It’s easy to assume that the biggest businesses in an industry will naturally get the most attention.
The biggest brands typically have larger marketing teams, bigger budgets and names that journalists already recognise. For those competing against an established market leader, trying to achieve the same level of visibility can feel like an uphill battle. But when it comes to PR, size is not the determinant of success.
Journalists are most interested in people who know their subject, have something useful to contribute and can respond when an opportunity arises. They aren’t necessarily looking for the company with the highest turnover or largest workforce.
For specialist B2B brands, that creates an opportunity. You might not be able to outspend your biggest competitor, but you can become known for the subjects your business genuinely understands.
You can’t own every conversation, so don’t try
One of the first things we look at when developing a PR strategy is where a business has a credible opportunity to stand out. That doesn’t mean producing a long list of everything the company could possibly talk about – it’s actually the opposite.
Trying to have an opinion on every issue affecting your industry can quickly dilute what you want to be known for. A better approach is to identify the areas where your expertise, customer experience and business objectives overlap.
For a manufacturer, that might be a particular production challenge or an issue affecting the customers it serves. A business in the built environment for example, may have valuable experience of a particular aspect of retrofit or building envelope performance.
The more specific you can be, the easier it becomes to build recognition around that subject.
Find the areas where you have something to add
Deciding that you want to be known for sustainability, innovation or AI isn’t enough. These are huge topics and there are thousands of businesses trying to talk about them. Instead start with a list of what your business can authoritatively speak on.
Your engineers might be seeing a technical problem becoming more common. Your sales team may have noticed customers asking different questions than they were 12 months ago. Perhaps your business has spent years tackling a challenge that the rest of the industry is only beginning to discuss.
Those experiences give you something worthwhile to contribute. And regularly the best PR subjects aren’t the ones sitting neatly in the marketing plan. They come from conversations with people elsewhere in the business who don’t realise that what they know could be interesting to anyone outside it.
Don’t wait for journalists to find you
Having expertise is one thing but becoming known for it takes work.
Once you know which conversations your business can credibly contribute to, you need to find ways to put that expertise in front of the right audiences. That could mean approaching journalists with an opinion on an issue they’re covering, developing a thought leadership article that challenges the accepted view or using original research to add something new to an industry debate.
Timing matters too. When an issue suddenly hits the news agenda, journalists often need knowledgeable people who can explain what it means in practice. Businesses that have already established their experts and can provide useful commentary quickly are in a much stronger position to be part of the story.
The aim is to make sure you’re on the right journalists’ lists when your subject comes up.
Your size can sometimes work in your favour
Smaller businesses often see their size as a disadvantage when competing for media attention, but it can make some elements of PR easier.
There may be fewer layers between the PR team and the person who knows the subject inside out. If a journalist needs to understand a complicated manufacturing issue, being able to speak directly to an engineer or technical director can be far more useful than receiving a carefully approved corporate statement several days later.
One big piece of coverage won’t make you an authority
It’s tempting to focus on landing one big media hit, particularly when you’re trying to compete with better-known brands. There’s nothing wrong with ambition, and the right opportunity can deliver fantastic exposure. But authority usually comes from what happens over time.
If your experts regularly provide useful commentary, contribute to respected trade publications and share genuinely helpful insight, people begin to associate your brand with those subjects. That consistency matters to journalists too. Someone who has provided a useful comment before, delivered it on time and understood what the publication needed is much easier to approach again.
For many specialist B2B businesses, being consistently visible in the places their customers actually pay attention to is far more useful than chasing reach for the sake of a big number on a PR report.
Give people a reason to remember your name
The biggest company in a market will probably always have advantages when it comes to brand awareness. PR gives smaller and specialist businesses a different way to compete.
You can build recognition around the expertise that already exists within your organisation. Pick the conversations where you have something worthwhile to contribute, make the right people visible and keep showing up with useful insight.
Over time, your company name can become associated with the subjects that matter to your customers, even when there are much bigger brands operating alongside you.
Want to build a bigger profile for your business? Refresh works with specialist B2B brands to find the expertise, stories and industry conversations that can set them apart. If you want a PR strategy focused on getting your business noticed by the people who matter, get in touch with our team.