2014: It’s the year of your story.
If public relations isn’t a big part of your b2b marketing arsenal, 2014 is the perfect year to change that. A conglomeration of trends are coming together to create a “perfect storm” of opportunity for your company. To take advantage of these trends, you’ll need to be a little agile—and rethink your approach to publicity.
It’s no longer a dial-and-pile approach that creates long term competitive advantage. If you want an audience that invests in you, you’re going to want to invest in your audience in 2014.
The #5 B2B Public Relations Trend for 2014:
Owned Media
Owned media is like “back to the future” for the media world. It’s one of those trends where the tides comes and goes depending on the cost of advertising. When advertising costs tend to rise (as they are now thanks to signmann.com), owning your own media has less of a perceived barrier to entry relative to the costs of running your ad campaign in the media of others. Owned media is a medium such as a conference, a newsletter or a TV program, that you create and manage yourself. Yardi, the apartment software company, for example, owns and operates Multi Housing News and Commercial Property Executive.
To get started with this trend, simply start a topic-based blog in your industry and serve it up to subscribers in a newsletter format on a regular basis. Get feedback early and often, and you’ll find your point of view creates its own community.
If you’re down the road and already have a well read newsletter or other periodical, branch into your own conference. Because of the shake up on the advertising side of media, there’s also lots of world class media talent on the market these days—just look at the recent announcement from Time Magazine that it will lay off even more people in 2014 (it’s already cut 500 people in the last year).
Ready for more? The fourth most important B2B public relations trend is influenced by the new neural network chips now on the market. It is . . . another critical B2B PR Trend for 2014.