Analysts are often seen as some of the most credible influencers in any given field. Their vendor neutrality and broad knowledge of market players makes them a reliable source on industry trends, developments and projections. That’s why commissioning a report or whitepaper to help highlight your company or client’s industry message, often on best practices to solve business pain points (without an outright company endorsement), can be extremely beneficial.
But, once you have the report in hand, what can you do to promote it to the right audience? Here are five ways that can provide a good starting point to PR and marketing communications teams, as well as to public relations firms themselves.
1. Influencer Relations
The analyst report is likely to be broken up into digestible sections that highlight various industry pain points and ways that companies are working to solve them. These sections are probably backed up supporting figures or use case examples, too. These examples can provide PR teams with a plethora of pitch topics that can inform and inspire the wider media community to write about the subject matter. And, with the analyst report as a supporting piece of collateral, journalists may even seek to interview the analyst for additional commentary and hopefully link to the report itself.
2. Thought Leadership
Creating a byline or contributed article from the report can be a great way to promote the analyst’s message. You can also link back the full paper to showcase a credible source on the issue(s) or drive readers to a landing page with the report for lead generation. By placing the byline in a respected, third-party media outlet, you’re able to increase visibility even further. Another option is to post the piece on LinkedIn as a blog post to help establish yourself as an influencer and reach a dedicated business audience.
Another option is to develop a webinar on the topic, perhaps teaming up with the authoring analyst firm to moderate and even have a customer contribute to the webcast. The recording of the webinar can also be used on a separate landing page to drive leads and offer more multimedia fodder on the topic.
3. Social Media
Beyond promotion of the report and any associated collateral on social media channels (both corporate and individual accounts), sponsored social promotions are also an option. Promoted Tweets on Twitter and Sponsored Updates on LinkedIn can help get the report in front of targeted industry audiences.
4. Visual Content
With access to a digital agency or content creator, a report – especially one with a lot of compelling statistics – can easily be turned into an infographic, informational video or other kinds of eye-catching multimedia that may be more suitable for other platforms like Facebook or Google+.
Beyond digitally animated options, companies could opt for a “talking head” video that features an executive – perhaps teamed up with the report’s authoring analyst –who discusses the trends brought to light in the paper.
5. Marketing Support
Beyond a press release and gated landing page for the report, the marketing team can work to distribute the link to the paper and other collateral through newsletters or email campaigns to customers and prospects. This will help enhance sales team efforts and drive downloads. In this way, a report won’t just help build brand awareness, it can actually help drive business revenue as well.
This post was first published by Meredith L. Eaton on March Communications’ blog PR Nonsense.