Introducing: The Eskenzi PR “How To” Guides
The received wisdom around PR is that everyone considers themselves experts in the subject. Any PR professional will tell you that it is an undertaking that many people think they understand intrinsically. We’re here to change that perception, with our new “How to” blog series. This, released weekly in the run-up to Eskenzi PR’s 30th birthday, will work as a guide for the people who truly understand how to get PR right and how it can work specifically for companies in the cybersecurity space. We’re beginning our series with an exploration of:
The Psychology of PR
Public relations, as with any marketing discipline, is a psychological game. With public relations, psychology remains even more complex; with direct marketing, the audience is expected to be sold to. When it comes to the use of public relations, there is a requirement for nuance, understanding, and subtlety, which traditional marketing campaigns need not consider. If a cybersecurity company wants to use PR appropriately, this is the first lesson they need to learn – Or, in some cases, unlearn.
Who you’re selling to?
While the people you’re hoping to influence via PR will remain the same and reflect your ICP (Ideal customer profiles) in the same way as traditional marketing, the methods for reaching them will be entirely different. Instead of targeting advertisements, you need to influence them where they go for their news. For example, if your ICP is a CISO, they are likely to be a reader of the technology press, and you can develop a PR strategy that seeks to appeal to these journalists and publications. However, if you are directly selling to consumers, more mainstream, consumer-facing publications in the National press would represent a better strategy.
The psychology of PR
Identifying where your ICPs get their news is just the first stage. Secondly, how can you use public relations campaigns to target these individuals without them even realising they are being targeted? The reality is that most people want their news sources to be authentic, independent, and untainted by the influence of commercial interests. As such, readers and journalists alike are by nature hostile to any suggestion that PR has played a role in what they’re reading. The best PR people acknowledge this and work to find ways around this psychological handicap from which our campaigns begin. The best way to avoid this is simply by understanding what both the journalists and the readers want and finding out where it is within their corporate repertoire so your clients can provide this to them. The methods for doing this are simple: Engage with the publications and journalists that are important to your clients. Read everything they publish, ask them what sources would be helpful for them when they’re conducting investigations, find out what their editorial directives are, and bring all this information to your client. By amassing information about the things necessary to your key journalists and publications, you can encourage your clients to help them to provide these missing pieces for journalists, thereby making your client useful and improving the journalism of said publication in the process. This keeps the client and the journalist happy and, crucially, does not intrude on the reader’s sense that his publication is editorially independent because your client has added something useful to the story. Over the subsequent guides, we will show you the many ways this usefulness can be manifested, and more: This blog series and subsequent E-Book will serve as the PR bible for cybersecurity companies, imparting Eskenzi’s 30 years of wisdom in the space, so that the next generation of cyber companies can enjoy the same success as the ones who came before them.