learned then is still guiding my strategies today.

Enterprise software is one industry I’ve worked in for years, and which has provided some of my most exciting moments, including helping to launch one of the first SaaS (software as a service) businesses, before the acronym became known and understood.

Who do you rely on for marketing content creation: an in-house team, outside agencies, or some combination? Chances are that each brings different strengths to the table, judging by the response of 300 B2B marketers to a survey by Walker-Sands.

What advantages does an in-house team have over outsourcing? What do outside firms tend to do better? And how can you get the best of both worlds when you work with an agency?

Recently I shared a post about the importance of integrating public relations and marketing as one of my 15 lessons from 15 years as a marketing agency owner.

Our long-time client West is a perfect example of taking a single content concept or piece of information and spreading it across all channels — owned, earned and shared — to generate awareness, industry authority and leads.

As an agency offering integrated public relations and marketing solutions, we only succeed if our clients succeed. And that is why I love sharing success stories, something I plan to start doing regularly here on the Inbound Accelerator. I know there are things my readers can learn from hearing about what has worked well — in some cases, extremely well — for our clients.

If you have been following my 15 Lessons From 15 Years series of blog posts (this is post #11), you may remember that when I discussed the key steps to successful marketing in the healthcare IT arena, I said that integrating PR and marketing was essential.

In fact, it is so important for all industries, not just that one, that I felt I needed to revisit the concept and walk you through the steps we follow to ensure that all communications create a cohesive message and focus on reaching the same corporate goals.

Every industry has individual nuances in marketing tactics, techniques and needs. And while nearly every B2B market is also filled with industry-specific knowledge and vocabulary that marketers must understand in order to create credible content, when it comes to businesses in the life sciences sphere, the need for expertise and immersion in the field is even greater.

Life sciences, as a field, encompasses a wide range of businesses, most of which support the infrastructure that enables the healthcare system, from medical device manufacturers, to pharmaceutical companies, DNA research, and the contract research organizations that take on drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical trial research for pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

More than 15 years ago, while I was still working with global PR agency Porter Novelli, I was handed an assignment that I was certain was punishment. I couldn’t think of a topic any more boring, any less engaging, any more difficult to turn into a public relations campaign that would garner media coverage.

I was assigned to support the sales of paper and ink. Really?

Successfully placing contributed articles — also called bylined articles or thought leadership — in industry publications isn’t always an easy task. It requires developing article ideas or abstracts that publishers find attractive, pitching to the right publications, and finally, crafting a high-quality piece that meets publication guidelines and earns you a reputation for submitting great work.