Zoe Merchant

After 20 years delivering B2B marketing strategies in the IT industry, Zoe founded Bright to help tech and consulting firms get the most from their marketing investment. Using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Zoe leads the team in delivering results through continual and focused improvements in order to support client’s business goals. A huge foodie and committed turophile – Zoe counter balances this with gymming, running and walking.

Media outreach to support your marketing goals

Public Relations (PR) or media outreach has historically been viewed as an important, yet distinct, part of the marketing mix. In the past PR agencies often worked quite independently from marketing, devising their own campaigns, usually with one eye on the overall marketing strategy (although not always!). However, the arrival of the Internet changed both the media landscape and traditional ways of working. PR is now much more integrated and at Bright Innovation we see it as an intrinsic part of what we do.

A shared goal but a different approach

While PR, marketing and advertising all share the same end goals of building brand awareness, increasing demand and attracting the right talent – the way each element approaches this is quite different.

The value of PR is high because it is what is termed ‘earned media’. This means that the exposure has to be ‘earned’ through strong, relevant and compelling content rather than bought (like advertising where you are essentially paying to be able to say what you like). The flip side to this however is it is much harder to make a direct correlation between a positive piece of coverage, an increase in demand or in good people applying for a role in your organisation.

Social Media: a must for PR practitioners

Today, it is increasingly rare for a PR campaign not to involve at least some element of social media. Having said that it is surprising how many businesses still fail to understand its importance.

If the Queen and President Obama are on Twitter, it’s a pretty safe bet that the CEO of the company you really want to get in front of is too. And in the unlikely event that he/she is not on Twitter, they almost definitely will be on LinkedIn. By failing to consider how to build social into a PR and marketing strategy, businesses may be missing out on the opportunity to directly connect with key business people.

In my experience people working in B2B technology tend to view PR in one of three ways:

We are a fascinating company that does something totally unique and everyone will want to hear about us and our new products (especially FT journalists)
We have nothing to say and can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to hear about us (unless maybe we do a major deal with Tesco or appoint Bill Gates as our Chairman)
What’s PR?

The reality is that PR can be an incredibly effective way of getting your message across if you are both ambitious (every company has something interesting to say, we just need to work out what it is), pragmatic (it probably isn’t the launch of Widget 3.2.6) and you don’t compromise on the quality of what you produce. The most interesting content will be useless if badly written and you would be surprised what you can do with something quite mundane with good imagery and some smart statistics.

What results can you expect from PR?

To give an idea of the kind of results a successful PR campaign can achieve, as part of our work with Red Badger, Bright Innovation recently ran a campaign to promote the launch of Fortnum & Mason’s brand new, fully responsive eCommerce site, designed and developed by Red Badger.

Bright Innovation produced a range of content that appealed to different audiences across key industry sectors including tailored press releases and award entries:

To ensure that the content was as compelling as possible, data and imagery from the new site and real customer feedback were used to demonstrate tangible results.
Content was also drip fed across social channels and made to work harder by turning it into direct mail campaigns and a series of more technical blogs were produced for the Red Badger website.

The results included coverage in 10 key titles, including a blog style critique of the new Fortnum site on Econsultancy that had a direct impact on new business leads who approached Red Badger after reading it. The award entry drafted by Bright Innovation also led to Red Badger and Fortnum & Mason being shortlisted for Retail Week’s Technology and Ecommerce Awards in the Best Customer Experience category.

Creating a range of compelling content which was disseminated through different channels including traditional media, to an email campaign and through social networks helped to maximise the impact the campaign had on Red Badger’s target audience and led to direct new business enquiries.

May 26, 2015 Zoe Merchant Marketing Effectiveness 16 comments

Talent marketing – A new approach for modern tech businesses

As the economy pick-ups and tech companies all over the country are starting to become busier, their ability to hire top tech talent is having a huge impact on their success. This is because the core strength of a services company lies in the skill set of its team.

The fact is that candidates simply have more choice and hold the upper hand in the “war on talent”. With 58% of UK hiring managers directly experiencing a skills shortage this year, candidates know they are a valuable commodity and are able to be more demanding from potential employers.

Candidates aren’t just looking for a good remuneration package; they are looking for a company that shares their same philosophies and culture, and one that can enrich all aspects of their life.

There are companies who have woken up to this issue and have developed strategies focused on nurturing and harvesting an active talent pool. It’s these innovators that other firms should learn from. Red Badger – a Bright Innovation client – is a company that has set the bar high in this respect. Red Badger is a software development company specialising in open source technology. The skills they need are in high demand so they have adopted a community building approach to help them, not only find good people, but to create brand ambassadors who can promote the brand within the community.

Recruiters have long been talking about active and passive candidates, and developing strategies for attracting the latter, who are ever-elusive and hard to reach.

However, traditional recruitment, by its nature, is reactive and recruitment companies see little benefit in spending the time establishing and nurturing active networks of passive candidates. Instead they use tools like LinkedIn to proactively search for them.

Following the traditional approach means companies must start from scratch every time they need to hire. For modern tech companies this means a lot of needless waste. This is why companies must adopt an alternative, long-term strategy for talent acquisition and retention.

Now for the controversial part… For a long-term and successful talent acquisition and retention plan, companies should forget about measuring short term results. They should instead concentrate on adding value to their community by doing a great job of marketing their brand.

Ironically, not focusing on results can deliver the great results.

Great marketing, which covers the entire marketing mix, will naturally expand your engaged audience, whilst having the obvious benefit of winning new clients.

Your passive talent audience will see your marketing activities, and, if these activities are compelling and make you stand out from your competitors, candidates will be impressed!

Candidates care about brand. Does your brand resonate with the type of people who you want to work for you? Your brand is crucial, so invest in it.

You only need to look down the list of the Sunday Times Best Companies to work for to see how investing in your brand can translate into a successful talent strategy.

One way to stand out from your competitors, and build a brand that people will get behind, is to give back to your community. In the open source world, for example, there is a rich and exciting culture of giving back and sharing knowledge.

Why not host a regular event where members of the community come into your office to hear the cool stuff you’ve been working on? Are you blogging and using social media effectively to show off your thought leadership and give your valuable insights away for free? This is a chance to showcase your culture and give people a chance to experience your brand – and gain from it.

Develop young talent. Work with local universities, schools and engage with apprenticeship schemes. Not only will you be able to nurture and train young talent in the methodologies and technologies that are important to you, but you will also be helping young people to learn new skills that will benefit you, them and the wider economy.

Bringing young talent into a business can have a great effect on your existing and more experienced staff: they get the chance to pass on skills and knowledge, while the newbies bring in fresh ideas.

There are also great PR and marketing opportunities for companies who have innovative junior hiring programmes.

By creating compelling marketing campaigns, engaging with your community, and nurturing young talent, you are building a brand which will resonate with tech talent.

It’s not easy, but this is a long-term approach which isn’t just going to benefit your business in terms of the talent you can hire. You will win new customers, help build and shape your community, and help the next generation of talent get their foot in door. There might even be an award up for grabs.

A marketing and community-focused approach to talent attraction can sound daunting, but, with effective planning and delivery, this approach could build a long-term talent pipeline whilst reducing your recruitment costs.

March 15, 2015 Zoe Merchant Agile Marketing In Practice 24 comments

LinkedIn a key part of every B2B marketing strategy

With more than 300 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has truly established itself as the largest professional network online. In B2B and in particular the IT & tech industry, it’s my experience that more people have a LinkedIn account than a Twitter account. Trends in B2B marketing also show that companies are taking advantage of different technology when researching, and in some cases they are at least 75% of the way through the buying cycle before contacting a vendor. Having said all this, it’s still my experience that LinkedIn is a tool which many companies struggle to fully utilise.

Here’s a short guide to 5 reasons why LinkedIn should be a key part of your B2B marketing strategy:

1. Research

Whether you’re looking for new prospects, delegates for an event or new talent, LinkedIn allows you to easily find and approach the people you’re looking for.

For effective research you need to have built a good number of connections (200 – 500) however, make sure your network is relevant and is acquired using best practice.

2. Driving traffic to your website

Driving traffic to your website from LinkedIn is a great way of showing ROI and in the LinkedIn strategies I run, sending an increasing amount of traffic to websites is the main metric.

In fact, across many of our clients LinkedIn drives more traffic than any other social network.

3. Show your brand personality

Your prospects will research your company and even had made their buying decision before contacting your sales team directly. A company’s brand is becoming as much about the people they employ and culture they create as it is about the services themselves.

Your prospects are gauging your brand personality by looking at your company profile and the profiles of your key staff. Make sure you are reflecting well!

4. Leverage personal networks

Most businesses will have people internally who either have a strong personal LinkedIn network, or a strong personal brand.

Make sure you leverage these individuals on social media and especially LinkedIn. When executed correctly these people will demonstrate significant thought leadership in your market whilst driving interest in your business.

5. Share great content with your brand advocates

Your LinkedIn followers tend to be people that have an interest in your brand. Don’t be fixated with the number of followers you have; you should care more about the quality of your followers. Company updates allow you to interact with your customers, prospects, staff, suppliers and talent pipeline. When they see great content they will share and in turn, your followers and web traffic will grow.

LinkedIn often rolls out updates, and it can be difficult to keep up. LinkedIn strategies need to be kept up to date and will need to evolve as market trends shift. If you are looking for advice and guidance on how to make your LinkedIn strategy work for your business, get in touch with Bright Innovation.

February 12, 2015 Zoe Merchant Marketing Strategy 22 comments