A strong piece of media coverage can introduce your business to someone who has never heard of it. What they find next is just as important.
You might secure a brilliant interview with your founder, but find your website barely addresses the subject they discussed. Your team might publish regularly on LinkedIn, while missing opportunities to develop the ideas you’re pitching to journalists.
There’s plenty of activity, but each piece starts from scratch. So how are all of these individual efforts building towards what you want to be known for?
This is a content strategy question. And it belongs at the heart of any B2B PR programme.
Content strategy helps put your PR ambitions into practice. It guides which ideas deserve investment, what evidence supports them and how to develop them across different channels. It gives articles, interviews, posts and reports a shared purpose, while leaving room to respond when a timely opportunity appears.
Here are five questions to help you connect those efforts and get more from the work you’re already doing.
1. What problem are you trying to solve?
“We want more coverage” is a familiar starting point for many businesses engaging with PR.
To develop a useful B2B content strategy, though, you need to understand what that coverage should help you achieve and why. The problem may well be that too few people know you exist. More often than not, something else needs unpicking.
Perhaps buyers associate your business with one product and overlook everything else you offer. Perhaps they understand your technology but can’t see why changing their existing approach would justify the disruption. You might need to explain an unfamiliar category before anyone is ready to compare suppliers.
Each challenge gives your content a different job. So before getting into formats, channels or how many posts we can squeeze into a month, we need to agree what that job is
In our experience, those early conversations with clients are all about trying to help each other to complete this thought:
We need [a specific audience] to understand [something specific], because [a problem or uncertainty] is currently getting in their way.
“Decision-makers need to know we exist” leaves a whole lot unresolved, whereas “network operators need to understand how a different deployment model could reduce the risk of launching new services” gives you something concrete to work with.
2. What can you contribute that helps your audience?
Once you’ve identified the problem your content needs to address, it’s tempting to get straight into production, especially when the news cycle is moving fast, and opportunities risk passing you by.
AI makes it easier than ever to keep producing content at pace. More posts, more articles, more commentary. Keep feeding the machine and hope something lands.
A passing thought can become a post, an article and a month’s worth of follow-ups before anyone has asked whether it was worth sharing. Worse, it can all look perfectly convincing until you reach the end and struggle to identify what you’ve learnt.
So, what can your business contribute that makes engaging worthwhile?
Your product features are one source of material. I think what’s more interesting is the problems your customers experience, and what your business knows about solving them. How your product will help solve their problems gives people a reason to care. Because, frankly, many people definitely don’t – yet.
3. What job will each format and channel do?
One strong idea can support several pieces of content. Each should give its audience a useful way into the subject.
It’s not exactly a revolutionary idea, but it’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of when everyone is concentrating on getting their own piece out of the door.
For example, when planning a programme for a telecoms technology provider, we assigned different roles to the proposed formats. Short videos would provide an accessible introduction, while articles and expert conversations would develop the argument. A landing page was needed to bring the proposition and supporting information together.
We also considered how those assets would reach relevant audiences through the company’s channels, expert networks and paid distribution.
That thinking helps you make better production decisions. You can explain why a video needs to be short, what an interview should explore and which questions belong on the website.
4. Does your content back up what you're saying in the media?
Back to that interview with your founder. Someone reads it, becomes interested and looks up your company. What happens next?
A vague product page can leave them doing a lot of work to connect an engaging story with what you actually offer. Check whether they can find a fuller explanation, evidence behind the claims and a useful next step.
This needn’t become a website overhaul or a series of requests to another busy department that get sent to the back of the queue. The bare bones may be there, and you might simply need to update a page or make an existing resource easier to find.
Where another team owns the content, involve them early enough to agree what’s needed. Bring design colleagues into those decisions, too. They may see a better way to explain a technical process or organise the evidence before the copy has been written and approved.
5. How will you know what to develop next?
Agree how you’ll review the work while you’re planning it. Decide what information you need, who holds it and when you’ll discuss it.
The Impact stage of Wildfire’s Think.Bold approach looks at awareness, perception and engagement. Apply that thinking to your content: what would you expect people to recognise, understand or do differently if the work were succeeding?
If the aim is to explain an unfamiliar proposition, are journalists communicating the intended message? Are sales colleagues finding the supporting material useful?
Website engagement and relevant enquiries can add to the picture, where that information is available. Be clear about what each measure can tell you and why it matters.
This is also your opportunity to learn what works, what doesn’t and what deserves more investment. Regular review processes are invaluable for understanding which messages, formats and channels earned relevant attention, helping inform subsequent phases.
Content strategy gives your PR something to build on
Coverage can introduce your business. What people find next, and whether it fits together, decides whether that introduction leads anywhere. Before commissioning another article or scheduling another month of posts, work out who you’re helping, what they need to understand and what your business can contribute. Then build the programme around those answers.
