How do I identify my target audience for PR and marketing?

A good sales strategy will identify the industries, sectors, and businesses you are targeting. The next link in the chain is to dig down and think about who is going to buy from you, who else influences the buying decision, and how you get in front of those people with messages that will resonate and encourage them to buy from you rather than someone else. 

The first step is to spend some time in your prospective customers’ shoes. Think about who they are and what’s going on for them. This is where sales, marketing and PR teams can do great things together. Your sales team is out on the ground, meeting people, hearing why people want to buy – and why they don’t. They’ll be getting incredible insights into what’s going on for customers and the sector in general – what are the biggest challenges, the real pressures they are facing, the things that are keeping them awake at night, or stopping them doing their job as well as they could be. 

Capture those insights. And then think about who else is involved in the buying process. 

If you’re selling industrial lubricants for machine maintenance and your end user is an engineer who is measured on keeping machines running, their priority will be a product that is easy to apply, that does the job well, and lasts longer than others on the market so they can extend maintenance intervals. 

But if you’re a purchasing manager who is measured on meeting strict budget targets, you’ll be less concerned about how easy the product is to apply and looking far more closely at the purse strings. Their ears may well prick up when you tell them that extending lubrication intervals on all their machines could save them £100k every year. They need to understand the bigger picture, the wider efficiency benefits and not just see your company name as a line and a number on an invoice. 

Think about everyone who can have an impact on whether a company buys your product or service, and for every one of them, work through what will help – or hinder – them buying from you. 

There are so many PR and marketing channels. Which ones should I use?

So often we see companies approached by people from websites and magazines asking them to spend money. They’ll bombard you with the numbers of website hits they get each month, or the number of subscribers to their publication. Or they’ll sell you a fantastic deal, “only £100”. But if those two million subscribers aren’t the people you need to reach, then there is absolutely no point wasting your money, not to mention your time and effort putting together content that isn’t reaching the people who matter. 

Go back to your strategy, your target customers, and your market insights. For example, once you know that 100 people every month are asking Google what anti seize does and how to apply it, you can come up with answers to those questions and post them in a well optimised blog post. 

You might think that 100 searches a month isn’t very high. And by some standards, it isn’t. But as manufacturing businesses you’re not answering searches on how to make banana bread in lockdown. Many manufacturers are operating in much smaller niches, and if what you are saying is relevant to those 100 people, you could find yourself with new customers, or at the very least more of the right kind of people in the top of your sales funnel. Share the article on your social channels, and you might find yourself with even more. 

One well-placed and well-targeted blog post, news story, opinion piece, or case study can be far more valuable than half a dozen cheap adverts or editorials saying the wrong things, in the wrong place.