PR’s role in supporting the sales funnel

At Wildfire, I see a lot of RFPs that ask us to come up witha campaign that will ‘support sales’. As someone that looks after both salesand marketing, my advice is if you want your PR to have a positive commercialimpact on your business, you need to be more specific.

The sales funnel

As a prospect, if what you’re asking is, can PR help you toraise awareness of your company to help supplement the sales funnel, the answeris yes, without a shadow of a doubt.

PR is naturally geared towards getting more people to knowabout you than knew about you before and so lends itself very nicely togenerating early stage interest from prospective clients. As my old Dad wouldsay, ‘job’s a good’un’. He’s not actually that old, 65 — but he’s fromYorkshire. You get the picture.

However, if what you’re saying is that awareness is alreadyhigh, but conversion is low… there is definitely more to the story. PR canstill have an impact, but it needs a different strategy.

Do you fully understand your market opportunity?

Having put Wildfire’s own sales pipeline under this exact microscoperecently, it occurred to me that really understanding your marketopportunity is a feat within itself. Knowing who your target audience is, translatingthis into an ‘entire addressable market’ and then working out how muchawareness about your brand already exists so that you can begin properlymapping the sales opportunity is haaaard. And that’s before we even get into broadermarket segmentation and tailored targeting.

My advice, get help. Don’t try and get your arms around thisparticular conundrum all on your own when there are third-party services outthere designed for stuff like this.

For me, it’s like trying to give myself a manicure… It seemslike a good idea and it will save time and money in the short term. Ultimatelythough, the results I’m left with just serve to remind me that some things inlife are worth paying for as I attempt to undo the latest problem of my owncreation 🙄

Have you sprung a leak?

Assuming your sales pipeline looks something like this:awareness, consideration, preference and purchase, it’s important to understandwhat clients ‘look like’ at each stage of the funnel and also the percentage ofthe market that sits at each stage.

If 75% of your addressable market is considered to be awareof your brand, but only 2% prefer it over that of the competition, then pouringmore money into awareness raising content may not be the best plan when you clearlyhave a leaky consideration stage on your hands. Instead, investing in a mix ofqualitative and quantitative research (surveys, focus groups, etc.) with yourtarget market might be a good place to start figuring things out.

Buyer enablement

You and I basically have the same problem. B2B buyingdecisions are complex and the decision-making process is done largely on andoffline, before ever making contact with a company rep. Gartnersuggests B2B buyers break down the job of purchasing products and solutionsinto discrete tasks and that the brands which offer information to assistbuyers to address these tasks will fare better.

Raising awareness is just the tip of the iceberg. Buyerenablement requires specific types of content that goes beyond thought leadershipand infotainment.

What is your company doing to help buyers to understand, self-assess,benchmark and communicate their needs? And as content-producers, how muchresponsibility does your PR team have to address these modern buyer’srequirements?

Back to my original point on the RFP

The most challenging part of this job is working withtechnology companies that don’t know what they want. And by challenging, Idon’t mean bad — far from it. At Wildfire, we see part of our job as helpingbrands to understand what they can expect from PR. We help to create a visionof what PR can do, which may previously have been beyond the client’sexpectation.

The best type of RFP lays out the groundwork for thestrategic and creative teams, offering all of the required information for theteam to get to grips with the challenge at hand, while giving them the freedomto do what they do best.

However, if you do want your PR to ‘support sales’, try toidentify where the problems exist within your current sales pipeline andcommunicate this within the RFP.That way the agency can formulate recommendations and execute a plan based on realrather than assumed issues. This will inevitably lead to better PR outcomes andoverall business impact.

Do you think Gartner has it right when it comes to buyerenablement? Should companies be looking to develop content that better supportsthe buyer journey? I’d be interested in your thoughts…feel free to contact meon paulaf@wildfirepr.com