Our clients are specialists in their fields. It is what makes a difference to their customers, and often helps them win business. The same logic applies to their suppliers, and when it comes to communications, becoming a true expert in one area is what gives specialist agencies the edge over other, more generalist PRs. A deep understanding of the data storage and related industries, and of those who follow it, for example, ultimately makes a specialist agency quicker to achieve first-class results, and, because time is money, more cost-effective.
Think about it: you would not hire a general handyman to replumb your home – you’d call in an expert. You wouldn’t leave your precious sports car in the hands of the local garage – you’d take it to a specialist. Why would it be different for your company’s PR?
A deep understanding of the industry…
By immersing in a particular industry day in day out, a specialist agency has a greater understanding of your competitive landscape, differentiators, and the pain points that you aim to address.
What’s more, years of experience and pattern recognition enable a specialist agency to more quickly identify the optimal PR strategy and tactics for any given story, or communications project. This is particularly useful when it comes to developing your narratives, press releases, and pitches. Imagine: your engineering team is very excited about a new feature. A specialist PR agency will ask the questions that drill down into what makes it truly unique. They’ll know how to build a story that resonates with the target media (and its audience), and they will also spot – and tell you – if this feature is not strong enough for a news story.
That said, a specialist does not operate in a bubble. Just as an IT vendor’s sales team has to engage beyond its products, technologies, and market, to recognise growth patterns, developments, and challenges, a specialist PR agency also tracks related industries such as media and entertainment, healthcare, finance, etc. to understand the bigger picture.
… and those who follow it
A specialist PR agency builds stronger relationships with the influencers in your space than those who work across many industries. Right now, competition for reporters’, analysts’ and bloggers’ attention is at an all-time high. Hundreds of press releases land in their inboxes each day, followed by pitches, reminders, and phone calls. Detailed knowledge of who responds to different types of content, how, and when, is essential.
When you have what seems like a run-of-the-mill case study, for example, a specialist agency will ask you the right questions to bring it to life. They will know which targets to approach: the journalist who will take stories about end users based in a different country. The analyst who will only talk to a CTO. Perhaps someone who will only write if they have an exclusive.
Familiarity with these preferences avoids wasting everyone’s time, allowing you to spend longer on other activities, saving ‘brownie points’ with your sales team (and your customers), and making your PR budget work much, much harder.
Hiring a specialist PR agency allows you to meet your objectives swiftly and on budget. That agency brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table that will allow highly creative and effective ideas to be a staple of your PR. So go and take your company’s business plan, build an ambitious PR strategy around it, and find an agency to match! You can start by dropping us an email – we’d love to tell you how we’d turbocharge your PR!
