Andrew Davies
Being new to the market means making your brand known to your potential customers, partners and investors. Pleiades client Signapps is a rewarding example of how PR can work for your business, given active client involvement, a strategic approach and key media contacts. Signapps CEO Andrew Davies shares his insights on the value of PR to his business.
“One of the challenges for an early stage company, especially one like ours, which is dependent on enterprises for revenue and which operates in a historically conservative industry, is establishing a track record or building a reputation.
We have been very fortunate to get early traction in our business with some blue chip customers. Surfacing information in media about these projects, the experiences of companies and individuals using our platform and our views on where technology in healthcare is moving has been instrumental in creating a knock on growth effect in a relatively short period of time. In a number of cases we have been able to directly attribute deal closure to PR.
Where have we felt the benefit exactly? While we have seen some successful inbound leads through the media most of the success we have had with PR as a marketing tool can be attributed to two different areas.
1 – using media as a starting point for initiating a focused conversation with potential new leads
‘This is what we are doing with X company, have you considered how we might apply the technology in your environment?’ Originating conversations with decision makers in corporates is generally difficult given the volume of noise they face every day. A continuous presence in the media has proven to be a great conversation starter.
2 – the effect of media closing deals with long sales cycles.
More often than not decision makers operate in environments in which making, and then executing, a decision is a complex process requiring layers of buy-in. The process of making a decision also takes time. Reputation, part of which is our profile in the media, has proven to be crucially important in originating and closing deals in this space.”