Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Advertising And Pr Agencies Specializing In B2b

Posted by SeanGeehan on 1/26/2010 at 11:40 AM ET 500 Points
My book, "The B2B Executive Playbook", will be available in April, 2010. I'm looking for the best way to get my message in front of B2B executives. Are there PR agencies that specialize in B2B promotion? What other groups can help reach C-level executives including CEO, CMO, CFO as well as Business Unit Leaders, Sales Executives and Product Development Executives?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 1/26/2010 at 11:43 AM Member
    You are going to have to define a niche. This is a very broad request and you won't find a one single source.
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 1/26/2010 at 12:46 PM Member
    Are you working this trough traditional publishing routes, or selling this outside of them? If traditional, I would think you would want to see what it takes to get listed on the book review sections of the key business magazines. Business Week, Economist, Wall Street Journal, and such come to mind first, though perhaps there are others that are more targeted at C-level folks.
  • Posted by mgoodman on 1/26/2010 at 3:13 PM Moderator
    How is it possible that you wrote this book BEFORE you considered the marketing plan? You invested a lot of time and energy to get to this point and now you're wondering how to reach your primary target audience?

    It's all the more puzzling because your book title suggests you're going to give advice to these senior executives, when you haven't followed the good advice you would [presumably] give them.

    Now, with that off my chest, let me suggest that you narrow your focus considerably. You'll do much better grabbing a 100% share of a very limited market than a 0.0001% share of a huge and diverse one. (It will cost you a lot less too!)

    Who is this book going to help most? What are your goals for this book? What are you trying to accomplish?
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 1/26/2010 at 4:11 PM Member
    Start by giving copies away to your target audience (or offer your book as a premium to attendees at an upcoming B2B executive conference). If the content is valuable and worth spreading, it will be.
  • Posted on 1/26/2010 at 5:01 PM Accepted
    Rieches Baird in Irvine, California is a B2B specialist agency
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 1/26/2010 at 6:24 PM Accepted
    Dear Sean,

    Do you have your book available as a PDF? If you do and if
    you can get a few hundred review copies printed and shipped to numerous business publications, you'll be able to spread review copies.

    Those nice people at www.blurb.com offer a PDF to print option and they'll be able to send you actual books. Cost, time? Yes, but you'll have things reviewers can review.

    B2B execs like to know who else is like them or who they can aspire to become, so them seeing a review in a trade publication they respect and admire might help.

    PR-wise, contact Annie Jennings www.anniejenningspr.com, and also consider contacting Christine Comaford, author of "Rules for Renegades" https://www.christine.com/, who, according to Bill Gates (yes, the Bill Gates "is super-high bandwidth."

    With your laundry list of CEO, CMO, CFO as well as Business Unit Leaders, Sales Executives and Product Development Executives, you want to contact www.score.org.

    I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
  • Posted on 1/26/2010 at 8:18 PM Member
    One great way to promote your book is to promote yourself as a thought leader within the topic that the book is on.

    Depending on your topic there are likely numerous possible blogs, LinkedIn Groups, potentially some Facebook groups you could begin to participate in to establish yourself. This would be a start to a larger inbound marketing strategy.

    Have you considered writing a blog that teases the ideas in the book? If you want to see a great example of how that's done, check out Avinash Kaushik and his blog Occam's Razor the way he pulled excepts from his book to formulate compelling blog posts is exactly what led me to purchase his book Web Analytics 2.0. https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2009/11/social-media-analytics-twitter-quan...

    In addition, you should look at the range of tradeshows and B2B conferences happening in 2010 and see if you can get on as a speaker to discuss some of the great insights contained within your book.

    By the way, what type of playbook is this? Is it focused on the operational side of business? The marketing side? Something more specific like leveraging social media to fuel innovation within your organization? The more specific the subject matter the easier it will be for you to find the right places to position yourself as a thought leader.

    I'd need to know more about the actual substance of your book to understand:
    a.) who's the most relevant target customer?
    b.) how can you best reach them?
    c.) what will the triggers be to motivate them to purchase your book?

    Good luck.

    Aaron Bean
    The New Group
    Portland, Oregon
  • Posted by thecynicalmarketer on 1/26/2010 at 8:34 PM Accepted
    In addition to Gary's excellent answer, you can also be like Dorothy and look no further than your own backyard.

    MarketingProfs offers MarketingProfs Updates where they send their special offers to their opt-in list of business people with an interest in marketing issues. A recent email featured a book offer similar to yours. Here's a link to the offer: https://bit.ly/amDGOx The service is supported by Experian who has more data on more people than almost anyone on this planet.

    You can also benefit by utilizing social media and participating in networks such as LinkedIn and others. Again, MarketingProfs has a ton of great info on the subject including a recent webinar " The Naked Truth: Insights from Our Social Media Marketing Research" https://bit.ly/5zJJzL You need to push with the media, bloggers, and other key influencers, and of course an agnecy can help. To gain better insight into what to look for check out David Meerman Scott's "The New Rules of Marketing and PR."

    Hope it's a best seller for you, JohnnyB.
    if you like the advice, read https://bit.ly/75KkSG
  • Posted by SeanGeehan on 1/27/2010 at 8:38 AM Author
    I appreciate all the responses. I apologize for any confusion. I have been in B2B marketing for 25 years and am very confident about the marketing plan that's been put together. I'm truly just looking for a great B2B PR firm to help execute that aspect of the plan. This includes identifying contacting, coordinating and executing specific activities, events, publications, blogs, etc that I need to get to/be a part of...this is in addition to the areas already developed.
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 1/27/2010 at 12:14 PM Accepted
    I personally recommend Tom Peric of Galelo Communications.
    https://www.thegalileo.com/
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