A year in review of bringing fresh ideas to marketing professionals
It’s time for our final blog of 2021. There are three words we would use describe this year. Content, placements and growth.
From three new starters, and a roster of new clients, we have certainly blasted through the last 12-months. Primarily as a PR agency we work hard with our international portfolio of clients to grow their B2B media coverage and company messaging worldwide.
But IBA practices what it preaches. During the course of the year, we operated our own thought leadership campaign to help provide insight and best practice for PR, marketing and comms professionals. Our placements have met with excellent traction – in fact, total impressions for the 2021 thought leadership campaign came in at just over 1 million unique views!
Here’s my four top picks of 2021.
- IBA research on agency requirements during the pandemic finds traditional PR agencies need to re-set their services
At the beginning of the year, Senior Market Analyst, Simon Woolley donned his analytics cap to summarize our own primary research on the changing face of B2B PR support in response to the global pandemic and Brexit.
Despite the challenges, the B2B industry remained optimistic about the future, but only 11% of marketing managers said they were satisfied with their agency support to achieve these international ambitions. Simon dug into the data to look at the reasons for the dissatisfaction such as high agency costs with little return, and the inability of agencies to meet new marketing demands. Clearly traditional PR agency need to adopt a new way of working to satisfy B2B marketing managers!
Simon’s article was been published in MarketingProfs, Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, Warc, PR Moment.
- Measuring PR is essential – here’s the best metrics
The second part of the IBA primary research focused on how nearly half of B2B marketing managers struggle to gauge PR and marketing agency contribution levels within the overall business. With this in mind, Jamie Kightley, Head of Clients Services, penned an article clearly outlining the key metrics PR agency should use in order to successfully measure campaigns. He explained how results and metrics can inform what content formats work, which messages resonate most, measure of inbound success and how to tie PR results back to web traffic.
His views have been published in Portada, MarketingProfs, O’Dwyer PR, Customer Think.
- PR increases its influence during COVID-19
Good Covid-comms has been a requisite for brand reputation and often comms teams have kept company reputations afloat during the choppy waters of the pandemic. In fact, research from IAB UK and YouGov revealed that 80% of buyers are less likely to purchase from a company that has been insensitive to the crisis.
For this very reason, strategic media and comms counsel has been highly sought after by the heads of the C-Suite table. Jamie Kightley looks at how marketing professionals can use data analytics to help keep businesses agile and deliver key messages to customers and prospects alike. The strategic importance of PR to the C-Suite is set to continue – check out last week’s blog, where we explore the latest Cision Global Comms report – including how 87% of comms leaders say the C-suite has sought the counsel of comms more in the past year
Jamie’s article has been published in: B2BMarketing, Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, AiThority, O’Dwyer PR,
- PR goes virtual – the influence of Love Island in B2B & Virtual events best practice
Two of our most recent articles are about virtual reality! First, we look at Love Island and B2B Influencer Marketing, where Georgia Harris, one of our Senior PR Executives, identifies the four benefits of B2B influencer marketing and how consumer social trends such as Love Island have trickled down to change B2B influencer marketing strategies. So, no need to feel guilty about watching the series – it was there to learn from!
Second, we go virtual with virtual events. Jamier Kightley reviews the effect of the global pandemic on virtual events and how business can take advantage of it. Since the beginning of the COVID-19, one event platform provider reported virtual events surged 1000% to 52,000 events and subevents taking place. He offers good advice on how to make the most of your virtual events, from pre-event outreach through to hosting formats and securing post-show coverage.
Our articles have been published so far in: Marketing Gazette, Social Songbird, PR News, PR Daily, MarketingProfs, Ragan Communications.
A wide-reaching industry voice during 2021 – hence the million unique views!
We can’t wait to see how we can push our PR influence further, as we see what 2022 will bring.
Angelika Winiarz is PR Executive at IBA International.
Leave a comment