Why? Because over time these brands have invested a lot of effort in gaining your trust and building a connection that influences your purchase decision. Often, this decision has already been made early in the buying process without us realising; we somehow already knew that this particular brand would meet our needs, especially compared to the unfamiliar alternatives – there’s comfort in what we know.
This is why Admiral, for instance, spends so much on advertising. Admiral’s case is interesting, because they are not even expecting you to go direct to their website. They know that most people these days buy their motor insurance on comparison sites, so they just want to be the recognised brand on the first page of search results.
On the B2B side of things, many companies are focused on sales, sales, sales to build their business. It’s understandable; at the end of the day it’s what it’s all about. If you don’t make sales, you don’t have a business. However, in a competitive marketplace where discerning buyers can research at will and are marketed to in a multitude of ways, this one-dimensional approach simply falls short of the mark.
The importance of building your brand
When building a business, some people forget or do not understand the importance of building their brand as vital part of the sales process. They have teams of people bombarding prospects with emails and cold calls and then get frustrated with the lack of results. We see this all the time.
Now, I’m not negating the importance of focusing on sales, but I am saying there are other factors at play, branding being right up there.
This is arguably the secret to success and, if you do it well, it will make the quest for clients, talent, and funding far easier. They will all come to you. As the old quote goes: “no one got fired for hiring IBM” (something I like to think was a brilliant piece of marketing by IBM itself, but who knows?).
Open more doors, close more deals
There are many ways to build a brand, advertising being just one. For many companies, an integrated communications approach that leverages multiple channels, including working actively with the trade press and making smart use of digital and social media channels, is a more effective and certainly cost-effective solution.
Our ‘PR-with-a-purpose’ campaigns are built using this integrated approach, communicating our clients’ value propositions and key messages direct to their target audiences. This approach has successfully built our clients’ brand profiles and turned many of their sales teams’ cold calls into warm ones, enabling them to open more doors and close more deals.
Whilst the pandemic has been testing for many, with our support the last 18 months have brought positive news for many of our InsurTech clients, in particular when raising funds (£75mil in the last six months alone), winning new business, attracting top talent, and engaging with major insurers with paid-for pilots before sealing the deal.
They say that success breeds success, and in 2020, at NextGen Communications, we also grew our team and doubled our business. Further in 2021, we have already gained four more new clients: Supercede, Whenfresh, Nuvalaw, and Intelligent AI. Working in partnership, we will build their brands with them to help them build their businesses – you will be seeing a lot more of them in the very near future!
Proof that PR works
The sales team’s dream is not making the call, but taking the call.
This is exactly what happened to our client Novidea. Following press coverage about their Lloyd’s broker SRG win, they were contacted directly by OneGlobal Broking who were looking for the best provider of a new cloud-based broker management platform, following the merger of SSL Insurance and Endeavour.
“I had never heard of Novidea before, but I think we need to get them in.”
OneGlobal Broking Director to Chief Broking Officer
In another example, InsurTech start-up TrackActive was looking to raise funds on crowd-funding website Seedrs. They had promising early success, but then the dial stopped moving. Sadly, with Seedrs, you have to reach your target or you don’t get anything. The pressure was on.
TrackActive turned to NextGen Communications to boost interest in their fund-raising campaign.
It was one of most rewarding projects that I have ever had the pleasure of working on. Why? Because every time we took PR action the dial went up, whether through targeted press coverage or via a continued flow of impactful LinkedIn posts.
The campaign worked; TrackActive got their funding. I am pleased to report that they are off and away and are attracting great clients, from Gen Re and Royal London to DHL and Sport England.
More recently, our client Previsico raised £1.75mil in a Seed Plus round, from Foresight Group, a listed private equity and infrastructure investment manager, to support their product development, including IoT sensors, team expansion and sales growth, worldwide.
Jonathan Jackson, CEO, Previsico said: "We have worked closely with our PR partner NextGen Communications over the last 2.5years, and during this time Previsico's #brand has grown from strength to strength.
"The results from their hard work, #press connections and insights are there for all to see, with a steady and increasing flow of inbound interest, including 23 enquiries so far from prospective investors."
What should you do next?
For starters, stop the cold calling; no one likes it, and it rarely works. Instead, partner with a PR specialist with a proven track record and who can build your brand, enhance your market reputation and warm up your prospects. Experience has shown us that the clients, talent, and funding will surely follow.
If all this sounds interesting and you’d like to know more about what our integrated communications approach can do for you, drop me a line:
simon@nextgencomms.com