ChatGPT wants my job. It can’t (and it won’t) have it.

Time to read: 4 minutes

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread for Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd. In this post, he looks at ChatGPT, AI’s risks and benefits, and what’s in store for us as the technology advances.

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread. Especially as mine is one of the professions the technology – especially the likes of ChatGPT – is gunning for. Admittedly, binging on every documentary and podcast the topic has to offer, all with contributions from long-time experts in the field has done little to assuage my fears.

The speed with which AI is developing is raising questions that those in power seem unable to answer. This is a problem. Once artificial general intelligence (AGI) is rolled out, the technology’s passage into maturity will be complete, and humanity’s relationship with robotic intelligence will become one where we are the dependents.

It will mark the most significant point in human history since the first homo sapiens discovered how to create fire. AGI, however, will be a blaze over which we could all too easily lose control forever. Hence the recent dread.

The dread gets real

When ChatGPT trampled onto the scene like a heavily caffeinated Wildebeest in a pensioners’ yoga class, I admit not thinking too much of it. “Another AI service that I can spend my free time interrogating on whether 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is the more effective football formation. Big wow.”

But then I used it, and beads of sweat began forming on my expansive brow. I typed in a made-up, generic title and sat back in horror as the chatbot generated a grammatically sound and, on the face of it, relevant 1,000-word blog.

If it were dread I had experienced before, I wouldn’t even know the word to describe what I experienced at that moment. It was a feeling that lasted for weeks. The gig is up. Time to start thinking about re-training.

The importance of knowing your enemy

Having sought reassurance from family members, friends, and colleagues, I began to excavate my resolve and free it from the claws of the relentless Large Language Models. I love my job, and I’m not losing it to a set of precocious algorithms.

It was time for me to step into the ring with ChatGPT, and we were going bare knuckle.

Instead of using some generic blog title, I re-engaged ChatGPT and typed in the title of an actual blog a real client had asked me to write. The blog outline was separated into different sections and looked depressingly appropriate. Next, I gave the chatbot permission to write the blog in full, and within seconds, it cascaded down my screen.

However, upon reading the blog, an almost transcendental sense of elation washed over me. It was crap. Littered with repetition, from sentence openers to entire sentences, it had zero personality and was laughably light on credible facts and figures. It was crap.

Friend, not foe

With round one going emphatically to the human, I began to recalibrate my whole attitude toward ChatGPT. Although it has undeniably improved since 2022, its ability to produce quality content remains limited, to put it politely. But it does offer other functions that have since proved to be handy.

It is superb for beating writer’s block and has become essential for brainstorming ideas. I’ve also long since learnt that the ability to construct excellent prompts is the most important skill you can acquire when using any form of generative AI.

True though this may be, even with the most professional prompts, the resultant copy is not what any self-respecting copywriter or organisation would ever think to publish. But it can give a decent starting point, a handy blueprint for a competent human to improve upon radically.

In other words, generative AI can be considered a promising work-experience student, approaching their employer and saying, “Hi, I’ve done this for you to try and save you a bit of time.” And I, the employer in this dubious analogy, reply with, “Thank you. I can probably use some of this. Now, you run along and finish transcribing that video for me.”

Even if ChatGPT does become a little too self-assured in the future, it faces another problem even more formidable than me.

The search engines won’t stand for it

When the likes of Google cottoned on that people were stuffing their websites with keywords to dope their SEO, the backlash was ruthless. Many websites were penalised so heavily with SERP (Search Engine Results Page) relegations they never properly recovered.

Expect the same for AI content. Indeed, a raft of AI content detector tools are already sweeping the marketplace, and it seems to be a matter of time before they’re integrated into search engine result generators. The last thing any search engine provider wants is for its users to be pummelled with a load of robot content during their cyber surfing sessions.

Apart from the inevitability of this development is the delicious irony – AI saving the livelihoods of copywriters from AI. *chef’s kiss*.

ChatGPT knows its place. For now.

I don’t know what the future holds for ChatGPT. That’s the one thing that’s still quite scary – no one really does.

However, I do know that in its present form, it can’t respond to detailed briefs as competently as a human copywriter. It can’t understand the unspoken reactions of clients during calls. It can’t offer original insight on any topic, question a client’s approaches or ideas, or inject personality (unless it’s pretending to be a well-known human).

Mercifully, it also seems to understand all of this. With ChatGPT draped against the ropes, sweating and bloodied, I asked it directly if it was coming for my job.

Its response?

“As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to predict the future. However, it’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other AI language model will completely replace copywriters. While AI can be helpful in generating content and assisting with certain tasks, copywriting involves creativity, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of language and communication. These are skills that are difficult for AI to replicate, and human copywriters are likely to remain an important part of the industry.”

Maintain that attitude, ChatGPT, and you and I will get along just fine.

Let’s talk shop

Internal Communications: 3 tips to boost your start-up’s culture

Time to read: 2 minutes

Emma Tucker, our internal communications consultant, provides her top three tips for creating a company culture that is right for you.

All companies have a culture regardless of how old or new they are or the condition of their internal communications. Your culture captures the essence of who you are and how you do things. It can attract people to join you and keep them working effectively and loyally.

For start-ups, culture and vision can be used to convince prospective hires and intentionally defining and promoting both will keep you honest as you grow.

Here are three ways to get intentional with your culture.

1. Define it.

Get your people in a room and discuss what makes the company special. Write it down. Get specific on the words you choose, and don’t be afraid to disagree; it’s in the debate that you’ll uncover areas of tension and uniqueness. Think about the stories you tell about your company – what do they say about you?

Define the values and behaviours you want to live by. For example, you might choose “Impact” as a value and explain the accompanying behaviours as “You accomplish important work that positively impacts our clients”, “You consider the impact of your work on the people around you”, and “You leave a good impression because you take action and deliver on your promises.”

Involve employees in the process by letting them discuss the values and prioritise relevant and helpful behaviours for their work. Then, test it with your clients and external stakeholders. Honest feedback will be your friend.

Keep refining the descriptions until they feel right and truly reflect your thoughts. Aim to define four or five company values. Teams can then decide on the relevant behaviours (aim for three behaviours per value).

2. Embed it.

Weave your culture into every interaction with your employees and clients. It should:

• Be part of hiring, developing, and assessing your people.
• Become integral to how you innovate and grow your business offering.
• Be part and parcel of how you approach client meetings and deliver results.
• Be reflected in your communications, tone, and methods.
• Be instantly recognisable in everything from financial updates to processes and procedures.
• Be projected in team meetings and one-to-one conversations.

Ultimately, your culture should dictate how you measure your performance and success.

3. Evolve it.

Your culture is organic and will evolve whether you intentionally maintain it or not. Revisit the definitions. A set of values and behaviours appropriate for year one might need another look by year five. Check that you haven’t missed an important touchpoint as you’ve grown.

Smart leaders keep their finger on the pulse. Return to your employees and clients, listen to their stories, observe their behaviours, and act on their feedback. This is true internal communications in action. The speed and scale of your growth will dictate the frequency of these checkpoints, but every six months is a sensible guide.

This process is worth the effort because getting intentional about your culture will drive better business outcomes. McKinsey’s Organisational Health Index shows that organisations with top-quartile cultures post a 60% higher shareholder return than median companies and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile.

People who want to add to your culture will perform better, more easily adapt to change, and help you attract more talent. They will be your champions.

Putting in the effort to define, embed, and evolve your culture during the early years of your start-up will save you a lot of time, money, and energy in the long run.

Let’s talk shop

Corporate culture: If you’re going to improve it, talk about it

Time to read: 4 minutes

Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd, looks at why companies need to talk about their corporate culture and values. And why it should be part of every communications plan.

Businesses must regularly monitor and assess seated KPIs to perform optimally. Typically, these KPIs surround functions such as sales, technology infrastructure, PR and marketing, and client relationships.

Critical though these metrics are, they are the supporting walls of the corporate edifice. Without a solid foundation, they are liable to collapse.

That foundation is the corporate culture. Many businesses neglect corporate culture in favour of shorter-term pursuits, yet developing a strong, inclusive, and supportive culture is the key to unlocking maximum potential.

However, simply embedding a strong culture is not enough if you want to reap its rewards; you have to talk about it.

In this blog, we look at the benefits of a great corporate culture. How a selection of Comms Crowd clients developed theirs, and how we’ve helped spread news of their successes to the masses.

The ‘Great Resignation’ has brought corporate culture to the fore

Developing a robust corporate culture was always important, but the Covid-19 pandemic made it critical in the years that followed.

In what became known as the ‘Great Resignation’, employees voluntarily quit their jobs in unprecedented numbers. Between July and September 2021 alone, over 400,000 UK workers left their jobs.

Employees frequently cited a hostile working environment as a reason for leaving. Indeed, such was the prevalence of the phenomenon that ‘toxic workplaces’ became a trending topic nationwide.

The disruption of the Covid years prompted fresh expectations among the workforce regarding what behaviours they are prepared to tolerate. A poor or neglected corporate culture may have been grudgingly endured before the virus escaped ground zero. Times have changed since.

Quorsus, a strategic financial services consultancy and former Comms Crowd client, led discussions on the dangers of toxic company cultures and how to avoid them. Indeed, the company itself was established on a vow that its corporate culture would be positively imbued and reinforced by core values.

Consultancies must prioritise embedding a robust culture and strong values because their people are their product. Quorsus will tell you that it has gone some way to explaining the extraordinary success.

We amplified Quorsus’ approach and message, ensuring its impact was felt across its sector and beyond.

A robust corporate culture breeds productivity

Ask any education professional, and they’ll confirm that praise is essential for a child’s development. The chemical reaction experienced from being told they’ve done a great job immediately boosts a child’s sense of self-worth. It encourages them to continue working hard so they might experience it again.

In other words, it has the power to supercharge their productivity.

Yet, something changes when we reach adulthood and enter the world of work. It’s as though we forget these reward centres exist and how powerful they are. Consequently, praise is often replaced by criticism and our inner child – still so easily motivated by encouraging words – is swallowed by a vortex of ruthless expectation.

Ignoring this reality is short-sighted, to say the least. A national Workplace Culture Survey of US employees found that 63% of respondents claim that workplace culture directly impacts their organisation’s success.

Abundant opportunities drive productivity. When former client and friend of The Crowd dxw, a leading employee-owned digital agency, launched its Returners’ Programme, it broke new ground.

dxw partnered with The Comms Crowd to share and disseminate its story with potential stakeholders. The coverage was such that dxw has become recognised as an expert provider of digital public services and opportunities to those who may feel they have passed them by.

Together, we ensured the world knew of dxw’s leadership position in creating a positive, inclusive culture. In fact, it became one of the first companies to introduce gender pronouns into email signatures.

dxw’s small size notwithstanding, the firm won an array of company culture awards, helping to attract exceptional like-minded talent. Essential for any fast-growing technology enterprise.

Positive cultures promote development

‘The Great Resignation’ jolted many organisations into action. Not wanting to lose their top talent, these firms put a renewed focus on facilitating professional development. They recognised that avoiding high employee turnover requires more than just an amenable working environment.

Before any recruitment drive, senior leaders review factors such as pay scales, perks, and benefits. However attractive they can make each perk if the organisation is renowned as a place where careers stagnate, the drive is doomed to fail.

As such, building a positive culture requires embedding opportunities and routes to success at all levels of the business. The best cultures underpin this by committing to personal development as much as professional development. Achievements are properly rewarded, and a healthy work/life balance is respected.

Another former client, JDX Consulting, since acquired by Delta Capita, attributed its sustained global success to a carefully developed culture. It promoted inclusivity, coaching, and empowerment, allowing the firm to attract diverse, high-quality talent from all walks of life.

By entrusting The Comms Crowd with articulating and sharing its methodologies, JDX became the corporate culture benchmark within its sector before being acquired by Delta Capita.

We then worked with JDX to promote its Festival of Learning, a professional development programme set up by the firm’s HR division. The initiative gives employees the space and tools to grow professionally at their own pace and take control of their career progress.

Showcase your corporate culture with The Comms Crowd

Our clients love us because we’re adept at getting their messages and successes into the public domain and the publications their stakeholders engage with.

It deserves to be celebrated if you have invested time and money into developing a corporate culture that breeds energy, achievement, opportunity, and happiness.

Moreover, potential talent, partners, investors, and clients want to know what you’ve done and are doing. Speak to The Comms Crowd today; our internal comms consultant, PRs, and writers can ensure they will.

Let’s talk shop

The Importance of Building Trust in the World of Regtech

Time to read: 2 minutes

Lauren Bowden, Fintech content lead at The Comms Crowd looks at the opportunities and challenges facing Regtech firms, and the role trust plays in ensuring future success.

When the term Regtech burst onto the scene circa 2015, it was met with mixed reactions. Some were cynical. They dismissed it as spin for existing regulatory technology vendors to benefit from Fintech’s halo effect. Others saw it as a way for new start-ups to shake things up, offering more cost-effective and agile SaaS-based solutions to post-GFC problems.

Regtech is here to stay

Seven years later, with the market projected to reach around USD 33.1 Billion by 2026, countless players are thriving in all areas, from tax to cannabis. Established vendors embrace the portmanteau with open arms and invest in more flexible, forward-looking business models. Few would now dispute that Regtech is here to stay.

That said – there are still a few hurdles these firms must jump before they can realise their full potential. According to the FCA, one of the most active regulators supporting this burgeoning market, it all comes down to trust:

“The trust element is ingrained in the complex ‘business case for RegTech’ – RegTech firms need to convince firms to allow them to work with their most sensitive data assets and systems to solve their problems.”

For regtech firms, trust is everything

Policies, procedures, and – most importantly – legal documentation go a long way to ensure sensitive data assets and systems remain safe. But before anything gets signed, Regtech firms must find ways to demonstrate their trustworthiness. Of course, trust needs to be embedded internally through a solid culture. That culture must cascade from the top down and be cultivated by HR. However, it must also be demonstrable externally, especially in a crowded market. This can be achieved with transparent marketing communications.

• External communications should be planned carefully for start-ups with many moving parts. Investing in building relationships with trade journalists marks the beginning of the journey and is always time well spent. These independent and credible sources are essential conduits for getting news out when the time is right.
• For more established vendors looking to move into the Regtech space, a solid analyst relations programme should be at the heart of the product roadmap. Honest, open, and regular dialogue with the gatekeepers of those ever-important magic quadrants, waves, or rankings should be prioritised.
• Solid content marketing and a strategic social media plan should be shared directly with prospects and customers, including blogs, e-books, infographics, and whitepapers and posted to social media platforms like LinkedIn. Content must speak authentically to the right audience, be relevant, add value, and avoid the overly promotional. With the amount of change in the regulatory landscape, the opportunities for subject matter experts to demonstrate thought leadership and guidance are plentiful.

Your voice deserves to be heard

Regtech firms can employ an arsenal of comms tools at various stages of their evolution. The art is knowing when, what, how, and to whom.

Working with communications professionals who understand the nuances of this complex, jargon-filled environment and how to get messages to hit home will ensure your voice is heard.

Getting our own house in order

Time to read: 1 minute

Founder Sam Howard reflects on how it’s easy to forget to talk the talk when you’re so busy walking that walk.

Simply put, our role at The Comms Crowd is to help companies best articulate what they do. How they help their customers, and why they do it better than their competitors.

We then roll out – in various engaging formats – across the most appropriate comms channels for their target audiences:

• Website
• Content
• PR
• Social media, etc.

We have all built our careers focused on this and only this. Naturally, we have become really rather good at it. As a result, we have enjoyed eight years of strong and steady growth.

But then we made the CLASSIC MISTAKE:

We were so busy looking after our clients we fell behind on our own positioning and comms. Fairly embarrassing for a comms agency!

Like the firms we work with, our strengths have evolved over the years. This means our competitive advantage has shifted, as has the type of clients we work with.

In the early days we sported the start-up vibe of, ‘we are small, agile and affordable’ and of course we were, and still are. However, over time we attracted and retained some of the best independent talent in the industry. We also developed a deep pool of sector knowledge and a wider skill set. And as a consequence, we have enjoyed working with a much wider range of companies. Thus, alongside our first loves, the start-ups, we find ourselves increasingly working with larger firms, too.

Yet our website, blog content, and social feeds did not reflect this evolution at all.

Having identified the problem, we spent a few long weeks at the keyboard as we overhauled everything from the ground up. Now, our website and all our social content clearly articulate our core value and how we are best able to help our clients.  We have created the space to demonstrate our fintech and tech/cyber experience and our comms expertise, and made sure we have lots of lovely client stories to go with.

So now we are all set! Bring it on, 2020; we’re ready for ya!

What Does a Great Blog look like?

Time to read: 3 minutes

So you’re a B2B Tech firm and your marketing team has agreed that a blog is the way forward (and indeed it is). This is the blog you need to read next. Sandra Vogel, who heads up tech content for The Crowd and ghost blogs for a range of firms, passes on her advice.

So what does a great blog look like? The answer depends on what you want to get out of a blog, so for the sake of argument let’s say you run a business that sells goods or services. There’s a lot of competition for whatever it is you do, and you need to remind people you exist. You use a range of different methods to do this – a blog on your web site is part of the mix.

To meet the requirements of your business, your blog needs to keep people coming back. It’s a tool for you to deliver useful information to existing and potential customers or clients. It’s a way of showing off your organisational personality. And it’s a way of helping people understand more about your products, new launches, upgrades, exciting ideas and plans you have for the business.

That’s a lot for a blog to do. Here are some guidelines for better blogging:

• Keep it short. In general try for no more than 600 to 700 words. People will get bored if they have to read more than that, and you might easily stray off the topic at hand.
• Keep it simple. Don’t try to cram all your wisdom into a single blog. Have a point to make, make it, expand a little, maybe give some examples. Develop your point of course, but be careful not to make things too complex.
• Do you need a call to action? I see some blogs that include a call to action every single time. As a reader I know how the blog will end – it’ll be ‘now go and look at our great product’. If that happens every time readers know a blog is a glorified advertisement. They’ll get bored, go away, and maybe never come back. Calls to action are important. But you probably don’t need one in every blog.
• Connect well with the rest of the site. Do you publish white papers, news releases, new product updates? Of course you do. Tie blogs in so that there is continuity, and so you can link to other resources where possible. Don’t leave the blog out on a limb.
• It’s a good idea to have a forward plan so that you don’t get to ‘blog day’ and sit staring at a blank screen wondering what to write. If you work with an agency – and that’s a really sensible idea – then they’ll help with this.
• Be regular. It’s a good idea to have a schedule. Perhaps you want to put a new post online every two weeks. If that’s what you want to do, stick to it. When you make your plan (above), make your schedule too. Both plan and schedule can change in the light of events, but if they’re not in place a blog is the kind of thing that an organisation can let slip if it is busy. A blog that’s not up to date is arguably worse than no blog at all.
• Look from the outside in. Visitors might not use your product or service, might not know your business at all, might just be passing by. Think about it from their point of view. This can be hard to do in-house. It’s another area where an agency can be really helpful.

There’s another guideline that’s overarching on all of the above. It’s about the writing quality. The tone, writing style, grammatical accuracy and readability of your blog speaks volumes – it’s probably more important than the content. Really. You might have the most fantastic point to make, but if the message is garbled, nobody is going to get to the bottom of the screen.

If a blog is going to work for you, you need to put energy, effort and expertise into it. Writing a blog is hard work, and it is a skill people learn and hone through years of experience. Ensuring that the blog plan and schedule are well managed and that topics are spot-on can also be tricky in a busy business. There is no shame in lacking the skills or the time that’s needed in-house. Bringing them in from outside can take your business blog to the next level.

Five tips for Building a Solid Content Marketing Plan

Time to read: 3 minutes

Lauren Bowden, who looks after FinTech Content Marketing here at The Crowd, draws on her in-house experience to outline the foundations of a solid content marketing plan.

I moved into a content marketing role around six years ago after a decade as a PR practitioner. While certain aspects of the two disciplines were similar – story crafting, messaging, creativity, etc. – my eyes were opened to the commercial side of the business. Moreover, how the various parts of an organisation fit together.

Earlier this year, I was asked to be one of 11 content marketing experts to participate in an eBook on ‘using the content lifecycle to maximise content ROI’. Below is a summary of my contribution, with some additional insight I have gathered recently.

     1. Pool your knowledge

The FinTech sales cycle can easily take around 18 months. It usually involves a plethora of decision-makers who marketeers need to understand to target their content marketing campaigns. It requires serious teamwork and buy-in from all key stakeholders, not just the sales team, who often are positioned as the only link to the client and, therefore, the primary go-to for marketing. Professional services team members have invaluable on-the-ground insight into the daily dealings at client sites. Meanwhile, product management has a macro view of the industry and can point to future trends. Tapping into their knowledge is crucial when devising a content marketing plan.

     2. Do your research

It is rare that only one product or solution will need to be pushed to the market throughout the year. Content marketing plans, therefore, should be drawn up for each area of focus. Some plans will be more detailed to reflect the organisation’s priorities. But, at the very least, they should cover information on:

• Market drivers
• Solution description
• Key messages
• Target market
• Buyers’ journey mapping
• Key competitors
• Challenges
• Localisation plans
• A content calendar

This will take time but always pays dividends when managing workloads and budgets effectively – ultimately measuring effectiveness over the year.

     3. Plan well – but leave some room to wiggle

Budgeting requires you to have a clear idea of the goals you must achieve in each campaign—goals communicated to and accepted by stakeholders. This does not mean planning and budgeting for every detail of every content piece with no wiggle room. Even the most robust plan and organised team will have unexpected opportunities that are too good to pass up. That’s why it’s always essential to have at least a 10 per cent contingency built into the budget.

Another benefit of a strong content plan is that it helps you manage supplier costs. With a well-thought-out plan, many items can be budgeted for upfront, suppliers notified beforehand about what work you have planned over the year, and packages negotiated accordingly. Collectively, it gives you more bang for your buck.

It is also crucial to keep up to date with your existing suppliers’ new offerings and to explore the marketplace for other suppliers who can help you execute new tactics. This kind of market scanning is particularly important for in-house marketing teams so they can keep abreast of the latest techniques and methods.

     4. Embrace the data

Ensuring you hit the right audiences with your content can be challenging, especially when targeting multiple stakeholders who make collective decisions. When you look back on this kind of win, it isn’t easy to pinpoint the influence that specific content pieces had on that sale. You’re not going to turn around to a salesperson after an 18-month-long sales process and tell her the real reason she got that deal was because of a video or white paper. Unless you want to be laughed out of the sales meeting.

Marketing Technology (aka MarTech) can be your best friend here. Whether it’s CRM, marketing automation or content management systems, it can be crucial to ensure content gets into key audiences’ hands. For example, you can build a picture of what happens during a sales cycle with CRM data. Retrospective analyses can reveal how many people in an organisation engaged with which content pieces. When it turns out that 12 different people from the same firm have all clicked on multiple pieces of content, or if the person clicked on multiple pieces of content, you have a much stronger case to prove your campaign’s effectiveness.

If the content is not hitting the mark, messages are not reaching their targets. Or they are simply not resonating. Thus, tweaks must be made on the fly. This shouldn’t happen too much with campaigns that are well thought out at the planning stage. However, sometimes you must adjust, try different things and then stay in constant communication with campaign stakeholders to ensure you remain on the right path.

     5. Stay curious

Another useful tool to help you dive deeper into campaign effectiveness was shared by Raconteur Media recently. They applied the well-known BCG Matrix to the business of content creation:

Figure 1 Content Creation Matrix from Raconteur Media

The general guidance is that you milk the cows to feed the stars. That is, dedicate around 70 per cent of your resources to creating more of your best-performing content types, positioning them prominently in the customer journey, and optimising the process as much as possible.

Set aside the remaining 30 per cent of the resource budget for experimentation. Depending on your risk appetite, you might split this allocation further between moderate‐ and high‐risk activities.

At The Comms Crowd, we can not only help you create winning content but also work with you to plot those pieces along your customer journeys and find the best way to resonate with the right decision-makers at the right time. Email us to find out more.

The Power of the Podcast

Time to read: 2 minutes

We look at how podcasts are becoming the star pupil in the B2B marketing class of 2019.

Podcasts are thriving in the UK. Nearly 6 million people now tune in each week, according to a survey from Ofcom (September 2018) – with the number of weekly podcast listeners having almost doubled in five years – from 3.2 million in 2013 to 5.9 million in 2018.

While podcasts were traditionally created with consumers in mind, thanks to the tech evolution, brands large and small are getting in on the action.

The soaring popularity of podcasts has led many B2B publications to introduce them to their websites. Be it paid-for ops, interview placements or the opportunity to submit pre-recorded material, the rise of the podcast is opening new avenues to B2B PR professionals looking to get clients heard as well as seen.

So, should your client be hopping on the podcasting bandwagon?

While podcasts are relatively easy to make, producing and managing a regular branded podcast is a big commitment. It is not something I would recommend to any client taking their first steps into podcasting. Clients need to think realistically about how much time they can dedicate to recording and the frequency with which they can publish content. The key to podcasts is consistency. If you want to be effective, you should offer something that listeners can tune into regularly.

Our advice

We recommend making podcasts part of your existing PR and marketing strategy that complements other activities.

As PRs, we should familiarise ourselves with existing podcasts in our client’s sector. In our case, that’s technology. We should be engaging with these podcasts and the editors producing them to identify available opportunities. This might include guest speaker slots or themes of the month that clients can get involved in. You should invest time in pitching for slots, establishing if there are opportunities to submit client speakers, or even submitting pre-recorded material regularly.

Beyond ease of production, the great thing about podcasts is that you don’t need to duplicate content. You can utilise written articles as topics for discussion and kill two birds with one stone. In addition, there is the advantage of longevity, as content can be listened to repeatedly.

As PR consultants, we should look for opportunities for clients to contribute to podcast conversations (as with all other media forms). It allows the speaker to convey information more interactively and engagingly than words on a page. We should encourage clients to augment their PR strategies with podcasts and start honing their broadcast skills in preparation.

Writing the American Marketing and PR Playbook: Part II

Time to read: 3 minutes

Jo Detavernier, vice president  of Swyft, our US partner and the founding firm of our global network, First PR Alliance,  provides this two part guide. It’s for UK tech companies on how not to get lost in translation when venturing across the pond:

Part Two: UK marketing to US: getting it right

Any modern marketing and PR campaign must be integrated. Integration implies that you will try to have the following channels working together to reinforce one another:

• Your ‘owned’ (your website, blog, etc.) channels
• Your earned (media coverage) channels
• Your paid (advertising) channels

In many cases, ‘shared’ (online shares) is added to the mix, equating to PESO (paid, earned, shared & owned). We stick to the first three tracks and count shared with earned.

Here is a list of tools available for a marketing and PR campaign in the US. For each campaign, you will make a unique selection of building blocks. As you’ve been fairly warned about selecting the right market segment, speaking the right language, funding your effort sufficiently, and employing the right channels, your marketing activities can yield the highest possible return.

Owned media

• Website content tuned to an American audience (either a U.S. site or American pages on your global site) and plenty of call-to-actions help conversions through the sales funnel.
• Blog with articles that are relevant to American buyer personas.
• Send newsletters that are geared towards different buyer personas.
• Tailor video content to provide valuable information to prospective buyers.

Earned media

• When warranted, distribute press releases to American news outlets that serve your target audience and wire services (e.g., Business Wire).
• Offer interviews to journalists who attend a trade show at which you have a booth.
• Pitch exclusive stories to journalists when practical.
• Do a press tour and visit journalists’ offices for one-on-one talks. This assumes you are a sizable player in your respective industry or are first-to-market with disruptive technology.
• Contribute articles to trade magazines.

Paid media

• Advertise in print or online media.
• Promote content and/or ads on social media.
• SEA on Google and/or Bing.
• Sponsor posts (native advertising) / advertorials in print or online media.
• Sponsor podcasts.

Integrating owned, earned and paid

Marketing and PR campaigns that yield the best results are fully integrated. Pitching interviews on a story in October, promoting posts on Facebook in January and paying for a sponsored article in March can and will have some impact. However, they are not nearly as powerful as a fully integrated campaign, where you bring everything together in mutually reinforcing ways.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Say you have just surveyed a hot issue in your industry. How can you maximize the impact of that survey to increase brand awareness and stimulate lead generation?

• Owned: Make the survey report available on your site for people who leave their email addresses. Make sure you respect American CAN-SPAM regulations while you are at it). If possible, write a series of blog posts on the results, illustrated by an infographic. Dedicate a status update to the survey on your Facebook page, and publish a slide deck on your SlideShare account.
• Earned: Send a release about the survey to a major tech news outlet or a trade publication if it has enough news value. Pitch interviews with your CEO about the results and use the survey to feed your proof points for a contributed article in a key trade magazine.
• Paid: Companies will typically not pay to promote a survey. However, the buzz created by the survey will allow your now ‘primed’ audiences to be extra receptive to any advertising campaign you run in the months following the campaign.

The US and UK markets are different

In these two blogs, we have discussed some common mistakes that European companies will typically make when looking to expand in the US. And what advice these companies should heed if they want to succeed across the pond.

The American market is, in many regards, very different from the UK. Those entrepreneurs and marketing managers who stick to their UK playbook when arriving in the US will do themselves a huge disservice.

This white paper is based on the Swyft whitepaper: How Should European Companies Write Their American Marketing and PR Playbook? Swyft is the founding member and organizer of First PR Alliance. For more information on Swyft, visit growswyft.com

First PR Alliance is a network of independent PR and marketing agencies that offers highly coordinated support spanning borders, time zones, languages and cultures. For more information, visit firstpralliance.com.

Writing the American Marketing & PR Playbook: Part I

Time to read: 3 minutes

Jo Detavernier, vice president of Swyft, our US partner and founding firm of our global network, First PR Alliance,  provides this two-part guide. It’s for UK tech companies on how not to get lost in translation when venturing across the pond:

Part One: UK marketing to US: Common pitfalls

At first sight, promoting services and products in the American market looks similar to how it is done in the UK. Are American B2B buyers not comparable to their counterparts across the pond? And are the best means to reach them the same as in the UK?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer to both questions is a resounding ‘NO.’ UK companies need a dedicated American marketing and PR playbook to succeed in the American market.

So, in the next two posts, we look at what not to do and what to do to crack the US market.

What UK companies do wrong (most of the time)

1. Trying to ‘boil the ocean’

Trying to ‘boil the ocean’ is an American expression for trying to accomplish an insurmountable task or making a project unnecessarily difficult.

Here’s the thing: the American market is simply too large for any European company to attack all at once. At least not with the budget one normally allocates to attack a single European country.

Omar Mohout, a prominent Belgian professor in Enterprise who teaches at the Solvay Brussels School of Business and Economics, recommends that European companies first target one specific American socio-demographic or geographic segment.

For example, say you developed a perfect SaaS accounting solution for small and mid-sized professional services organizations in the US. You might choose to target American law offices in a handful of major metro areas first rather than attempt to sell the solution across multiple industries and geographic markets.

In other words, figure out how to thrive and be successful in one specific niche, or one geographic market (for example, the state of Texas). Then, you will have something to show when it’s time to convince investors to participate in your next big push to grow market share. Your organic growth and the extra funding will help make the next chapter in your American expansion story a reality.

2. Underfunding the effort

This second mistake is closely related to the first. Not picking a small segment to thrive in will cause you to underfund your marketing and PR efforts. However, even the ones that manage to pick a realistic segment will often commit critical budgeting mistakes.

For instance, marketing and PR agency costs run higher in the United States than in the UK. Especially if you are contracting agencies on the West and East Coast. It stands to reason that the cost of any effort aimed at brand awareness and lead generation in one European country is much smaller than attacking the EU as a whole. The same rationale applies to the US, only on a larger scale.

The per unit cost of acquiring leads may also vary in the US, if only because the degree of competition in the tech space is incredibly intense. Even sponsored posts on national trade websites will cost much more than their European counterparts. Google Adwords campaigns are tricky, given the competitive nature of many U.S. tech businesses. It’s not uncommon for bidding amounts to run so high as to make the ROI on leads untenable.

What can you do to avoid underfunding your marketing efforts? Aim for what you can reasonably afford. Don’t attempt to overreach on market size and, in the process, underfund the effort. Do plenty of research into your target market and what works and doesn’t work when it comes to marketing and PR. Also, don’t be shy about contacting local agencies for advice. What you learn from them could be the difference between success and failure.

3. Not speaking the language

We share a language, but speaking the right language doesn’t only relate to how things are said. It also concerns the core messages of your marketing campaigns and how you articulate them. American culture is different from UK culture. A simple edit of a brochure or website into American English will not suffice. You must ‘think’ like an American to authentically attract their attention. Otherwise, you risk alienating your target audience within seconds.

4. Picking the wrong channels

You have selected a segment you want to target, but now the work begins. Given your budget and target audience, you must select the best channel mix to achieve your marketing and PR objectives. If you are new to the market, you must spend most of your time creating awareness. Don’t forget to track your inbound leads and properly attribute their source (e.g., Twitter ad, Google AdWords campaign, trade show, etc.) in some kind of spreadsheet. Fortunately, many marketing automation platforms (HubSpot, Pardot, etc.) do reasonably well at lead attribution. Lead attribution will only partially help inform your marcom spending decisions. Take SEA (Search Engine Advertising), for example: For European marketers, SEA equals Google AdWords. But Bing had in January 2018 a 23.7 % share of the American search engine market (source: Statista).

While it’s not the largest search engine regarding search volumes and ad spending, you can’t afford to ignore it in the long run if you hope to pick up market share against your competitors.

Now that we know the mistakes to avoid, the next post will examine how UK companies should write their American marketing and PR playbook.