Empower Your Public Relations Business with the B2b Saas Sales Model for Public Relations

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hello everyone thank you so much for joining us today uh I think a lot of you have already joined this webinar and I think uh we are very good to start now okay so uh welcome to this webinar I am akriti I'm co-founder at biki I'm so glad all of you could make time on a Thursday morning I'm sure it's very busy with work and I hope you're doing really well now I'm uh co-founder Wii and Wii is Asia's first AI powered media intelligence platform you can find your metrics ranging from reach awareness to sovs to various cuts on how you want to see messaging pull through and if you've not tried it already we most you're most welcome to register and get a trial on now the reason why we wanted to do this webinar was one Lita it's great to have you here and has recently written a PR handbook for entrepreneurs on B2B uh PR and you know today we're living in a global World which means that everything is boundaryless companies are growing mushrooming all over the globe and then why should PR be with boundaries right and Lita has actually done PR across the globe she's been able to set up operations of PR in many countries simultaneously not only uh is it been in b2c but B2B companies her experience is fantastic know her from a while and I think her experience will help us learn a lot i' hand it over to you Lita to quickly introduce yourself and then we can start on the very exciting subject which you know from a distance sounds a little boring but I know that you'll make it really exciting for all of us here thank you Lita for joining us over to you hi akriti thanks for having me here today it's a pleasure so uh a little bit about myself uh I have about 177 years experience in PRN brand about six years in SAS now and I've handled both b2c and B2B in the past during my agency life uh so right from you know fintech edutech Healthcare like you know Apollo hospitals TVs group uh then there's Titan brand so many right across B b2c and B2B and uh I've also worked with the VC firm for about six years as a consultant and worked closely with very early stage startups uh you know um so yeah done a bit of all that yeah yeah so first thing you know L I do want to talk to you about that I've heard I've really heard some people vouch for PR for example Bill Gates he says that Hees down to his last dollar he will spend it on PR in marketing he will spend it on PR I want you to throw light on this as to why people say that they will spend it on PR and especially in context of B2B PR absolutely see perception is everything that's the bottom line right so uh PR can actually make or break Brands and uh storytelling plays a very important and crucial role in that just having an amazing product is not enough right you need to tell an awesome story too so bottom line is perception is everything and in the business of PR we are in the business of building per ctions right so that can basically make or break a company so yeah okay so uh what is the difference between B2B and B2 CPR to begin with like you know yeah the most obvious difference is the channels that we go through to reach the uh prospects right but if you go a little deeper than that there is a difference in how buyers make decisions like for example as a consumer of a b2c product like you and me uh we decide independently whether we want to buy that product or not but when it comes to B2B there's so much more risk involved there are so so many other factors involved right now if I were to Tool or a software I am answerable to my team as well as to my manager and to the management of the company and I'm spending my company's money right and I there is also an approval cycle there uh you know the bigger the company is the more difficult it it is right so there's so much difference in the buying pattern itself between B2B and b2c right but having said that uh there is one uh you know misconception uh saying you know B2B needs to be you know very formal communication needs to be very formal so B2B doesn't have to be boring in fact it has to be as interesting as b2c right or even more yeah or even more yeah so okay so um from your point of view help us understand what how do you pull out what is prible what is media worthy give us some premise on what is PR worthy from a B2B point of view uh because a lot of us get stuck in this vicious um cycle of seeing B2B PR as award press releases or I'm not going to do that I'm like you know how do you make something media worthy across the globe uh give us context from you know if you are setting into a new country or if you're already there in a country and you want to like start building out your product awareness brand awareness yeah sure so but before I get into that I just want to kind of share something that I read recently and it's pretty insightful I must say so if you can see what I'm showing you right now uh there was this recent report that was published by trust radius you can see this right yes can you put it on slideshow do yes it is on the slideshow okay we can't see the slideshow okay I'm just going to try that again uh I think you might have moved the uh window to see if the window is visible uh you are able to see the PPT though I'm able to see the PPT it's just not on the slideshow though okay to share that with you again yes are you able to see that because I'm not sure anybody else is able to see that please we have a lot of folks here folks that us know if you're able to see the slideshow uh from you know a complete full screen yeah I think uh manit said she can yes okay okay great let's okay okay so there was this recent report that was by trust radians right and uh they talk about B2B buying decision making and how that has changed over the years and how it looks like in 2024 so uh brand awareness trust and transparency play a big role and we already know that but there is a conundrum here right now largely across regions uh B2B vendors have scaled back their spending uh on PR and brand because for ages it's always been looked at as discretionary spend spending and right now because of resource crunch they have scaled back but on the other side of the spectrum where uh the buying behavior of people have changed too right they lean more towards Brands they are favorable to brands that they already know that they are already familiar with right so which is actually uh you know kind of you know extreme situations here so uh brandl growth is now in the spotlight it's even more important than product L grow and that's the only way to capture mind share whether you're entering a new market or whether you want to establish yourself as a leader in in an existing Market whatever it is you will have to capture mind share right and branding is important across the entire journey and not just at the beginning right so going on to what is pable I just yeah so again there is a lot of miscon conception around this especially when Founders are just starting off and you know they do a DIY of PR right they just want to get their hands dirty and they want to handle it themselves um there's a lot of confusion between these what is PR what is media worthy right so I've kind of listed down here uh so new fundraises strategic Partnerships customer wins all these are you know uh something that the media would want to listen to uh if put across in a you know in a very thoughtful and interesting manner what they don't want to hear and many of them you know it's a pet peeve for them is Awards right because most of these awards are pay to play I mean you just pay to get nominated you get you just pay to win right uh and the media knows that and they definitely noted I don't think the screen is moving uh maybe you can just let me let me see if I can put this across um sure give me a second I can you let me know when you want me to move the screen I'm just switching on the screen at my end if you will unshare yeah understood understood thanks Anan you'll try to share it on your side yeah I'm sh visible now yes yes so we were looking at the slide where uh we listed down things that appear yes uh can you yeah the next one yeah this one right so uh media doesn't want to hear about the awards you won or the products or features that you launched uh so this is where actually uh you know the piso model comes in akriti where uh there is a media mix available to us and most often we don't know where to put these H right yeah okay no this is an important point because a lot of us we get we get into um we get into B2B and get into Global PR first barrier of course is to see if we can get a agency or an expert from the country who can help us localize how important is localizing Lita is it that if I am and which is your favorite I wanted to ask you which is your favorite country Beyond India to do PR Middle East definitely because I have some experience handling that region and it's kind of easier than the other markets because it's kind of closed uh also but very mature in terms of Technology adoption right okay so it's easier to work with journalist there and uh there is a good mix of both paid and earned uh media channels that are available to us at our disposal yeah right so if if we want to set up as a team going to UAE and set up the pr Ops there uh how what is the first thing that you recommend that you know teams should do and give us an example in context of the companies fantastic companies that you've been at like klow facilio so tell us in like you know you set up operations in facilio uh for PR in UA how did you go about it step by step so it was very founded driven in the early early stages I kind of joined the uh Team much later but uh I don't know uh that uh PR was the top priority even before setting up a sales team in uh Dubai for p abely they launched there and they did you know thought leadership events uh you know found a Le PR from day one and it has paid off tremendously in the last couple of years the investment right so uh for new Founders who are just starting up they will have to spend time you know uh meeting media in person um and uh you know being seen at events uh kind of you know doing these relationship building meetings where they you know they share their Journey their Vision their larger Vision so that the media buys into that story first before you any coverage I would say that the first thing that you're saying that companies need to keep in mind the presence or visibility of the founder is is critical to setting up operations in a country and you may and I'm and we're not thinking guys just press releases here we thinking of complete PR Ops and uh decoding as to how you can get into a country okay that's first then yeah once you're in the country how important it is to have a spokesperson dedicated to the country it is it is definitely and the media prefers a local spokesperson right uh you know they definitely uh prefer homegrown businesses or Founders who are available to them you know uh so that's definitely there I mean uh it's easier to get media coverage that way rather than doing things remotely right and in terms of hiring an agency see localization is very important uh especially markets like Saudi Arabia where you will have to translate a lot of stuff right but in Dubai it's all English uh so localization a local language all that is important but before you hire an agency I would say you will have to strengthen your own media channels where you have a lot of good strong content us examples of your your own media channels what you mean see by own I mean you know the uh the website itself the blog you know uh our own social media channels uh and all those things so we need to have content that can be atomized so you need to have like you know anchor content pieces which can be broken down and then given a spin and taken to the media so that's the backbone first that's interesting what you're saying is that on your website you should be visible as a company that's present there with anchor anchor content pieces which you know people can refer to and believe in the capability of the company to be you know able to service the market yeah yeah yeah but among these you know eight points that you've put out which are the first ones that companies should practice and bring into media it depends on what stage of the company is right and what their priorities are now early early stage obviously fundraises is is a very glamorous thing again uh a small anecdote uh Tech crunch is one of the most favorite channels for companies going abroad to sell right and when they raise a fund they obviously go to Tech crunch but apparently Tech crunch reporters get about 50 to 60 pictures of just fundraise per week and they only publish nine oh wow so where is this Gap right so what are they really interested in so that's something we need to think through yeah yeah so you're saying that if you're localizing you don't need to just focus on the uh you know most visible and they like like Tech crunch of course it's not a low hanging fruit for anybody you get it that's great but there are other avenues in localized markets that you can probably share so new fundrais is great but tell us beyond the few new fundraise if I'm operating in a market and um you and and it's a it's a bootstrap company but they're doing really well which are the ones that one should go after yeah so there are basically three tires of media or three categories of media channels right the first is the main stream your You Know Your Business Insider your your you know all the Publications that cover business those kind of fores entrepreneur these kind of channels right then the second one is Tech pure Tech right uh so you have information week Information Age you know you have these The Verge or these kind of Publications right then the third but more underestimated media uh category is the trade Publications and these really matter when you when you're doing Regional PR okay so by trade Publications what I mean is they are focused on news and Trends with within a particular vertical or industry so you have a whole lot of uh you know journalists and editors dedicated to verticals like healthare like retail like real estate right um so this is a very underestimated uh uh category of Channel and this can be actually it has a lot of potential because in the early stages you should not aim at being seen in Tech crunch but you should be you should be in every trade Journal that matters to you this is where your audience is hanging out this these are the Publications your potential buyer is actually reading and there is a way to find out also you can do that you know that kind of market research you can do an audit to find out which are the channels which are the forums they go to to learn to network you identify those but most often it is actually the trade journals and they really pay off so by getting coverage in all these trade journals you are bound to build up that kind of you know thought leadership H so that it's easier to go and sell to the mainstream media understood makes a lot of sense so just encapsulating this in one uh quick nugget initial earlier when you're setting up have the founder make them visible uh in various platforms um we were talking earlier Al how failo you know the the founders were there for a month so that is great insight and uh second is do not shy away or do not just go after uh the tech crunches do look into the trade beats where your readers are get into those trade beats even before you set up sales you can you it would be great to set up PR so that the brand awareness is built in such manner right people ready to open your doors and one of my favorite understanding of PR over the years of experience is that you know PR's great outcome is that it makes things move faster it may not act it's not just sales does it make sales happen no but if sales are happening it will make it move faster so you've just validated that with a point of view that if you want to set up a country you can set it up faster if you have PR already happening there now here we can touch upon upon category commentary which is a very difficult subject L how to make that easier is is a lot of us we would like to know category commentary is very localized it has to make sense and it is very hard to do as well how have you been give us a an example of how you've been able to initiate category commentary in any of your brands that you've been at in a country other than India yeah so uh when it comes to category commentary you need to be on top of Trends or you know what is currently buzzing or trending in the category right so that is one way and second is you will have to kind of uh differentiate yourself very strongly because initially you cannot say you're just marginally better than somebody else right so you will have to uh communicate the vision the larger goal the larger purpose very strongly so because in a category there are multiple players already and some of them might be more established than you right so you cannot simply say you better than the others at the same time category creation itself is very tough that's a whole different thing right I mean a lot of Founders actually I think make a mistake saying we uh you know saying that we are category creators you know we we are the only one we are creating the category but that's also very difficult to get the media interested in in fact it can uh you know kind of uh go the negative way right because there is no proof yes so media likes a benchmark media likes to say okay so you're like this but you're doing something very differently right so those are two ends of the spectrum but when it comes to category creation you should be able to say something intelligently and a different point of view it can even a controversial point of view about the category or you know something like that if you have those to share then that definitely media will be interested in yeah makes sense and Anam totally with you when you've just added here for all of us to learn that you know new product launches uh are something that you can talk about in a new country in a country data stories those are fantastic for any country any geography and I completely uh you know Echo your thoughts there that data stories also and case stud work really well in your countries yeah yeah okay I just want to add one thing to that actually it's very interesting to talk about data Le stories right so data can come from different sources for storytelling the typical ones are you know you commission an industry report you you work with a partner and and you pay them to you know do that survey or report for you and you use that data but there's another uh source that is usually neglected that is your product itself okay yeah yeah so you go into your product you actually observe the usage the way customers are using it and pull Trends from that and actually turn that into Data bites right which you can use that's a very powerful tool and I've seen some brands do it well especially you know the my current favorite gong where I actually have a whole case study about them so they go into their product which is a sales tool sales intelligence platform and they identify small very interesting trends that they pull out right okay uh and they actually amplify that and it's very interesting the way they do it okay gong that I am going to definitely Google search gong and for the benefit of all of us do spell it out as to how uh you know g n would it be yeah yeah okay I actually have a slide on that if you want to in the name itself yeah okay great so uh moving on to the next subject that we have at hand and just just a second okay now at what stage should companies worry about employer branding and uh why should you know how how do should they go about it throw some light on us on this subject here it's important right from the beginning right from the early stages but before you start anything to do with this you will have to have internal processes in place right you have to have strong organization structure you need to have those processes you need to know what your core values are you should have something that defines your culture right and then you start communicating it both internally and externally that is employer branding but before that the background needs to be set you need to have those processes in place otherwise it will just backfire right so once you have that in place there are literally just these three things that you need to communicate right um so when it comes to external communication uh you have to tell your prospective employees or the talent that you you want to attract H why they have to work with you and how will it actually move their career forward right how will it actually uh lead to growth the second is you also need to communicate what are the kind of people you are hiring and keeping now there are interesting ways to do this and I think a lot of brands have done this beautifully where they showcase their employees achievements you know milestones and they celebrate both internally and externally using uh lot of social channels right so you're telling the world that this is what we value we value these these these things right when you're celebrating like you you value loyalty that you know how you went about this in any of the companies that you've been in the past because this is again a very tricky subject because getting approvals on getting this sort of uh talk out and whose domain and department is it how do you work around such difficult uh points so give us an example of this so for employer branding uh it's mandatory that you work closely with the uh HR team or the people resources team right and uh this was beautifully done and still done in kislow where um uh they take culture very seriously and they also uh communicate this both internally and externally right uh I mean some very good pract practices that have been put in place like for example uh one thing that uh stands out is uh you know once you complete five years in the company they do a huge cutout of the person and put it in the office for I think a week and uh the person who was there in that cutout I mean it's it's a huge cutout like a Raji cutout right so uh they they take pictures of this and they post it on social and all Milestones are celebrated beautifully I mean I'm sure everybody remembers about the BMWs that were given away and that was like a big splash right about 100 media covered it so loyalty was being celebrated there right so these small gestures really matter and how do we amplify this is where PR comes in the culture is already in place right right how do we actually communicate that and how did you do that in various ways like for example one other favorite example is uh during the pandemic everybody went remote and everybody talked about how uh you know uh we are trying to handle remote or maybe they giving a hybrid option there was a lot of backlash about some practices saying you know companies wanted them to come again you know lot of uh media was writing about it extensively right so then what we did was in kisow U we we uh the HR team decided upon a hybrid model where uh basically you know once a week for a whole week you spend time in office the rest of the month you literally work from anywhere like anywhere right people moved out to their hometowns and all that that was very common at that time but the we branded it we call this remote plus uh it was a new name it excited the media everybody talked about remote and hybrid but nobody actually you know came up with a name like this so it was remote plus and uh this uh and we wrote a whole article about it and this was covered by 50 plus media outlets right from BBC fores entrepreneur um Business Insider and a whole lot of India India media right it was very interesting the way we termed it this kind of you know one week whole one week in office you know the rest anywhere uh then we also did a podcast you know around this theme so it's all about how you tell the story no that's I I from K's point of view I think it's a case study in itself I think Sur has been such an icon for the industry he has been very strong on putting values out and I completely understand and resonate how branding even your internal employer uh you know initiatives can play a role in you having a you know visibility out there for prospective employ voice and the right kind of talent to join now very interesting point here that you've you know put in your example is that when you're bringing together a company you want like-minded folks and if you're talking about the culture you bring those like-minded folks and make them naturally you know attracted to the company so great point there yeah yeah yes um just moving on to the piso model I think you've thrown a little bit of light here for everybody here if you can just quickly take us uh through this grid and help us understand but folks if you want to add with the examples that you have it will be great because you know we all we've all had our experiences and it's great to learn from each other please put it in in the chat and we'd love to have and have that directly from you go ahead L over to you yeah yeah so we talked a little bit about what is PR and what is not right so uh we all need a mixx of this these four types of media uh and uh we really need to know where to put what so that's about it right to get the correct mix and combination right uh the most common mistake happens when you put the wrong thing in the wrong bucket okay uh so when it comes to Owned media this is actually very powerful and not leveraged enough in fact if you see a lot of companies are going direct now they're making a lot of their announcements directly on LinkedIn and other channels or YouTube or whatever right I mean you might have seen this both in b2c and B2 Brands they are going direct and what happens is when you have the right media following your own owned channels it works very beautifully because they follow you and they get it directly from you rather than it going through a press release or anything like that right so owned media is extremely important and there are various forms you can you you can start your own podcast you can do your own annual event uh and so on right I know media who actually follow news news rooms of companies they keep checking those news rooms for updates they themselves go right and they they also follow LinkedIn pages of companies I mean that's a big win right so it's it's uh you know push versus pull right so and then you have the earned media which is a very important uh part of the whole PR program where you take them you know customer wins case studies you know category commentary senior leadership win hires and so on there's also the shared media where you do co-branded initiatives with industry peers or you engage with influencers both for free as well as you know paid programs and so on right and in LinkedIn I'm seeing a lot of these groups where you have your Right audience already there right yes so you can actually post your content in these LinkedIn groups and they are also very vertical specific you have groups for Real Estate Healthcare retail education and so on so they are great to be leveraged right and there the paid media now early on Founders need to understand the difference between paid and earned because again one common misconception is they think that you know it's like advertising where you just call the media you know you just tell your story and then you expect it to come that's not how you work and you cannot control headlines you cannot control the entire narrative you can influence them you can influence it but you cannot control it so but if you want to control it the best way is to go for paid content or advertorials and if you want it to come in a specific timeline right I mean you're launching a product and and you want that story out in the next two three days so editorials and sponsored content are a great way yeah okay so what I understand from this is one thing that and that comes out roundabout in very many you know instances that L is sharing with us is that to have a if you're going for Global PR the center stage is your website if you can have a dedicated Newsroom which has um your case studies your white papers your announcements and uh It is Well enriched with media that enriched with content that enables media then you may even have subscribers to this so any of you if you think that there is um you know that that you want to see how this can if if everybody agrees then we can have a specific Newsroom dedicated web with the experts but yeah this is a great point and then you can leverage it if that is your Hub then you can leverage it with folks across like uh paid earned shared owned and figure out how you can bring everybody to that Hub yeah okay great yeah yeah correct correct yeah okay uh then you know so okay so we have now created taken the first steps done tactical stuff now creating successful PR programs help us understand what does it really entail to create successful PR programs yeah so it's a mix of all these it it starts with uh uh you know building that uh thought leadership uh right uh but then uh interestingly I just read one comment or article yesterday uh you know somebody bashing thought leadership saying this is a much abused word uh you know in the name of thought leadership uh founder go sit on panels and they actually say nothing and there is no solid takeaway for the audience right so thought leadership is all about uh you know uh giving something real learnings real takeaways real strategies and tactics that your audience can actually apply in real life in real work right so it's not about you know content that's being ghost written for you right so that's very important and taking a bold stance is very important too that comes back to category uh dominance how do you how do you build category leadership right uh people must respect your opinion they should want to hear what you are saying so if you take a bold stance if you share different points of view that's definitely very interesting and the third one about content being atomized is something that we spoke briefly about right have these anchor pieces of content which can be broken down and uh tailored to different channels and you know uh formats right so that's that's very important it doesn't always have to be new content that's being fleshed out for PR it's already sitting there we just not using it properly right and what's also important is to be able to speak with your internal subject matter experts and get timely inputs whether you are hiring an agency or whether you're doing it yourself this is very important and customer Centric stories right it has to be customer Centric so again uh my favorite example is you know you don't have to uh uh what was that anecdote uh so it shouldn't be about your features or products that you talk about it's about value what value are you creating how are you changing that person's life or are you making easy work easier for her you know right so this is this is very important so the customer needs to be at the center of it and not your product it's a total flip to how things are being done now right and dat yeah yeah sorry no no go ahead sorry so and data is definitely a good you know something that media loves and riding on Trends right so this is also something that we can do in PR yeah no that brings me to an example from my own experience which I would like to throw light on is um when 20 years back when I was at no.com uh we had a lot of data every click was considered a transaction like you know the user is transacting with you when they're clicking he said there is there is definitely a gold mine of insights there and this was not only India data because NOC re operates also in UA when we started looking at those insights from coming from various clicks what are people searching how are they reacting which are the top jobs coming up on the website it was broken down into a report now interestingly for no what it was and you know if you have any other examples please share but interestingly for no it meant that you have very Dynamic data which changes month on month yeah which gives you a leverage to go out to Media month on month and tell them what really happened which were the top jobs posted you if you're looking at top jobs you're breaking it and cumulatively looking at top industries where the jobs came in top functions where the jobs came in top roles that the jobs came in experience- Wise now you were talking about uh you know datab Back stories which you see on the website if you can find uh an anchor in data which you can send out every month that I think has been the most successful case of my life at least that that report that we conceptualized in July of 2008 has since then been running month on month and still manages to get media attention from various geographies it's it's so interesting that even the recruiters and job Seekers wait for that report so uh you know data back stories is I think one of my favorites in terms of looking at how you can create a put your PR on autopilot be it any go at any space absolutely see these data reports they have a longer shelf life you can actually you know use them for about 6 months to one year at least right you can do so much with it yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely okay and then uh let's hear more about you mentioned gong earlier let's more hear more about that yeah I mean I've been following uh uh their CMO and you know what stuff that they've been doing pretty closely recently and it's very inspiring right I mean we have examples closer Home like fresh Works obviously but this is also very interesting one where they started off in 2015 uh you know it's not uh it's not born in the US it's an Israeli startup and from day one apparently they had this one mindset you know they knew that they wanted to do everything big they want to be loud they wanted to be a loud brand right and they wanted to take the biggest stage in any event that they were speaking at you know they wanted the biggest Booth they wanted to go big right from beginning and that kind of translates into everything that they do right right uh so uh basically when you are starting off uh in the early stages it's good to define the brand personality what brand voice that you want to you know translate into your messaging and all that and this is something that I think they internally agreed upon and this is you can see it in every everything that they do right um and one interesting activity they did very early on I think maybe two to three years since they started was to take a spot in uh the Super Bowl uh take an ad spot in the you know uh Super Bowl uh this thing right so usually this costs Millions it's about I think 1.5 2 millions or something like that to just get a spot ad spot advertising spot during the Super Bowl what they did was they just identified three regions where most of their prospects were based in that was I think New York Seattle and Bay Area and they took a local spot right it was added only in these and this local spot costs a fraction it's about maybe I don't know the real cost it's $100,000 or whatever a fraction of the actual cost if you were airing it on National Television so they took that they made this ad and they released it but what they did around this is phenomenal right they they posted it on LinkedIn it was everywhere on social people were talking about it for months apparently right and everybody thought that this is a big Enterprise and they took a national television spot you know they are that big the perception of big is what worked to their strength here right it's just a small startup so that's very original and and apparently though the CMO went in to get Buy in saying that this is a long-term brand play what it really gave them is huge impact on Revenue immediately and it actually created a p pipeline so most Founders think that you know spending on brand and PR is is is discretionary pring we cannot track it we cannot measure it MH right but uh this is actually a good example of a successful PR stunt yeah no so you raised I I think you closed with a very important Point most people think PR is not measurable uh and we'd love to learn from you how you not only did you measure but how did you convince that those are the right measurements what are the tools you used brings to us uh you know you wanted to throw light on exactly how you did this in various companies that you work with tell us so the common way best ways probably to measure is uh to see the brand reach right and there are different tools for that uh now it's not so difficult uh and then you also track website traffic because you are obviously putting a lot of owned content there out there and you uh try to bring them back to the website so website traffic is a great way share of voice is a great way where you actually uh you know track your competitors media mentions and see where you stand in each region so share share of voice can be done regionally it can be done uh you know U brand versus brand and in so many ways right and social media engagement is also a great metrics right and there's one more thing that can be done is brand audits now though this is more time consuming brand audits can be done both internally as well as externally and why I say internally is it's also important for you to uh know what your employees uh the way they perceive about the brand because they are the advocates in the end of the day they are the ones who are taking the message out in various ways so you need to know that they are in sync with the brand messaging right so an internal brand audit also makes sense in the early stages an external brand audit also helps you understand how it is being perceived among Prospect effect uh you know so these are different ways to measure and there are lots of tools now for that MH so uh just just decapsulating here um recapping here total reach s so social media engagement internal and external brand audits uh you know those are some ways that you can have a look and see how you can you know measure which one is the most convincing one to leadership website traffic website traffic okay so you're looking at website traffic and how you know your work across has been able to correct there's also you know very nice anecdotal evidence that we get from partners and customers you know when we get on calls with them and we ask them where did you first hear about our company so they tell you and then you know that you know which channel is working well and you invest more in that channel so anecdotally evidence is also important that's very interesting and in total evidence we will definitely have to work hard on how we collect that uh but it's interesting that many companies tend to put uh nowadays their LinkedIn on their brochures to say if you have feedback put it out on if you have positive feedback of course uh you can put it out on LinkedIn and we've seen that LinkedIn has started garnering these of course G2 review sites Etc are very important for any Global brand to get their uh you know get a a larger perception out there uh right and uh tell us your the tools Etc that you lean on to measure and how important it is to at what stage do you get these tools and how important it is to lean on these metrics using tools why not Excel sheets yeah absolutely I mean there are a lot of CRM kind of tools now for PR where you kind of manage the entire function of process on that tool um so I've used various tools like coverage book is a good one where you have all your coverage in one place and it also shows you the reach that each of the content or article got you know how many people read it how many people viewed that page and all that it's all in one place then for Sheriff voice there's of course VII and melt water and then there's also uh what were the other tools um so that's about it and in terms of media database I wouldn't suggest really I've not used any tools for media databases it has to be done manually because you need to know uh you know who writes what where to pitch and all that so you can't and also what happens is when you uh download Media databases it's most often very old data or you know because journalist move around so quickly so often so the data tends to be a little old the contacts especially right so I wouldn't Advocate that but yeah so all these tools definitely and there's there are also two of my other favorite tools for inbound PR so AK if you see before it's it was always outbound PR right but now uh tools like Harrow and CED have made inbound PR very uh this thing so where you actually uh answer queries that journalists have put out right and then you get quoted in those stories so that's a great way to find potential story opportunities so quoted is my favorite tool it's a free tool then there's there was Harrow I think which was bought by cian and then they killed it now the same guy uh Peter has started another Channel very similar free it's called Uh hero it's called Help every reporter out but it's still in the very early stages so a lot of more journalists and editors need to join that but it's one simple email that lands in your inbox and you know there are queries from journalists from different domains and you can simply reply to it so both these tools have actually helped me greatly in the past uh for landing stories in say even in Business Insider in fobes in BBC all these channels yeah right and uh I'd like to you know end this and our session uh with you know open Q&A please let us know if you have any questions we here to address also something L shared with me earlier today was this beautiful slide I'm just trying to pull this out for everybody's purpose meanwhile if you have questions I think we have one question that is coming uh L um could you please help out type out the tool thanks a lot okay this is already done anything else anybody wants to uh discuss with us throw a light on WE happy to bring you on stage and if you have any specific um you know example or instance that you would like to elaborate on this is more of a discussion please feel free I'll just share this report also here this link this is interesting yes okay and I'm also trying to share these I found these really interesting are you able to see my screen folks yeah yeah yeah yeah this is the report I shared very interesting yeah W you have just raised your hand uh manprit if you can quickly add her to the stage and we can have her talk about you know whatever she has on on her mind hi can you guys hear me yes hi thank you hi ATI hi Lita hi um on B2B PR I have a question uh which is how do you track global news and media so I um also handle Global PR and one of the challenges I face is tracking news in say Brazil or Mexico or tracking what's coming on my sector in in us or even in Middle East so how do you do that because I know that uh there is process via Google alerts or Google News where you change the region and then you do that but it's a lengthy process is there a a quick tool or or a hack that you guys use to track news and media in your sector in that particular country yeah actually akti should be answering this but then anyway I will throw in my bit so I use I've been using mziki for a while now so what what you can potentially do is you can first uh indicate what are the regions you want to track so you can only take Middle East uh us UK or so on so you first set up the regions and then you set up the uh industry with keywords right you you put you know real estate or you put retail or you put whatever fmcg or whatever that you want to track right so then what it does is it pulls out News Daily using those keywords and shows you what is happening in that category and Industry in that region then you can set up your competitors you can pick two or three top competitors uh uh who who you want to track in terms of me media mentions uh in that region right then it will also show you what are the stories they are mentioned in and you can go back and see which are the reporters or editors who wrote about your competitor and you can go directly and Pitch so that's a great way of having full visibility in terms of what's happening in that region and Industry thanks thanks I have another question coming in from Prasad Prasad would you like to join the talk okay prasad's question is I'm part of a company whose main brand gets coverage for the news being put out but the coverage for our subsidiaries doesn't have the same hit how can I better it uh L would you like to take this question so uh I don't think I understand it fully so there are the subsidiaries MH of a company which they want to kind of amplify and position in a specific region probably yes H I've never done that before but uh I think uh some kind of umip needs to be done for the subsidary also right I mean kind of bring the management of that subsidiary in front of the media also and see what they are doing differently so maybe some kind of messaging there yes if I can add to that I think Prasad what really works is when you're reaching out to Media three things work uh for you one is familiarity with the brand familiarity with a person or something that they are really familiar with like numbers or data that goes out right so we we early years in uh when we were doing Global PR in my agency we found that if you build familiarity for example if you're doing partner announcements and your partner is really familiar put that in the subject line and the headline if you have cracked a certain um market and that market is really familiar to folks or there is a trending topical keyword put that in the subject line you'll get more opens more opens means that at least people are getting familiar if your content is great they will reach out to you third and very interesting point is that you can please add like you know if if if it is suppose uh uh sales force and there's a subsidiary of Salesforce so you can do please do not shy away from from putting it in your subject line headline first line of the press release first line of your uh pitch note that it is a subsidiary of Salesforce and just giving an example here it helps the journalist understand why they should take your content more seriously and that really helps at least it helped a lot of companies that we worked with especially those who those that were funded by large companies this also works in a large VC funding a young company okay so let's say it's um like in early days seoa like if a company very young company even raised a 2 million if you put it in the headline seoa bag XYZ company it works really well for the company so that's that's how you can take a look at that uh we have yeah asking a question any AI tools you wish to recommend for PR to increase efficiency so I use perplexity because it also gives me sources of uh good you know credible sources from where the information came from and I use chpt but mostly to just build the content base uh but not to you know draft the entire press release or anything like that these tools are good um apart from that no nothing else yeah okay great I think we've covered all the questions if you have any questions I think L's also already shared but I'm just going to put that again uh this is the place where you can download uh on a second uh s okay let me know once you're able to see the screen okay so please connect with Lita on LinkedIn and if you want to download the handbook that we brought really into this uh webinar you can download it from the link here and uh just to close one of the most important things that we you know were able to see from today's discussion was first is that have a have your Founders believe in PR let them be visible first start PR before sales in a country if you're going to expand there second thing a dedicated Newsroom will work really well for you if you are uh looking at Global PR Ops and with that I would close this webinar thank you so much Lita for being here it was fantastic talking to you and uh you know folks would reach out to you on LinkedIn and um I'm glad you could make the time and thank you to all of you you were fantastic you could make time on a Thursday morning I know it's very busy for all of you so looking forward to uh you know interacting more in the future over such similar webinars thanks thanks for the opportunity it was lovely