Maximize Your Share of Voice this Fall
September through November is a crucial period for big announcements and big decisions across various industries. For B2B tech marketers, this makes early fall an ideal time to review and refresh their budgets and plans to ensure a strong presence and drive results by year-end.
What are the most impactful and common releases for the fall?
Product Releases – ‘Tis the season for tech companies to launch new products and release new feature updates. These may often correspond to key conferences and events.
Acquisitions – While these deals happen throughout the year, there is often a drive to complete them before the holidays. This kind of news can help further define a company’s differentiation from its market in a well-architected narrative.
Corporate and Partnership Announcements – It’s common for companies to hold news that was deemed too important to release in the dog days of summer. A patchwork of summer vacation schedules and an important chain of approvals often bump press releases too close to Labor Day and, thus, further into the year.
What are the key strategies marketers should incorporate during a heavy news season?
Thought Leadership – If a tech company is coming out of its shell to announce a series of news releases, it must already be a known entity to its market’s news outlets to successfully garner meaningful coverage. Reporters are far less likely to cover a company with no prior news exposure. We recommend working in advance of an important news announcement or series via a thought leadership campaign as the first step.
Impactful Messages – Within a product announcement or other meaningful market-related news, it’s important to craft a message that goes beyond marketing-speak and infuses important categories and market positioning to highlight the solution’s differentiation. The narrative should not just speak to the power of the product but also to the pain-points it addresses and value it brings. Wherever feasible, companies can bolster their position with internally generated or third-party data supporting the narrative.
Key Tactics – Tech marketers should also keep in mind best practices that support a stronger outcome for press releases:
- Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the better days for releases. Earlier in the week enables consecutive follow-up days by the PR team.
- If the release doesn’t get picked up immediately on day one, take a breath. The PR team will continue to follow up, and results should be assessed after a full week of outreach.
- Avoid trying to cram too many releases in too short a time. Releases should be triaged based on their importance and potency. The PR team will assist marketing leaders in defining a sequence that is prioritized by importance and the most likely to be covered in the news.
- And, keep Labor Day Weekend, August 31st – September 2nd, in mind. Press releases the week before and immediately following are more likely to fall through the cracks, as many view this as the last weekend of summer.
The end of summer is in sight, and with it comes the rush of initiatives and news. Planning a path forward now can help B2B tech marketers drive the highest outcomes for those critical fall press releases.
