Ask ITSMA: How Do I Shop for a Public Relations Firm?

By Bob Baginski, Senior Vice President, ITSMA

Each month, ITSMA receives a number of queries through Ask ITSMA, a resource designed to give members a quick and easy way to get insight on important services and solutions marketing questions they face. In this column, we will publish some of our favorite questions along with excerpts from our replies.

Is there a referral service for public relations agencies that specialize in technology?

The Public Relations Society of America is a good place to start to get names. But you also need to get recommendations from people you trust. Talk to friends inside other companies who use external PR firms, and ask the PR firms themselves for customer referrals.

Cast a wide net if you are thinking of hiring a firm for a significant relationship. Identify the top 12 firms or so and reach out to them. You may quickly find that many have a competitive conflict—that is, only a few will not be working with one of your competitors. This will be especially true if you work in a large, diverse company. There are exceptions, and some firms play fast and loose, but generally they honor and protect their current clients and have noncompete agreements preventing them from working with clients’ competitors.

I think PR can be a great ROI, but the firms need to be carefully managed. Business executives, who are generally skeptical of the value of PR, need to know that you are in charge.

Beware of agencies that profess to be global. Few truly are, though many have subcontractors in various geographies and are skilled at adding FTEs around the world as business dictates.

	Do you have a sales or marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access our experience, insight, and research results.

Recent ITSMA Thought Leadership

How to Create Marketing Content That Sales Will Actually Use
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/V0043.htm

Most marketing materials are usually too broadly focused or too complex to help salespeople in the heat of the sale. Indeed, 80% of marketing content goes unused. In this Viewpoint, John Aiello, CEO of sales enablement software provider SAVO, offers tips for creating types of content that will work better for salespeople and for tapping into the “black market” of content that salespeople develop on their own.

Are Spreadsheets and CRM Sufficient? Marketing Automation in the 21 st Century
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/OLB080909.htm

The incentives for marketing to automate its operations for more efficiency and effectiveness have never been greater. In this Online Briefing, we untangle the complexity of marketing automation and offer valuable advice—including results from ITSMA’s exclusive survey of best practices, challenges, and ROI from top marketing decision makers’ use of marketing automation technologies.

What Really Matters to Decision Makers? Insight into Key Buying Criteria for Services and Solutions
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/OLB080812.htm

Uncertain times call for razor-sharp marketing focus. This requires a deep and thorough understanding of how customers buy—what really matters most to decision makers. In this Online Briefing, ITSMA’s Julie Schwartz and TechTarget’s Marilou Barsam present the latest results from ITSMA’s annual research program on How Customers Buy Services and Solutions. Survey data and case study examples illuminate ways to align marketing vehicles and content to customers’ acquisition process.

17 Ways to Create More Valuable Leads
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/V0042.htm

Brian Carroll wants us to get passionate about one of marketing’s most important tasks: finding and nurturing leads—80% of which wind up being ignored or discarded. In this Viewpoint, Carroll, who is CEO of InTouch, a lead generation optimization services firm, explains 17 ways to make B2B lead management more effective.

Classic Insight

Check out these ITSMA Online Briefings that were rated highly by ITSMA members:

Online Reputation Management: Bolstering Your Brand Through Conversation and Community
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/OLB071016.htm

Just as important as what you say about your company is what others are saying about you. Today, marketers are looking for the best ways to leverage the Web to enhance their reputations and build their brands. In this Online Briefing, Brian Harvey, senior director of global marketing and strategy at Accenture; Vic Odryna, CEO, Zazzle Technology; and ITSMA’s Bob Baginski discuss how to proactively shape and amplify your reputation online.

Account-Based Marketing: Best Practices and Critical Success Factors
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/OLB070213.htm

ITSMA’s Jeff Sands, IBM’s Naomi Wilsey, and Xerox’s Liz Vega co-present this Briefing on best practices and critical success factors for Account-Based Marketing (ABM), a hot new approach that helps companies deepen relationships and increase revenue with key accounts.

News & Notes

Upcoming ITSMA Events

To view all events, please go to http://www.itsma.com/aspfiles/events/calendar.asp

Marketing 3.0: Challenging the Paradigm and Embracing Change
Annual European Marketing Forum
October 8 (dinner) and 9
Beaumont House, Berkshire, England
http://www.itsma.com/Events/event_desc/08AF10E31.htm

ITSMA’s European Forum brings together the region’s top marketing practitioners and thought leaders every year to discuss where the profession is and where it is going. This year’s event is focused on change and the way leading organizations are shifting their behavior and adopting new approaches. You’ll hear from marketing leaders from BT, Google, HP, and IBM, along with Prof. Malcolm McDonald from the Cranfield School of Management, Richard Lewis from Richard Lewis Communications, Des Lee from Executive Change, and ITSMA’s own Richard Seymour and David Munn, among others.

Some of the 2008 Forum themes that will be explored include:

• Marketing and the Share Price Mindset
• The CIO’s Changing Agenda
• Digital Media and How It Is Changing B2B Marketing
• The Expanding “Spheres” of Influence
• Marketing and the Cultural Dimension
• The Explosion of Key Account Marketing
• Brand Migration and the Role of Reputation Management
• Offshore Marketing and Global Sourcing

Maximizing Marketing’s Influence: The New Marketing Rules
15th Annual Marketing Conference, November 4 and 5
Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel
http://www.itsma.com/Events/event_desc/08AC11N32.htm

No more excuses: It’s time for marketing to step up to the plate and lead. Now more than ever we need to maximize our influence and create bold new marketing rules. Join us as we hear insights and success stories from marketing leaders on a wide variety of vital topics—each with a window into what they did, how they led, and the results they achieved. Our keynote speakers will be Jonathan Zittrain, one of the world’s leading Internet scholars and author of The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It, and Thomas H. Davenport, a world-renowned thought-leader and scholar who has helped hundreds of companies revitalize their management practices. Other speakers include:

• Krishnan Chatterjee, Associate Vice President, Business Marketing, HCL Technologies
• Ed Daly, Senior Director, US & Canada Theater Operations & Marketing, Cisco Systems
• Malcolm Frank, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Cognizant
• Reed Holden, CEO, Holden Advisors
• Nancy Lyskawa, Vice President, Support Services Marketing, Oracle
• Kelly Nelson , Leader, Strategic Initiatives, Deloitte
• Katharyn White, Vice President, Marketing, IBM Global Business Services

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 12:01 AM and is filed under Ezine AddIns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.