What is a PR/comms agency? How can comms help my B2B business grow?

A tech company lays off 3,000 employees. What starts as a simple news story quickly spreads on social media as former employees share their experiences, while simultaneously company rivals are swooping in with hiring announcements. It might seem like a straightforward story, until news of executive bonuses paid just days before the layoffs emerges and spreads. 

If this was your B2B business, how would you respond?

While rare, the above example shows that great PR/comms has never been more important. It also demonstrates that the industry is so much more than just sending out a press release and hoping it gets picked up. From narrative building and creating talk tracks, to reactive newsjacking and nurturing relationships with journalists, the role of a PR/comms agency is extensive and can have a notable impact on how a business is perceived. This helps generate not only positive awareness, but also leads that drive revenue. 

If you’re a business leader in the B2B space and wondering what all this means for your business, then welcome. You’ve come to the right place – an agency can be a genuine extension of your own team. 

Helping a B2B business find its purpose, narrative and USPs

In today’s economic climate, it doesn’t matter whether you’re operating in B2B or B2C; people want to buy from genuine people. They want to buy into a compelling story, mission, or set of beliefs. And it all hinges on trust: last year, over half (52%) of B2B buyers said they prioritised brand recognition and trust when evaluating vendors, and an additional 34% said they were more likely to shortlist those they recognise and trust.

So how do you gain recognition and trust? A common challenge for businesses, and one you may be familiar with, is figuring out a narrative and unique selling proposition (USP). Lots of companies offer similar products and have comparable features that overlap, so it’s a matter of translating your USP and values into something unique that guarantees a return on investment (ROI) – that’s where an agency comes in.   

At its heart, a PR agency or comms agency provides a range of critical services from media relations to brand storytelling. This can involve strategic communication planning, reputation building and even crisis management, if and when needed. Working with an agency can help you identify what kind of message you’d like to convey and why it matters, ensuring you resonate with customers. 

Central to this process are onboarding or download calls with your key stakeholders to better understand the brand’s USP, what your customers are saying, and what topics they care most about.

From there, your narrative and unique points of view – which we call ‘talk tracks’ – can be created. These can encompass everything from your brand’s mission, where your company stands on key topics such as diversity in the workplace, to what you think about the latest regulations.

These narratives will then be carefully mapped to what the media are focused on, so your buyers are encouraged to read about and engage with your business. They can act as a single source of truth to inform media opportunities, as well as editorial or owned content, and even social media activity – driving consistency and credibility.

Measuring the real-world impact of PR

Comms is often a continuous cycle of reinforcing the same message and continually going after opportunities to convey that message. The onus is on the PR/Comms agency to show you how that needle is moving over time, whether in the form of engagement, share of voice, or even something as simple as the number of business mentions in a quarter.

What does success look like? Many have long relied on metrics that do little to show the true impact, reach and value of earned media. For example, unique visitor traffic can give an indication of the number of people who may have seen an article, but rarely reflects the true makeup of the audience viewing the specific article or page. The first step is to work with you to identify the metrics that matter the most to your business. 

But, a crucial thing to understand in any agency-client relationship is that it’s a long-haul strategy, not a one-and-done approach. Good PR/comms campaigns can have an instant impact, but for the most part, the relevance builds gradually; you can’t expect to work with an agency for three months and see your brand awareness go up instantly.

Brand awareness is about consistency: the better you become at reinforcing your message, the more consistent and, in turn, authentic it becomes. As with any relationship, the longer you work at it, the better you understand each other. 

As your agency, we’re collaborators, acting as an extension of your in-house team.

Our Insights and Analytics team brings together talent from our PR, digital, content and tech teams to create bespoke reporting programmes. These can include media monitoring, sentiment analysis, consumer behaviour, share of voice, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) impact and more. We’re informed by data and use human insight and creativity to visualise both performance and actionable recommendations that fuel strategy. By fusing our tool stack with team members who understand your business, we can provide a more tailored analysis of the media landscape and, more importantly, how the results shape where you go next.

Having global access to tools such as Meltwater and Brandwatch means we can collate and analyse all markets in one place. This not only creates economies of scale, commercially, but also frees up valuable resources for internal and agency teams.

But it’s not just the measurable metrics that matter but having knowledge of audience readership trends. Marker Collective, comprising Archetype and sister agencies Outcast and Nectar, has partnered with media insights platform Memo, to integrate Memo’s readership metrics into a shared insights and analytics dashboard, called Delve, which can be used to track, measure and support any business. This readership data enables the tracking of specific reporters, articles, and topics, in order to make more informed decisions about media strategy and demonstrate clearer ROI.

Find a PR agency you can collaborate with

The world is not short of comms agencies. So how do you select the right one? In the B2B space, especially within technology, working with an agency that understands the industry is vital. Many industries lack the kind of big developments and breakthroughs seen in the technology space. Crypto is a great example, where there are breaking news stories probably once or twice every week – often not positive ones – and a PR or comms agency needs to be fully immersed in the news agenda.

Agencies are only as good as their results, so having a proven track record is key to success. Additionally, finding a PR/comms agency you can get along with both professionally and culturally, is a vital part of the mix – something many miss when looking for instant results.

Finding the right agency is never easy, it takes time and investment to build the right relationships and work with an agency that understands your needs. That’s why at Archetype Agency UK our team is trained to understand a company’s mission, its aims and its culture, ensuring we can build and execute a communications strategy that resonates with journalists and target audiences around the world. Even better: the impact can truly be measured and drive progress with the tool stack.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your business either start its PR/comms strategy or take its programme to the next level, get in touch.