For B2B Tech PR, Build Trust, Not Buzz – Here’s How
“We want to get some buzz” is a common refrain when startups reach out to a PR firm. But for B2B technology startups, “buzz” may be the wrong priority.
Of course, any time a PR program puts the spotlight on your company, products, or people, there’s an increase in awareness (or buzz). So it’s not that you should avoid it. The issue is that for many B2B tech companies, buzz does little to influence their buyers.
Think About Your Business Goals Before You Decide Your PR Goals
We ask every prospective client about their objectives across sales, recruiting, and fundraising, as PR can help achieve goals in each area. But it’s the sales questions that often determine a PR program’s goals. So we ask questions like…
- How many possible customers do you have?
- How long does your sales cycle take?
- How are you communicating with prospects throughout the sales cycle? What are those prospects’ choices?
- What makes them ultimately sign a contract with you?
Every once in a while, we talk to a startup with hundreds of thousands of potential customers (or more!) and whose entire sales cycle can be completed on a landing page.
But in most cases, the companies that approach us for PR could only dream of closing a spontaneous sale. Our clients may have just hundreds of potential customers with sales cycles of a year or more. It’s in those situations that buzz is the wrong priority.
So if not buzz, then what?
Trust Matters More Than Buzz – Trust Me When I Say That
There’s an old line – now obsolete (see McDonald’s experiment with AI) – that “no one got fired for hiring IBM.” The gist being that it was a big, trustworthy company, and your job was safe even if the project you hired them for failed.
What made them the safe choice? Trust.
The challenge is that for a young and / or little known company, building trust is hard. IBM built it over decades. Older and bigger competitors have greater resources and longer track records.
Thankfully, there is a simple formula for building trust, and we use it to guide our PR programs:
A + C + N + M = T
Authority (your people) + Credibility (your company and its offering) + Network (the people and companies you work with) + Momentum (your progress) = Trust.
Build Your Authority with Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is critical. It showcases the depth and quality of your team and their authority, not to mention your culture of innovation and the sophistication in your offering.
This is a big deal: Three out of four B2B buyers say good thought leadership is more impactful than traditional sales and marketing materials, according to research by Edelman and LinkedIn:
“Effective thought leadership exerts a surprisingly strong influence on sales and pricing. Thought leadership can be a more powerful marketing tool than traditional methods and makes people more willing to seek you out — and even pay extra for your expertise.”
Here’s what it looks like in a PR program:
Contributed Articles (or “Bylines”)
Written by (or ghostwritten for) your subject matter experts, contributed articles allow you to share insights, opinions, calls to action, and recommendations with complete control of your words. Contributed articles can’t be promotional, but the more impactful topics can certainly be highly suggestive of what your product or service addresses.
So no, editors won’t accept a contributed article about how your startup helps healthcare organizations remove employee friction, but they may accept an article on how less friction can lead to better patient care.
Expert Source Interviews
Not every article comes from a pitch, and that’s especially true with the top tier outlets so many companies want to get into. Reporters are paid to be on top of the news and trends, and more often than not they come up with their own ideas. That’s when it’s time to step up and offer them the expert insights they need during their reporting. So when a top industry trade publication gathers quotes from industry leaders, make sure you’re one of them.
Speaking Opportunities
Whether keynote, moderator, or panelist, speakers at events are literally put on a pedestal. It suggests that among the hundreds or thousands of potential speakers, you were the best one for the job. If speaking sounds good, start early; don’t wait for a month or two out. In fact, I’d reach out as early as today, even if the latest edition of the event just concluded.
Let the event organizers know you want to contribute in some way, be that planning or speaking or something else. Be on the radar, be helpful, and good things should happen.
Another choice? Host your own event.
Podcast Interviews
There are countless podcasts for nearly every topic. Many of them are looking for guests. When picking which ones to reach out to, aim for those that will reflect well on you:
- Are production values high?
- Is there a high likelihood of a smart discussion?
- Is the host connected and influential (they often are, or at the very least want to be)?
- Are their prior guests comparable to where you are (but don’t bring too much ego – OpenAI is the hottest company on the planet but CEO Sam Altman seems to be on every podcast, large and small)?
What’s not important – yet – is audience size. I recommend thinking of podcasts as a new and better kind of speaking opportunity. Look at it this way:
If you were invited to speak at a conference and got in front of 50 qualified leads, you’d feel pretty good about it, right? So why get bothered if a podcast has a similarly small audience?
Plus, with a podcast, you don’t have to invest time and money in travel, you get center stage versus sharing time with panelists, you get something that lives forever, and you can share it with prospects who weren’t there.
What’s not to love? (If you’re ready to start, here are some podcast pitching tips.)
Establish Your Credibility, for Both Company and Product
“Prove it” is the market’s common reaction to the claims of early-stage B2B startups. But how can a startup “prove it” before they have a solid track record for success?
Here are some ways to start building credibility:
Customer Stories
I meet a lot with very early-stage founders, and one of my favorite pieces of advice for them is to always be capturing customer stories. And by capturing, I mean documenting, not just talking about them. You should try to know the challenges, hopes, and dreams of your customers as if they were your family and friends.
This process will not only help you continually improve your products, but it will also lead you to collect the stories that will “prove it” to the marketplace. It’s not always easy to get a customer on board but if you focus on how they’re the hero of their own story, you can get them to do it.
Awards
Many folks roll their eyes at awards, claiming they’re just pay to play and largely meaningless. Those folks are (mostly) wrong. Awards for your company, your products, and your people all demonstrate the credibility of what you’re doing.
Categories can be local (e.g., Chicago Inno’s 50 on Fire), national (e.g., Best Workplaces for Innovators), vertical by industry (e.g., Digiday Technology Awards) or horizontal by technology (e.g., The Cloud Awards).
To be clear, no one does awards programs out of the goodness of their hearts. These programs are sometimes businesses in and of themselves but are more commonly a secondary part of a business’s operations designed to generate additional revenue, derive compelling content, and grow pipeline.
How to decide which awards make sense? Look at prior winners and honestly compare yourselves to them.
How do you win awards? Here are our recommendations. What awards could be good? Here’s a start.
Analyst Relations
Getting on top analysts’ radar can deliver profound impacts, whether it’s with a giant like Gartner that covers wide swaths of technology, or a niche one like IDC that covers a particular industry vertical. Subscriptions to those firms are a shortcut to attention, but most make it simple enough to request a briefing with a suitable analyst, so why not?
The result of this effort, however modest, will be unpredictable, but possibly great. You might get lucky and hit the analyst just as they’re working on a relevant report, making it simple for them to add your company.
Even if you’re not that lucky, though, these conversations can be fruitful. You’ll be able to introduce your business to an influential person in your market and, because these on-demand briefings are partly a business development exercise for the analyst firms, they’ll likely want to prove their value by sharing industry and business insights that could help you as you move your business forward.
Leverage Your Network of Customers, Partners, and Friends
Relationships are paramount to trust-building, and that’s especially true in B2B. So how do you sell to a B2B technology buyer with whom you have no relationship?
By showing that buyer the relationships you do have.
Prospective customers may explicitly evaluate you based on the quality product, stability of your company, and the intelligence of your people, but they are likely implicitly evaluating the company you keep – the social proof that says you can be trusted. Your customers, your partners, your shared contacts.
Here’s how to leverage your network in a PR program:
Speaking Opportunities
When pursuing speaking opportunities, think about bringing in your customers and partners as well. Instead of pitching a keynote, pitch a panel, where it’s you and a few customers or partners.
Podcast Interviews
We are big fans of podcasts for PR, and not just for the audience they deliver or platform they provide. They’re also great because those hosts are often well-connected and respected in their given industry. When one of these influential people has you on their show, it suggests to your prospects that you are part of a trusted inner circle.
Contributed Articles
In addition to building your authority, contributed articles can be great opportunities to spotlight the quality of your network. In these articles you can quote or share experiences you’ve had working with customers, using those experiences to illustrate and support your argument.
Awards
I’ve talked about awards as a credibility builder, but they can spotlight your network, as well. One possibility is nominating your customers – the companies or their people – for key awards that relate to their work with you. An HR benefits startup could nominate a customer for Benefits Pro of the Year. A healthcare AI startup could nominate a customer for Hospital CIO of the Year. Then, if the customer wins, you can bask in their glow.
Demonstrate Your Momentum
Your people have become authoritative and your company has become credible, but there’s one more piece to the trust-building process: showing momentum. Momentum is what suggests that you have what it takes to win the race.
Press Releases
Any PR win – media coverage, speaking opportunity, award, etc. – will demonstrate your momentum. But to control the drumbeat and create evidence of momentum, I recommend a steady cadence of press releases (note: PR doesn't stand for Press Release).
These don’t have to be “capital N” news. Yes, a new funding round or acquisition is a big deal, but you should look to spotlight smaller things as well, even if they won’t lead to coverage.
Announcing new customers, milestones, hires, reports, award wins, webinars, and conference participation can all tell your prospect that you are taking the lead.
To use another metaphor:
You don’t want anyone to think your business has flatlined, and press releases are an easy way to show the heart's beating strong.
It’s All About Your Priorities
Everyone wants buzz, but buzz in and of itself doesn’t deliver value for most B2B technology companies. PR is not just about making noise; it’s about making an impact. By showcasing your team’s expertise, proving your company’s credibility, and demonstrating consistent momentum, you will build the trust needed to influence your buyers and stand out in a competitive market.