Category: Growth

Here, Whiteoaks’ Chief Client Officer John Broy discusses:

  • Why the month of August offers a chance for profitable introspection
  • What to do if your PR is losing its edge
  • Boosting PR performance with KPIs

 

In many industries, the few weeks after the schools break up are a quieter time, when due to holidays, the daily demands on a business are not as intense, providing an opportunity for introspection.

With less day-to-day activity, this is a chance to invest time in internal planning and the kind of strategic thinking that supports the long-term growth of your business.

In this blog we’ll consider how companies in the B2B tech sector can use the summer lull to revise their PR strategies for greater impact. It is certainly true that August provides the breathing space, because it is a time of lighter news cycles, smaller audiences and reduced activity among journalists.

Are there any signs your campaign is getting stale?

Any campaign can become stale because of outdated messaging and lack of media engagement. Content may be going over well-trodden ground that induces media fatigue and has lost relevance for audiences.

This is where there is a need for hard work – stepping outside your comfort zone to assess whether messaging reflects what makes the company unique and helps it stand out from the competition. Teams can help by coming together to brainstorm new story angles, look at existing themes, questioning how they have moved on and where you can be ahead of the curve – beating your competitors to the punch.

Take a fresh look at the media landscape

The review should also examine any changes in the media landscape that inevitably occur over the course of a PR campaign. Are the publications you target still read by the audiences you want to reach? Have publications shifted their focus to other areas? Are there any new journalists or publications that need to be added to your media list?

Taking the time to review your current media list is an extremely worthwhile task, after all if it’s coverage you’re aiming to achieve you need to ensure your contacts and understanding of what they’re looking for is kept continuously up to date.

It’s also a great opportunity to look at the type of content publications want – do you need to look at the imagery you have to support your outreach, or are key publications after video soundbites?

To maximise media relevance, it is important too, to review your PR calendar to ensure you attend or contribute to the right events, and are ready to respond to any significant announcements or trends in industry thinking that emerge.

Are the KPIs right?

To get the most success from PR, it should be aligned from the very outset with your business’ strategic goals. However, these can of course evolve over time. The summer is a good halfway point through the year to look at whether those business objectives set out at the start of a campaign still apply, for instance, are you still going after that particular target market or are you still focusing on a certain solution etc.? Getting the answers to those questions will help to ensure that your PR activity still matches up. And if those objectives have changed, then it’s only logical the approach to PR should follow suit.

This aligns to that fact that for PR to deliver it must be measurable, so you should never hesitate about revising KPIs to ensure Performance PR maintains maximum effectiveness.

For instance, if driving website traffic is becoming a priority, it might be time to shift focus to activity and measurement that reflects that, looking at a digital PR approach to combine SEO and PR best practices.

So those summer days when the living is theoretically easy present a great opportunity to run the rule over a PR strategy. The result should be more sharply-focused content, stronger media relationships and much greater impact in the second half of the business year.

If you want to audit your current PR activity and understand how Performance PR can work for you, please get in touch now to find out more.

In this blog, Hugh Cadman, Senior Content Creator, shares:

  • The growing need for data centre providers to differentiate
  • The role of the explainer video
  • Why creativity isn’t off limits for B2B tech brands

When a co-location or edge cloud provider unveils a new facility or service tier, they will focus on telling a story about why their newly-launched operation stands out from the competition.

With co-location and edge computing set for expansion and increased competition, explaining important points of differentiation simply and succinctly is a necessity. Every provider has story to tell about how its new service or facility is the solution to industry challenges or niche requirements. But the number of voices clamouring for attention is growing all the time.

There are currently an estimated 274 colocation providers in the UK (and 523 data centres) and the market is set to expand significantly at more than 13% compound annual growth up to 2030, according to ResearchandMarkets. Demand is driven by corporate and public sector digitalisation initiatives and the massive growth in AI use among businesses and consumers.

In addition, the rollout of 5G and advanced industrial IoT networks will continue to stimulate the growth of edge workloads – processing data closer to the point of generation or consumption for ultra-low latency. To meet this demand, the edge data centre market is forecast to grow at nearly 19% compound annual growth up to 2030, according to Grand View Research.

 

A gateway to greater detail

With more data centres planned all the time, a provider operating in these markets needs a way to explain to prospects why their site offers faster connectivity, more sustainable processes, or more robust cyber security than the competition. In edge computing, for example, a regional data centre may have significant advantages for nearby businesses compared with larger competitors based close to the main connectivity hubs in the South-East.

Security, hardware maintenance, resilience and sustainability are always high on clients’ lists of concerns, so an explainer video animation must swiftly convey key points, providing a gateway to the greater detail available in slides, datasheets and brochures.

This approach works well as an introduction for the non-IT specialists in a potential client. The people who hold the purse-strings are often unaware of the extent to which data centres differ in the services they offer. Many people who are not involved in IT can too easily see data centres as undifferentiated, featureless, automated bunkers.

 

Creativity in connectivity

A concise animated explainer video developed with the help of a B2B tech PR agency can make all the difference, especially those with in-house creative departments. The addition of a voiceover can support in guiding prospects through the mysteries of each operation – from racks and cabling to uninterruptible power supplies.

Data centre cooling is a hot topic because of electricity and water consumption. An animation provides a quickly-understood explanation of the options and technologies such as hot aisle/cold aisle configurations, adiabatic methods, liquid cooling or renewable energy routing and so on.

Visualising what was previously invisible, an animation can effectively ‘peel away’ the wall of the facility to show what happens inside a data centre – including the hardware, cabling and connectivity.

Connectivity is increasingly critical as a point of differentiation in data centres, offering low latency and ease of data-transmission to other regions of the country or the wider world for specific purposes. But among non-specialists, it is easily overlooked. Concepts such as peering or internet exchanges are poorly understood. An animated video could address this, by for example, using live action to track a data packet’s journey from the server rack to a regional point of presence (PoP) in real time, summarising in a few words what is taking place and why it matters.

A video can sum up how a provider meets specific industry requirements and outline the benefits of superfast fibre and dark fibre. Experienced script-writers and animation teams can describe sophisticated approaches such as SD-WAN and SASE in simple terms, along with their advantages for business performance.

Creativity isn’t limited just because you’re operating in a tech space. Introducing a character to personify your offering can help the target audience understand what goes on inside a data centre, for instance. This approach is memorable, differentiated and can help to explain complex topics in layman’s terms. Such initiatives can be a breath of fresh air which cut through the standard, expected explainer video angle and bring something new to the table.

The value that data centre operators can derive from a short video goes beyond the 90 seconds or so of animation. Having attracted attention to their points of differentiation, data centre providers can draw on the services of a Performance PR agency to develop gated transcripts or Q&A documents which generate and track additional leads and build ongoing sales value. Short and sweet, videos pack a real punch.

To find out more, contact the Whiteoaks team today and for more inspiration view our creative showreel.