Hey PR Folks: Time to Disrupt Yourself

U.S. Census data is now reporting that “there are now 6.4 public relations specialists for every news reporter.”

PR folks (and journalists) may consume this statistic and see that the number of PR specialists is expected to continue to rise.

But, with less journalists and publications to reach, the PR bubble is coming.

The question is, are you prepared for it to burst?

While the best PR people, with the right narrative, and the right (dwindling) high-impact contacts to reach, will continue to thrive….the rest of us face an inflection point.

So how can you combat the bubble? Whether you operate in-house as a sole practitioner, or you manage a team, or even if you work at an agency and are seeking ways to help your client do more to enhance brand awareness while also getting closer to revenue, here are some of my thoughts:

Approach your company or client’s industry as a journalist (fill the void, if you will). Document the trends, challenges and opportunities facing your customers and your buyers.

How can you do this? Interview your customers and your ideal customers (prospects) about their career choices, their achievements and their lessons learned. But don’t approach this piecemeal — a blog post here, a video there.

Create an editorial theme, a calendar, and stick to it.

Remember, document…don’t create. It’s much easier to document your client’s journey, their responsibilities and their preferred topics/best practices/debates, then it is to create (and generate approval for) endorsements and testimonials.

The end result is similar — you are generating market awareness for your role as an industry/category thought leader (or as Joe Chernov calls it, a “patron saint”). And you are doing it by leveraging the actual voice of your customer — not an obvious marketing-ized case study.

Emerge from behind the scenes and become a public face for your brand/company. Deliver your talking points directly to the market and become a public face (both internally and externally).

If you don’t have an existing internal communications structure, you can build out the programs and tools to improve the way that your organization consumes critical information. Launch a weekly newsletter, and partner across the business with key business units to build compelling content.

If you do have an existing internal communications program — leverage it. Own elements of your Intranet. Get creative.

Of course, this goes for social media, too. PR folks and communications professionals should not be merely posting on their branded social media accounts. You should develop a personal/professional brand that has a unique voice (and following) on LinkedIn, Twitter and even YouTube.

Why do PR folks, particularly in-house ones, feel the need to operate in the shadows? As a natural born communicator, you should seize the spotlight which now exists everywhere.

Lead your company’s corporate brand efforts. This means going beyond PR positioning and messaging (e.g. your tagline and boilerplate). Create a corporate narrative that includes the Problem your company is focusing on and solving (and how that problem has evolved), and sharpen information on the Solution that you provide.

By doing this and really underscoring the Problem your are helping to Solve, you are also helping to design your category (if that is part of your marketing strategy, which it should be).

As part of this brand/category building process, which you can lead, craft your Use Cases, and provide examples from real customer stories. How are practitioners solving the Problem? Are they using your Solution to do so?

Deliver this narrative regularly. Give it to your employees in a digestible form. Manage the transition of the narrative to the relevant design and digital components. Preach internally, and be an advocate for the message. Do the same externally.

There is a chasm in sales and marketing that has existed for ages. At some point, organizations should consider hiring, or defining, a “Chief Alignment Officer.”

This could be you. Why?

Demand Generation and Programs folks are terrific with campaigns, metrics and reporting, but aren’t inherently the best relationship or communication folks.

Product marketers are natural alignment artists but are often segmented by product or vertical.

This leaves communication folks, particularly those that own the customer experience, as fine candidates to lead a Sales/Marketing/Go-To-Market alignment revolution. You know how to build relationships. You are organized and know how to communicate key dates, priorities, campaigns and events. And, you can do it all under pressure, but with a smile on your face.

Sales folks love PR folks, and this means there is an opportunity to wrap your arms around the friction that can sometimes exist between revenue marketers and account executives. You won’t own the pipeline (unless of course, you do), but you can communicate the processes behind the hand-of’s, the necessary best practices, the key content assets, and the strategic customer-led vision that ties it all together.

And, of course, own customer marketing — engagement, retention, growth and advocacy. I call this “customer experience marketing.” Protect, Grow and Activate Advocates (PGAA).

Again, particularly if you are building a “Patron Saint” brand, and your role as a brand ambassador, category creator and recovering PR person is to be an advocate for your buyer, their persona and their industry….then you’ll want to own every step of the customer journey to make sure the marketing messages you are delivering from on-boarding to cross-selling align with the reality of your customer’s real world experience.

But, this is just one man’s opinion. How are you redefining your role through this transition?