Sabrina Horn, president of The Horn Group, offers PR NEWS readers exclusive advice on how to drive sales with PR -- and simultaneously drive PR's value to your
organization.
A tough sales environment just got a lot tougher. The length of the sales cycle may have doubled. Hot prospects may have deferred their purchasing decisions to the end of the
quarter or next year. And the pipeline suddenly looks a lot less promising than it did a couple of months ago. In addition to all the other cutbacks your company is considering,
you're going to slash marketing, right? Well, before you do anything rash, consider this: Public relations, strategically planned and flawlessly executed against specific
business goals, can be one of the most effective drivers of sales leads.
Following are some tips for building a PR plan that will drive sales -- even in today's marketplace.
Base your PR program on measurable business objectives
Put the PR team in the same room with your C-level execs, including sales and business development. Ascertain what the company's financial goals are for the next 12 month
period. Calculate how many sales leads it takes to generate one good deal. Determine the length of the sales cycle. Choose potential vertical markets with low-hanging fruit.
Identify current and future competitors. Map out upcoming product releases and services that will create or meet market demand.
Once these overall objectives are set, establish a few, very explicit business goals, such as "increase sales leads by 50 percent in financial services," or "help generate an
additional $25 million in revenue in telecommunications over the next 12 month period." Then devise a strategy and tactical PR plan around these goals that gets management
support.
Measurement techniques: Is PR helping sales?
Each established business or PR objective must be paired with a measurement tool or methodology that tracks its success. These tools and processes should be monitoring PR
performance over the course of a program to determine what is working, thereby enabling a company to change gears midstream if needed.
Sabrina Horn is President of The Horn Group, a high-tech PR firm in San Francisco. Reach her at 415/905-4000 or [email protected], http://www.horngroup.com.
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Business goal
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PR strategy
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Measurement tool
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| Increase sales leads by 50% in financial Services | Product launches including tours, press releases and customer testimonial program | Telemarketing staff maps source of incoming calls to articles published as the result of press releases or other PR Sales lead tracking systems can be programmed to source same data |
| Position company as leader in market category | Competitive PR campaign, thought leadership campaign, CEO campaign | Qualitative analysis of market and category coverage by vendor and message over a six-month period |
| Increase awareness and build credibility | Business press campaign, analyst relations program, customer testimonials | Perceptual audit at beginning and middle of PR program, number of favorable analyst reports and resulting references for press and sales purposes, closed deals |