3 Steps to Orchestrate Your Public Relations in Your GTM

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

This week our topic is Public Relations. At most firms there is friction between PR and marketing, but there doesn’t need to be. Today, I share 3 steps to ensure alignment between PR and Marketing to help your GTM run with excellence.

What are your thoughts on the orchestration of PR and marketing? How good is your firm at it? Share your feedback on The Buzz Community.

And, of course, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for being part of the Buzz community. This endeavor is not possible with you -- our readers. For questions, comments, and feedback, please don't hesitate to let me know.

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3 Steps to Orchestrate Your Public Relations in Your GTM

PR and Marketing tend to be lead by different executives and likely end up in a turf war over budget, contribution to success, and who owns content marketing. This is a shame because communications and earn media is an important contributor to business success. Additionally, CEOs like PR, because it gives them fame - well at least business fame.

But the smart CEOs that I know look at PR as an integral part of the overall go to market motion for their company and its brands. And implore their VP Comms / PR and VP Marketing / CMO to collaborate to drive the business forward. But this can be tricky, approaches are different, MBOs aren’t in alignment and the teams supporting comms and marketing look at the world differently. So how does a c-suite succeed at orchestrating PR in the context of its overall go to market.

Step #1: Alignment from the Top Down

The C-Suite is where great orchestration begins. That’s where there needs to be alignment across key GTM Motions (Lighthouses, Tentpoles & Bets - see this post for more), MBOs, and Budget. The trifecta of orchestration success. This should be visited annually at 1B+ B2B Brands as part of corporate planning. But every 6 months at smaller firms for continuity and nimbleness. And ANYTIME a new member of the c-suite changes.

In some cases - in particular larger firms that have bigger C-suites - there is a benefit by having a third party facilitate those discussions and decision-making as it becomes structured, well documented and better managed towards. A 3rd Party doesn’t have skin in the game, so they can get at the answers faster and deliver non-biased articulation of the decisions, outcomes and strategic plan. I’ve done several GTM planning off-sites over two or three day sessions and have found that the great benefit is executive team building and consensus building that deliver better orchestration results.

But the net, net is CEO, COO, CFO, Chief Comms Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer must be on the same page to ensure that PR is not only contributing to Go To Market, but also both marketing and PR are contributing to broader company objectives in lock step. 1+1 can and usually does equal 3 if done well. Every B2B brand that hasn’t done this strategic homework is loosing money in both their PR and Marketing investments and people.

Step #2: Joint Brand Messaging Framework Development

We’ve all seen it, a PR release says one thing, and the product landing page says another. This is not a function of anything less than poor orchestration. That is, from planning through execution, comms and marketing teams must align on what the storylines are by persona, audience, product, industry, geography and all possible permutations needed to support a robust GTM.

This seems so obvious, but anytime I work with CMOs on their strategic planning, I ask a very simple question. Has your messaging been built in concert with PR? All too often, the answer is, “umm No.” and thus marketing has built messaging frameworks in a vacuum and PR is thought of as an afterthought. When in fact PR as a channel needs to be a forethought, because if your messaging doesn’t use vernacular from the “Buzz” of that moment, it won’t get pick up and you are missing a great opportunity to tell your brand / product / people stories.

Step #3: Planning Tactical Collaborations

Social media marketing more than any other joint PR / Comms and Marketing activity gets misaligned and under-utilized because no one has sat down and figured out the tactical operational management of it. I’m not talking tools - though when standing them up I see constant operational deficiencies. I’m talking about process. Not only having it for social, but doing it with excellence.

Social is a collaborative effort across a myriad of internal constituencies, and few firms have done the diligence to map out what those collaborations should look like. Additionally, many B2B brands have failed to build out the operational plan to support the iterative nature of delivering exceptional social media marketing. In particular, what ends up happening is social marketers become internal order takers for Posts. When in reality, they should be the internal leaders of knowing the pulse of the market. And educating others on that pulse. Typically, they have no way of bringing that insight up, out and across the organization. Or social listening is packed away in market research, where the nuance is lost. This is particularly important in B2B because nuance can mean a deal being closed or not. And if done right, social listening can be a material contributor to lead scoring and acceleration in revenue operations and sales development.

The good news, however, is that once a B2B brands has PR / comms and marketing in alignment, both motions benefit materially. And revenue goes up and pipelines get accelerated.

What are your thoughts on the orchestration of PR and marketing? How good is your firm at it? Share your feedback on The Buzz Community.

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