Successful PR in 2024 employs a powerful blend of strategy, technical experience and creativity that holistically elevates traditional PR by embracing the digital landscape with a multi-channel approach. From SEO and content marketing to influencer marketing and social media techniques, brands must consistently deliver disruptive and attention-grabbing campaigns to stay ahead of the curve. 

For B2B companies, modern PR is not just about maintaining a presence – it’s about carving out a reputation that resonates, engages, and drives success. While traditional PR focuses on emotional hooks, B2B digital PR must include a healthy dose of informative, value-driven messaging, crafting narratives that focus on logic, showcasing expertise, and building long-term relationships. 

So, how do you do this? How do you tell a story with those necessary emotional hooks, establish a brand personality that resonates with other businesses, and still provide a value-driven message? The answer is it’s not one thing but many. From customer success stories that add credibility, behind-the-scenes insights to build trust and authenticity, and commenting on industry trends to showcase your expertise, you can (and should) do many things. Here, we share four of our favourite strategies with tips and tricks to help you see real results from your B2B PR efforts. 

Online reputation management

In a world that demands more transparency from brands and their leaders than ever before, a positive reputation is critical to success. It influences customer trust, loyalty, and business growth. Your company’s online reputation is invaluable, and safeguarding it needs to be a top priority. 

The power of public opinion extends far beyond traditional media. Careful management of your online reputation is essential for shaping perceptions – but negative reviews and unfavourable content can spread like wildfire across social media platforms and review sites. This makes it more critical than ever to proactively safeguard your brand image and continuously nurture a positive perception.

You can use many opportunities and outlets to monitor your online presence – so start small and build up to prevent confusion or overwhelm within your teams. You can set up Google alerts for your company name and keywords to stay up to date with mentions and regularly check platforms like Google reviews, Yelp, Reputation.com, and LinkedIn. Social media listening tools like Sprinklr and Hootsuite are helpful in tracking sentiment. It’s also a good idea to plan quarterly reviews of your platforms to assess what clients see and identify where improvements could be made. 

Your web presence is another excellent opportunity to control the narrative and improve your online perception, but many B2B sites are neglected and outdated. Keeping your website regularly updated with fresh, SEO-optimised content is much more important than many companies realise. Community is also the heart of your business, so engaging with your audience and industry discussions via a blog or news section helps to build authenticity and trust. 

Negative feedback can be challenging to address, but in the digital age, responding promptly and professionally is essential – usually offering solutions as an added bonus. We also recommend taking conversations offline wherever possible to reach resolutions. On the flip side, it’s hugely beneficial to encourage positive reviews and share positive feedback. It’s essential to continually learn through all feedback you receive (good or bad) and improve your online presence by swiftly and thoughtfully addressing any issues as they arise. 

Building media relationships

As the old saying goes, ‘it’s who you know’ – and the best way to secure effective media coverage is still through building strong relationships with journalists and media personnel. This requires strategic effort and a focus on creating engaging content for them to work with. 

Research is crucial before reaching out to journalists. Focus on people interested in specific topics associated with your business, and review their recent work and what they engage with to learn their style and flow. You can then use this information to inform your pitch deck and employ targeted techniques to appeal to them more. 

If your pitch is generic, you run the risk of a swift delete. It needs to resonate with the intended recipient’s unique preferences, as well as the audience they can reach. It’s also important to clearly and quickly show why your story is a fresh angle for their content and would pique the interests of their readers. Tailoring your deck to different outlets or individuals speaks volumes because it shows the time and effort you’ve taken to select them and expresses genuine interest. Timing is also critical– journalists are often stacked on Mondays and Fridays, so midweek mornings are your best bet. If you’ve not heard back in a week, dropping a polite email will bring it to the top of their inbox without being overbearing. 

Striking the balance with this is a skill, and it takes time and practice to get it right. Journalists regularly receive lots of potential content and media requests, so you need to pick and choose your moments to engage them. Not everything will be suitable for them, so to keep the relationship strong, cherry-pick your best pitches and include data, insights, and exclusivity to elevate the pitch. The best media partnership strategies feature clearly defined goals, targeted research to find the most relevant journalists, transparency around expectations and negotiated terms, and regular opportunities to review and track coverage, engagement, and impact to see what is and isn’t working. By understanding journalists’ needs and correctly timing your engagements, you can build lasting partnerships that can deliver amplified media coverage with long-term benefits for your business. 

Leveraging social media

Social media is a brilliant tool for B2B companies looking to be disruptive with their online presence and drive success – and it’s now a need rather than a nice-to-have for most businesses. A diverse pool of different platforms is now available to promote your business, so careful selection is vital. Not all options will be a good fit, and focusing on the best channels for your business will help you secure maximum impact with less time and effort.

LinkedIn is a firm B2B favourite for sharing industry insights, connecting with professionals, and sharing company news. Long-form content like articles, data-driven insights and case studies work well on this platform. X allows you to engage with a larger audience through trending hashtags and topics, keeping posts concise and relevant and offering real-time engagement and results. Whilst they’re traditionally seen as more B2C channels, Facebook and Instagram can be used to engage groups specific to your industry and feature specific ad filters that allow more refined targeting. These platforms accommodate both short and long-form content, but they’re also great for engaging with followers in Q&A sessions. 

Instagram is a more visual platform, allowing for more behind-the-scenes content and storytelling. Creating reels, stories, and interactive features traditionally more suited to a B2C audience, like competitions and rewards, can further boost engagement. Whatever platforms you choose, using social platforms innovatively and creatively will help you increase your online visibility, attract traffic, and engage with your audiences. 

Social media isn’t a one-way street – as the name suggests, you’ll need to invest in teams to manage the conversations and communities you are cultivating who will work alongside content creation teams. Building a community and engaging with your followers can often feel overwhelming, but it’s essential for success. There are four key strategies you can employ to achieve this: using interactive content such as polls and live interaction videos, consistent posting to build reliability and anticipation, responding to comments and messages to show you value your audience’s thoughts and enhance customer experience, and sharing UGC (user-generated content) and influencer content to help encourage further engagement. Balancing your content between promotional and useful, value-driven info is key. Many businesses only share promotional content that doesn’t build trust or love for your brand. It can feel too forced and falls into the stale, stuffy stereotype that corporations often find themselves stuck in.

Digital Storytelling in B2B PR

Humanising your brand is an undeniably important task, especially in the B2B market. Digital storytelling needs to go beyond communicating bland information and straight-up facts. Instead, it needs to connect with your audience on a deeper level and play into their emotions and experiences.

A focus on brand narrative helps build trust and credibility with B2B audiences. You can do this by telling authentic stories about your brand, customers, and employees. B2B marketing uses similar tools to B2C here, but it tends to be more intentional and direct in its approach. 

There are several ways to enhance your storytelling for a B2B audience, and narrating your brand story is an excellent place to begin. Talk about your origins and the inspiration and motivations for starting the brand – preferably highlighting a desire to solve client concerns or pain points or establishing common ground with your audience. Share your challenges and goals, milestones achieved and ambition for growth. Playing into these emotional experiences will allow your audience to resonate with and remember you. Meanwhile, sharing colleague experiences, expertise, and career highlights speaks to the talent and dedication in your team and positions you as a sought-after partner (with the added bonus of boosting talent acquisition). It’s also beneficial to showcase your customer testimonials so they can do the talking for you. Focusing on problem-solving with your case studies will speak directly to your audience’s pain points and make you an obvious choice as a reliable expert in your industry. 

Humanising your content can be a real game-changer in the world of often faceless B2B brands, and digital storytelling techniques can help you build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with your audience. 

Cultivating success: The power of B2B digital PR strategies

Top-tier digital PR can leave your audience with an unforgettable and lasting positive impression, causing a movement of competitors aiming to replicate your transformative experiences. But getting it right isn’t always easy – even with the many tools and platforms businesses now have at their disposal. To execute a killer PR B2B strategy, companies need to juggle a wide range of different techniques. To recap:

• Your online reputation management needs to be a top priority in order to maintain a polished, trustworthy image, with timely responses to negative feedback and an eagle eye on your mentions. 
• Befriend sought-after journalists in your industry to secure far-reaching positive content – you’ll need to do your homework to cultivate successful long-term partnerships with them.   
• Leverage the diverse range of social media platforms, sharing the right cut-through content at the right time on the right platform. Addressing your audience’s pain points through humanising storytelling is key to captivating them and building a strong and long-lasting relationship. 

Sounds like a lot? It can be! At Smoking Gun, we’re experts in navigating the world of digital PR. We specialise in intelligent, disruptive, ingenious communications through delivering immersive digital campaigns that solve real business problems and transport customers to the heart of your B2B brand. Chat with one of our experts today to get started on your journey.