Member Article

Make headlines. Achieve your goals.

Samantha Davidson, managing director of full service strategic marketing company Horizonworks, on how public relations can raise profile, increase engagement – and produce real results.

You may be launching a new product, expanding into fresh markets, taking on the world with a ground-breaking service, or hosting an industry-leading showcase event. Your organisation could be a start-up, an industrial powerhouse or a major membership group. But whatever the nature and scale of your business or project, public relations should be a key component of your marketing mix.

Why? Because achieving positive coverage in the trade press builds credibility, industry profile and crucially, reaches decision makers in your sector. Because making regional headlines generates interest and goodwill towards your company on its doorstep. Because featuring in national consumer outlets, including newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and online, can help you get your message across to a mass market, boosting sales and enhancing brand loyalty - and put your company in front of potential backers and advocates. And that’s before we even get to the power of social media to inform opinion, spark conversations and boost engagement.

Just one recent example of our work demonstrates how employing a combination of PR tactics can make a very real difference, supporting an organisation in meeting objectives and delivering its messages to a defined target audience.

Earlier in 2014, Horizonworks was appointed by the Institute of Water (IoW) - the only professional body that exclusively supports the careers of anyone working in the UK water industry - to promote its Annual Conference and Exhibition.

The conference is a major event in the water industry’s calendar: chaired by Heidi Mottram, chief executive of Northumbrian Water Group and president of the Institute of Water, 2014’s programme featured high profile figures from organisations such as Yorkshire Water, Ofwat and Oracle.

Our objective was to increase delegate numbers at the event, held in June in At-Bristol Science Centre, and increase interest in the conference and the institute among the utilities sector press and water industry professionals. In addition, we were tasked with managing the media and photography at the event, and promoting the Institute of Water’s National Innovation Awards, which recognise outstanding innovations within the water industry.

We worked with the institute to develop key messages around the conference, which were then embedded into all of our PR activities. Horizonworks then implemented a trade press-focused PR campaign, engaged with leading titles and websites in the utilities sector, promoted the conference via social media platforms, worked with stakeholders (such as water companies) to spread the IoW’s message through their internal communications channels, and at the conference itself, acted as its on-site press office, liaising with journalists and speakers, and managing photography.

Our campaign for the IoW saw us generate pre and post-event coverage in prominent utilities sector publications and websites in the UK and abroad, reaching nearly 210,000 readers, and engage directly with thousands of social media users, both directly and through utilities providers and consumer organisations. Conference publicity was further boosted by our work with internal communications teams, while respected utilities journalists covered the event.

Most importantly, the conference saw the highest turnout in its 69-year history, with 230 people in attendance – an outcome which points to the effectiveness, and importance, of PR activity.

Moving to a very different industry, Horizonworks delivered a national PR campaign for the Desto Cup, a packaging solution designed and manufactured by leading packaging solutions company IPS. We helped IPS reach key trade press titles, securing coverage in a wide range of media outlets including The Grocer, Packaging Europe and Food & Beverage International. IPS recorded a significant increase in the number of sales enquiries following the campaign, which in turn generated new customers - including some of the UK’s leading brands and retailers.

Horizonworks is also skilled at delivering consumer-focused PR campaigns: our work for long-established motor dealership Vic Young, based in South Shields, has included promoting the firm’s community initiatives, apprenticeship programmes and innovative vehicle conversions division, Northern Truck Bodies, in both the regional and national press.

Obviously, the organisations highlighted above are three very different entities. But what they have in common is a willingness to use PR to get results – whether that’s boosting awareness, increasing sales, or getting bums on seats.

So if you’re company is not using PR effectively, maybe it’s time you told your story… and made the headlines work for your business.

Case study - Securiclad

Securiclad works with high profile organisations across the UK and abroad. It manufactures an innovative, highly specialist, market-leading product. But for this North Tyneside-based firm, which produces high security modular panel systems designed to withstand attack from criminals, and safeguard equipment or hazardous materials, client confidentiality is often paramount.

This means that in many cases, the company’s success stories – of which there are many - can’t be revealed: Securiclad’s systems are often used in sensitive facilities, such as server rooms within Government infrastructure, where the least said about their exact location (and what material is used to protect them), the better.

Generating publicity in the ‘traditional’ way, therefore, can be a real challenge.

Appointed to deliver a PR and marketing campaign for the North Tyneside-based firm, Horizonworks has overcome this problem by engaging with the trade press and drawing on the vast expertise of Securiclad’s senior personnel in the physical security field. By highlighting their knowledge and ability to offer guidance to readers, we’ve helped to secure profile-raising articles in a wide variety of trade publications, from Facilities Management World to Data Centre News and Professional Security.

We have also secured product features in the specialist specification and security press, highlighting the panel system’s benefits to both contractors and end users.

The result of this strategy? Let’s leave it up to Securiclad’s Claire Sales to explain…

“Horizonworks has challenged us to look at marketing from a fresh perspective and I believe that the material and advice that has been generated will open new doors for us. The editorial opportunities we have been presented with and publications we have featured in since working with Horizonworks have really put us in the spotlight.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Samantha Davidson .