Ep 26. ‘summer hacks’ series: Building B2B relationships

In this second episode of the summer hacks series, I talk about how Public relations is often seen as something you do if you have something to launch or some good news to talk about. But PR is not all about the media – it’s so much more than that. One aspect of PR is nurturing relationships that are already strong—reaching out to people who you already work with and who know your business and nurture those relationships.

Often underused as a strategic tool, PR is one of the simplest – and most effective – activities you can do to help your business.

I am going to talk to you today about how to utilise these relationships to your advantage.

Let’s dive in!

Links in this episode:

That Weetabix example:also here: shorturl.at/bkJ18

How To Find Customers and Help Them Buy – New online resource now available, also here: https://commsthatworks.mykajabi.com/find-customers+help-them-buy

Full Transcript (unedited)

In this second (should say 36 not 26!) episode on the summer hacks series, I talk about how Public relations is often seen as something you do if you have something to launch or some good news to talk about. But PR is not all about the media – it’s so much more than that. One aspect of PR is nurturing relationships that are already strong. Reaching out to people who you already work with and who know your business and nurture those relationships.

 

Often underused as a strategic tool, PR is one of the simplest – and most effective – activities you can do to help your business.

 

I am going to talk to you today about how to utilise these relationships to your advantage.

 

Let’s dive in!

 

Connecting with people you know in your business and showing some personality and providing great customer service all aid public opinion, and help build trust in your products and services. Using public relations in this way is generally a no-cost, or at very least a low cost way of doing this.

 

We love to engage with approachable brands

 

Don’t be afraid to show emotion and personality right now. Authenticity is one of our buzzwords in communications, public relations and marketing, but we’re not talking about laying it out bare for everyone to see on social media when you have a bad day. Some people want to do that and that’s fine, you can do that.

 

But I’m talking about just showing a human side of you and your business, and showing some empathy. We love to engage with approachable brands. There have been some really clever brands finding lots of great ways to engage with existing audiences on social media right now.

 

There was a particular one I really liked in the last year. Weetabix is a UK based cereal brand and they recently came up with lots of clever ways to help people remember their brand by inviting people to interact with their cereal in completely different ways to how they usually would. They showed it with beans, they had it with Marmite, and it sparked a lot of interest in them – and a lot of interest in other brands as well. You should go and check them out on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

 

Now, these guys will have resources and ideas, they’re bigger brands. But if you are an SME, you can still apply some of these principles to what you’re doing.

 

One way you could do this is create some emails to talk to your customers and ask them questions about how they are using your services or what challenges they are having right now. Ask them how they’re doing, ask them if there’s any way you could improve your service, ask them if they know about all your services that you’ve got going on at the moment.

 

Tell people, but also ask them for feedback. Say, Have you thought about, or “What would you like help with? How have your needs changed?” Nurture and serve them well and they will remember you.

 

Building strong relationships can also help you in a crisis, when you need people on your side when things go wrong.  By nurturing existing relationships with customers, being helpful and showing you care you can build up an army of supporters that can also fight your corner when you need them.

 

So I’ll leave you by saying, where can you start and what are you going to implement this week?

 

Bye for now, and see you next week.