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Thought leadership or not?

Thought leadership or not?

One of the trickiest jobs of a PR professional consists of guiding corporate executives to the proper mix of marketing and thought leadership in various types of writing.

The easy part, relatively speaking, is persuading them that if they insist on promoting their product directly in a bylined article, it won’t be published. In case they have any doubts, you can just suggest that they take a look at the publication online and see if any of its articles are marketing-oriented.

On the other hand, by its nature a case study or a press release is strictly promotional. Readers expect that the story will focus on a product or a business deal and that it will be structured to make the company and the product look as good as possible.

But the boundaries are much more porous when it comes to white papers, sometimes known as position papers. Over the years, I’ve worked for clients who have had many different ideas about what such papers should be.

Ultimately, of course, they all wanted to sell their products. But only some executives grasp the concept of a truly effective white paper: It should draw in readers with a point of view about an industry trend and promote the company’s product indirectly by showing the need for it.

The rest want me to blatantly list the advantages of their product somewhere in the paper. To them, it’s just another form of advertising.

I don’t know whether a rigorous study has ever been done to measure the readership of these two kinds of papers, controlling for length and the demand for information on the topic. But I’d venture to guess that industry stakeholders would be more interested in a paper that gave them information they could use than in another piece of marketing collateral.

Interestingly, big companies are no more likely than small ones to embrace the concept of true thought leadership pieces. Because they’re big, they may commission longer papers that have space to discuss industry trends or government regulations at greater length. But in the end, they still usually want their product promoted, with hardly a fig leaf to cover it.

It was actually a small, rapidly growing firm that gave me the widest rein to show its thought leadership and vision. Over a period of several years, I wrote a dozen or more white papers that helped build the company’s reputation for expertise in population health management.

I always mentioned the need for health IT solutions that could help healthcare organizations manage population health. But for the most part, the papers focused on topics that people needed to know about, ranging from accountable care organizations (ACOs) and patient-centered medical homes to care coordination, patient engagement and post-discharge care. Eventually, the company pulled together my essays into a book that it used effectively as a sales tool.

White papers and byliners are not the only vehicles for thought leadership. Occasionally, if a company CEO is a recognized expert in a particular area, you might be able to get a major publication such as the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post to publish a thought leadership piece by that person.

The easiest way to do this, by the way, is to pitch a letter to the editor. But it has to be on a hot topic, and you have to get it in very quickly.

One way to show a company executive the difference between marketing and thought leadership is to ask him or her where they see a bylined article or position paper being published. If they say they’d like to reach a broad universe, you advise them to think about thought leadership. If they insist on a marketing message, you tell them that it’s probably only going to be posted on their website or printed up for use by their salespeople.

A sophisticated PR professional or marketer knows that organizations need the right mix of these two kinds of communications to be successful. But thought leadership should be part of the package so that companies can impress potential clients with their deep knowledge and brilliant insights.

After reading a white paper or a bylined piece of this type, the potential buyer will probably not go running to your client. But when the organization’s salesperson comes calling, they’re likely to remember something about the company that caught their attention.

Like medicine and angling, PR is as much an art as a science. What it takes to help organizations succeed depends on how many tools you have in your toolkit, and how many different approaches you try. Eventually, if your executives trust you, they will land a fish or two.

Webinar Wisdom

Webinar Wisdom: 3 best practices for webinars that wow and get results

I have a confession. I’m not ashamed. It’s my truth. I love a webinar. I love everything about it. I love writing the title and description. I love promoting it and watching the registration count rise each day. I love when the day finally arrives and the presentation comes to life.

I even love the items on the post-webinar to-do list like sending the follow-up emails to keep the audience engaged, warming up the leads for the sales team or converting them into new sales opportunities. Yes, that’s really why I love webinars. I love the results and by that, I mean the results when everything is done right.

However, I’ve found that many marketing and PR professionals don’t share my pro-webinar passion. In fact, much to my horror and astonishment, many of them are firmly planted in the anti-webinar camp. But I understand their point of view. Most likely, they have been discouraged by a webinar that fell flat, or they simply don’t understand how to harness the true power of a webinar.

As a lover of webinars, with a successful track record over the last decade, I’m here to help with some tried-and-true best practices.

Create customer-focused content

There is almost no better forum than a webinar to highlight your customer’s successes. Why? It’s much different to just read a case study than to have your customers verbally share their stories. On a webinar, attendees can experience that case study live, identify with the challenges and celebrate in the successes which could soon become their own successes with the help of your company.

Now, having a customer co-presenter is the best-case scenario. We know that complete, fully baked customer case studies can be hard to come by or even nearly impossible when companies are launching new products. But there is incredible power in a customer case study that’s still in progress as well. Whether the journey has just begun or the results are preliminary, it’s still better for attendees to hear from their peer rather than just your team.

Webinars with customer co-presenters are almost always more well-attended and more successful. Plus, with customer co-presenters, your company also benefits from being associated with your customer names and brands. Even if someone doesn’t attend your webinar, they may remember that you work with that top hospital.

Prepare for an interactive experience

Even though a webinar is somewhat similar to any other speaking engagement, it’s technically much different. It’s challenging to speak into the phone rather than speak into a crowd of faces that may be either nodding their heads in agreement or nodding off out of boredom. That’s why it’s so important to leverage the technology to create an interactive experience that benefits both your attendees and your speakers.

Even the most basic webinar platforms offer a polling feature which should be used 2-4 times throughout the webinar. We often recommend to clients that they start with a poll question to get a better understanding of what the attendees are looking to learn or why they chose to attend. It can also be helpful for the initial poll question to serve as a gauge for understanding the “level” of attendees. For example, how would they rate their organization’s progress on the journey to value?

Also, did you know that one of the easiest, most painless ways to drive future registrations is right at your fingertips during each webinar? At the end of your presentation, while you still have a captive and hopefully happy audience, simply invite attendees to the next relevant session in your webinar series. When sessions are monthly or quarterly, attendees who enjoyed your webinar usually will vote “yes” via a poll to be automatically registered for the next session.

Focus on follow-up, not just promotion

Lastly, it’s incredibly common for even some of the savviest marketers to focus almost entirely on webinar promotion rather than placing equal importance on the webinar follow-up communications. Don’t neglect the attendees who just spent 30-minutes or an hour with you! They are now primed and ready for more so it’s mission critical to send timely (ideally within 24 hours or less but 48 hours max) follow-up emails to attendees and those who registered but didn’t attend.

It’s also important to send them more than just the webinar recording or the slides. Perhaps you can offer them a new eBook about best practices featured on the webinar or you may have a written case study to share on the same topic. It’s not always about having new content to share. It’s about having relevant content to share and becoming a go-to expert.

Regardless, it’s important for your follow-up communication to be educational and informative to drive continued engagement. After all, once someone spends an hour with you via a webinar, they are more invested. Now it’s about keeping them invested in your content, your customers and most importantly, your company.