PR Outcomes

2024 B2B Media Trends Leaders Need Today

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With the emergence of ChatGPT, the world is waking up to changes in content. While these disruptions aren’t always visible to the average reader, top PR agencies have been aware of these changes for quite some time; well before AI-generated content. These changes are impacting all media, including tier one media outlets. These changes aren’t all bad – in fact, for PR savvy B2B companies, leveraging these opportunities can be game-changing. Whether you’re a challenger brand, an emerging industry or Pre-IPO, these are the 2024 B2B media trends leaders need today.

 

2024 B2B Media Trend #1: Thought Leadership, Not Just for CEOs

While CEOs will always play an important role in B2B brand reputation, today’s B2B companies can leverage other brilliant C-Suite leaders to expand their horizons and speak directly to their customer base. Let’s say you’re a SaaS platform for accountants – why not take advantage of thought leadership opportunities for your CFO? Your CEO probably has insights your customers and potential customers would really appreciate, and the signal you’re sending to them is “we get you.”

There’s no reason your C-Suite leaders need even to write their own content, ghost writers do the heavy lifting. In fact, from a brand reputation and thought leadership standpoint, having a ghostwriter is the most optimum choice. Top PR agencies have excellent writers in their ranks and you can take full advantage of their decades of discipline by leveraging that talent to do the heavy lifting of creating content calendars and ideas, not to mention eagle-eye editing.

While owned content remains extremely important, third-party thought leadership opportunities abound today. Never have there been so many opportunities for the C-Suite to make their mark. Today’s ambitious leaders are contributing to Forbes, Newsweek, Entrepreneur, and even industry verticals regularly. And that’s relevant because according to eMarketer, content marketing is the #2 channel driving revenues for B2B companies.

 

2024 B2B Media Trend #2: Give Me The Data

As advertising revenues decrease for top publications, there have been huge swaths of layoffs for journalists. Today’s freelance journalist doesn’t have the weight of the publication behind them in the same way and that means gathering marketplace, consumer, or trending data is harder than ever.

B2B companies can double down on earned media by commissioning credible research or leveraging their own data to provide insights to journalists on trending business stories. And remember, even the top business publications are chasing stories that are of broader interest to the public. Data is the hero of B2B PR – use it.

Not only will using data give you a burst of earned media coverage, but your customers will appreciate it, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving. A well-structured survey will be useful throughout the year and position your company as the top of your industry immediately. Reports like this are also an excellent way to build out your database of potential customers.

Is commissioning credible data expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Only if you enjoy seeing your company in media outlets like Fortune, Inc., and Bloomberg. Even the Wall Street Journal uses third-party data, and there’s nothing like a quote from your leadership that solidifies a point of view with hard data.

While we’re at it, make PR decisions based on data, too. Modern PR firms have access to data that extends beyond reach and impressions. Identify target KPIs with your PR agency and demand they keep track of those KPIs quarterly. Your stakeholders, like B2B investors, will love this data and allow you to create credibility. Avaans Media uses a combination of social listening and AI to project trends and report on KPIs.

 

2024 B2B Media Trend #3: The Purpose Matters

As 2024 is an election year, there will be ever more eyes on how businesses impact culture. B2B companies can help their customers and themselves by articulating purpose beyond making money. Purpose-driven PR isn’t just for consumer brands anymore. This is especially true for Pre-IPO B2B companies.

Numerous B2B brands have leveraged purpose to distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace. According to the Harvard Business Review, “Purpose-driven companies make more money, have more engaged employees, more loyal customers, and are better at innovation and transformational change.” Purpose is your secret weapon to productivity and PR because purpose gives you another connection to make to timely news stories, especially trending stories like climate and the changing labor force.

If all that isn’t reason enough, because so many B2B leaders shrug off purpose-driven initiatives, it’s a great way to create a competitive advantage, even and especially when there is uncertainty.

2024 B2B Media Trend #4: Re-Thinking Social Media for B2B Companies

For the past two decades, Twitter was the town hall that gathered VC, potential customers, and media. PR-savvy CEOs took a personal interest in Twitter and knew how to leverage it. What’s more – media outlets LOVED going to Twitter to find sources, take a pulse, and find perspectives. But today, Twitter (X) is a red hot mess. The platform is unstable; the future is uncertain; the bots and trolls have taken over, and media outlets have jumped ship because of reduced credibility. There has been an onslaught of Twitter replacements, from Meta’s Threads to Jack Dorsey’s Blue Sky. But neither of them have quite reached the levels of Twitter (yet). But LinkedIn is a trusted standby and more and more professionals, including journalists, are finding refuge there.

LinkedIn has so many ways to improve a B2B brand, but one of our favorites is the LinkedIn newsletter. Leverage this this with premium content gets delivered right to the inboxes of your subscribers. Inboxes that your newsletter doesn’t have access to. LinkedIn is also experimenting with AI-generated content that allows thought leaders to contribute.

2024 B2B Media Trend #5: Use Your PR for Recruitment and Sales

Media coverage provides proof to investors, clients, and the public. But it also provides social proof in recruiting and sales.

From a recruiting standpoint, when your brand is an industry leader, PR helps you attract the best talent. This is especially important for hypergrowth companies who need top talent to take them to the next level or emerging industries that need to establish broader credibility. Your media coverage tells a candidate as much about you as your recruiter does. Plus, ambitious employees like to imagine that there is room for them to be included in media coverage.

PR takes a lot of heat for not being trackable. We disagree, PR is trackable, when your PR is aligned with your business strategies. But nowhere is that more clear than how PR increases revenue. PR helps your current customers stay confident in their choice, reduces friction for new customers, and stimulates potential revenue by allowing you to share solutions that potential customers didn’t even know could be solved.

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Avaans Media Named Among Los Angeles’ Top PR Firms

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Los Angeles PR firm Avaans Media, specializing in emerging industries and ambitious brands, has been recognized as one of Los Angeles’ Top PR firms by Clutch.

“For a PR agency that defines successes by its clients’ success, this is an exciting honor, on top of an already thrilling year,” said Avaans Media CEO Tara Coomans. “Our clients have appeared in Venture Beat, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Fortune, Forbes, and dozens of others since the beginning of 2023,” she continued.

Clutch.com is a business services referral site that hosts verified client reviews to help businesses identify the best PR agency fit for their business. Thousands of PR companies in Los Angeles are listed on Clutch, but Clutch only recognizes the top 15. Brands may purchase sponsored listings on Clutch, but its Top Los Angeles PR Agencies are based on client reviews, niche depth, and proven results.

Coomans credits Avaans’ A-Team white-glove services and their distinctive strategy and competitive analysis process. With its unique strategy and competitive analysis process, established in 2022, Avaans Media has exceeded client goals by an average of 300%, and PR results are 2X more effective than the competition.  With this recognition, Avaans Media punches above its weight next to other larger, established firms.

Avaans Media was founded in 2008 by Tara Coomans and established itself in Los Angeles in 2015, specializing in emerging industries such as AI, Cannabis, Drones, and ambitious brands.

 

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How People Discover New Brands?

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You have a new product to launch. How can you ensure consumers find it when they’re shopping? Marketing experts say the average person sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads in a single day; everyone of them claiming to be perfectly targeted to your ideal customer. People tune out most ads. But for DTC brands, the ad addiction is real. Why? Because it’s easy to establish direct ROI. Even when brands know the ROI isn’t great, they can’t seem to get off the treadmill because they know what to expect.  And with AI emerging, there is likely to be further disruption in the consumer industry. You’ve worked so hard to create a great brand and a great product. So, if not for advertising, how do people discover new brands today?

 

Give Them a Reason to Talk About Your Brand

Because we’re so inundated with signals and ads, buyers rely on friends and family for suggestions more than ever to help them filter through the choices. Every consumer brand understands the value of reviews, but referrals from friends and family are even more essential. 27% of consumers rely on trusted sources like friends for new brand discovery. Also, the older the target customer, the more likely they are to rely on advice from friends, with GenX (30%) and Boomers (35%) relying most heavily on friends and family.

But giving your advocates a gentle nudge and a reason to share your info with friends is even more important. We see this a lot with referral codes. Still, when a customer wants to advocate for you, or want to tell a friend about you, they aren’t likely going to go digging around for a creepy referral link that makes the receiver think their friend is only recommending a brand so they can save $10. It’s icky.

Instead, think about your content and social proof. For example, write tangential content that’s interesting and useful to your customer, not just about your brand. For example, if you’re a food brand, then write content about your favorite cooking tools in your test kitchen.

Also, when you secure consumer press, celebrate it with your customers. This IS a good time to offer a promo code because it’s one more reason to say to a friend, “hey, this is the skincare lotion you asked me about; it’s on sale,” AND it comes right next to the social proof that backs up your customer’s choice to share your product.

 

Search Engine Love

31% of consumers find new products on search engines. Consumers use search engines during two buying phases: the research phase and the buying phase. You want to be present for both, because that’s how people discover new brands

First, assuming your website is well constructed, and your product pages are well designed, your next step is to embrace the reality of the internet: content marketing. With the latest advances in AI-generated content, creating content for your website has never been easier. Just be sure to review your content and ensure the quality is there because content is often a consumer’s first exposure to your brand. There are countless ways you can use content marketing. Look at the way Sarah Blakely was always the #1 brand advocate for Spanx.

Second, if you sell DTC, use Google’s product review advice to help you build content that matters to customers. Our annual guide has many tips and hints about building consumer content that will help you stand out in search engine results.

But it’s not just owned content that customers love. When potential customers search for products, they’re in the buying phase, and that’s when they’re looking for reviews that jump out at them from search results: reviews by trusted media outlets. This is really important because publishers have massive amounts of content and SEO, so their product reviews are highly visible. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the press outlet uses affiliate links, so long as it’s disclosed. We’ve had clients sell out warehouses full of product due to affiliate links. Notably, affiliate links from friends might seem creepy, but product review affiliate links from media outlets are perfectly acceptable. Why might that be? When you learn about how people view lures and rewards, that’s another reason you must allow your marketing and PR to work together when considering your DTC consumer.

Influencers Gonna Influence

We can’t really talk about DTC PR without talking about social media influencers. It’s not just younger generations turning to TikTok for product discovery. And social networks catch buyer in all three phases – the awareness phase, the buying phase, when they’re researching a product, and the curiosity phase. Ensure your influencer campaigns work for both those phases, and be conscious of how impulsive your customers are when strategizing campaigns with content creators, because buyers are increasingly impulsive on platforms like TikTok.; 65% of GenZ and Millenials make impulse buying decisions at least once per month, compared to 38% of GenX and Boomers.

 

Using these modern PR tips to capitalize on how people discover new brands and tactics will make your investment pay for itself much faster.

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What Makes Hypergrowth Businesses Stand Out?

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While there is no blueprint for creating a successful hyper-growth company, many of these businesses share some common qualities that help them stand out in the crowd of tech startups. But first, it’s essential to understand what a hypergrowth business is.

What Is A Hypergrowth Business?

Hypergrowth businesses are businesses that maintain a rapid rate of growth over time. To be called a “hyper-growth” business, it must have a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 40% or more. Businesses with “rapid growth” have a CAGR between 20% and 40%. And businesses with “normal growth” maintain a CAGR below 20%. Hypergrowth usually occurs before a business has fully matured. The term “hyper-growth” was first coined in the Harvard Business Review.

Many startup businesses are looking to be the next big hyper-growth company. Amazon, Uber, and Facebook are all excellent examples of hyper-growth companies. However, many hyper-growth companies eventually take a quick downturn and ultimately fail. Many hyper-growth companies fail because they get so focused on growth that they neglect to plan for challenges that the business will face during its rapid rise, including overworked employees, marketing costs, and a customer-focused culture, and more.

How Hypergrowth Companies Stand Out

Hyper-growth companies are usually ahead of the trend, which means they’ve probably toiled in a constant state of underfunding until they didn’t. This means that many hyper-growth CEOs are unprepared for the needs of a company suddenly thrust into the public eye.

But whether their fast-growing status is due to an emerging industry, an outspoken leader, or an up-and-coming trend, the fastest-growing companies take the opportunity to create a brand for themselves.  This means engaging in marketing and PR before the trend hits. A well-positioned hyper-growth company leads the conversation because they are an already known expert.

They Keep Track of Emerging Trends and Offer Customers Real Value

Because the market is constantly in flux and consumers are continuously rethinking their wants and needs, hypergrowth businesses understand that they must keep track of emerging trends. When they see an opportunity, they take it. When they see a gap in the marketplace, they fill it with a product or service that has value for customers. Hypergrowth businesses understand that perceived value is not enough; customers seek products and services that add real value to their lives. Being flexible and focused on the company’s target audience and their changing wants and needs enables hypergrowth businesses to scale rapidly when an opportunity becomes successful.

They Know How To Identify Areas for Growth

Most businesses grow by expanding their current customer base by regularly offering new products and services or by targeting new customers by diversifying the products and services they offer and testing opportunities in new markets. Hypergrowth companies are successful because they know how to identify the most significant opportunities for growth and then strategically pursue that opportunity while keeping an eye on product performance and marketplace trends.

They Hire Focused Leadership

Hypergrowth companies understand the value of competent, focused leadership. Hypergrowth businesses that fail often do so because company leadership got so focused on the company’s rapid growth that they were unable to focus on other challenges that would inevitably arise due to rapid expansion. Successful hypergrowth companies hire leadership that can focus on both scaling the business and scaling other business areas to match the company’s growth.

Successful business leaders do much more than share a vision for the company’s growth. They also move the business forward by spotting emerging trends and constantly adapting to the constantly changing market. While remaining focused on the overall vision, they also focus on executing a business strategy to achieve their business objectives.

They Value Their Employees

Hypergrowth companies value the people who work for them and strive to foster a healthy workplace culture. Overworking employees can quickly cause a business’s culture to become toxic. Hypergrowth businesses provide employees with rewards and benefits that have value. A good work-life balance is far more rewarding and important to the average worker than access to ping-pong tables and craft beer on tap. Hypergrowth company leaders understand their employees are the catalysts for rapid growth and that the company’s culture starts with its workers. Hypergrowth company leaders are intentional about developing a healthy and unique company culture from the outset.

They Turn Their Customers Into Brand Ambassadors

Successful hyper-growth companies turn their customers into ambassadors for their brand. There are few things more powerful for a company than its customers going out into the world and gushing about the company’s product or service. Hypergrowth businesses rely on word of mouth and constantly identify potential brand ambassadors to promote their products and services. In addition to customers, other brand ambassadors might be employees or industry influencers. No matter how they spread the word about your brand, word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools a business can leverage.

They Measure Their Success

Hypergrowth businesses understand that success doesn’t happen due to dumb luck. Successful hyper growth businesses are constantly tracking their successes and failures, gaining insights into what is working and what isn’t by harnessing as much data as they can — the more data, the better.

They Are Flexible and Innovative

Perhaps one of the most important qualities of successful hyper-growth businesses is their flexibility and ability to innovate constantly. In the digital age, the world is changing rapidly every day. Successful hyper-growth companies understand that to achieve success, they must be malleable, constantly reassessing consumers’ wants and needs and new marketplace opportunities. Because consumers today have more choice, successful hyper-growth companies must constantly innovate to stand out above other companies.

Marketing for Hypergrowth

How can you market your company for hyper-growth? Implementing a focused and strategic public relations campaign is one of the best methods for customer-driven companies that are on the brink of or are already experiencing hypergrowth. The keys to successful hyper-growth PR is to reach a broad audience, keep them engaged, and letting your service or product sell itself. Some ways to do this include:

  • Running giveaways and other promotions to attract new customers and keep them engaged
  • Keep your existing customers informed and engaged with your company
  • Show all of your customers that you care, not just through words but through your actions

PR for fast-growing companies can be challenging, and especially for those experiencing hypergrowth. With so many tasks to complete, outsourcing some of these efforts to a company with specific experience with hypergrowth PR is often recommended.

Contact Avaans Media

The foundation of any company is its vision, but a successful hyper-growth company grows due to a solid business strategy that meets its goals. If you have questions about hyper-growth business strategies, the PR team at Avaans Media is here to answer all your questions. Contact us today to discuss your business objectives.

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PR for AI Startups – Is It Too Late?

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ChatGPT was a seismic event for AI PR. AI companies that focused on generating language models for prompts and voice commands were already years ahead. “AI prompts for ChatGPT” topics were all the rage, and for AI startups, that was actually quite frustrating because they knew there are so many deep, interesting topics to cover. And that’s why it’s not too late for public relations for AI startups.

As a PR agency specializing in emerging technologies, our clients definitely benefited from the burst of AI coverage after ChatGPT became a media darling. Still, our clients are already working on AI technologies that make businesses more efficient and embrace the human element to allow more informed decisions.

Journalists will cover artificial intelligence in the way they covered social media during its infancy: obsessively, as there are still a lot of stories to tell in commercial AI PR. AI-assisted technologies will continue to exist, so there will be endless types of articles to write, and they will not solely revolve around creating content or the disappearance of jobs.

The Case for PR Urgency

Executives and boardrooms are still unsure about what AI means for their companies. And tomorrow’s most relevant AI brands are taking the opportunity right now to create media coverage around topics that position them as thought leaders. An AI PR agency that understands the cyclical nature of PR for hyper-growth and emerging industries is an essential resource for AI startups.

85% of AI startups will be out of business in three years. From content to thought leadership to contributed content and niche audience trends, the PR strategies AI companies choose today will be the differentiator for AI startups from the earliest phases to pre-IPO. AI is dominating venture funding headlines and grabbing what venture funding dollars are available today, and that means tomorrow’s most exciting IPOs will be AI companies. And while those companies need PR for AI companies, even those who intend to stay private should embrace PR because the industry is at its most crucial stage.

Educating the Consumer About The Future of AI

Like with other hot emerging industries, AI technologies have the opportunity right now to develop positive relationships with stakeholders, customers, and consumers. As an industry, AI companies should take this very seriously because AI’s potential is scary to consumers, especially since consumers are still experiencing techlash from the unforeseen consequences of social media. Educating consumers about how the AI industry addresses their fears and concerns is a key opportunity for public relations for AI companies.

Even B2B AI companies should take the lead on educating the masses about AI’s potential. Why is this important? When the average person understands how AI will make their life better, AI will seem less scary and this is important to regulators.

AI companies can also take this opportunity to self regulate, instead of waiting for a government backlash from representatives who don’t understand what it is (see Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearing). Taking stakeholders along the journey enables them to see the future with you, as opposed to despite you. PR services are critical to this journey because today’s actions will have an outsized impact in the future.

From content creation to PR campaigns, AI companies should lean into tech where it makes sense, and lean into relationships where it’s most important.

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3 Tips for Cannabis Companies New to PR

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Cannabis businesses who are new to PR have a lot of decisions to make. Many of our clients have never hired a cannabis PR agency before and the process can seem daunting.At Avaans we work with a lot of hyper-growth or early stage companies in emerging industries, so we’re pros at guiding ambitious companies to the next stage of growth. Often our clients are CEOs or CMOs who understand why PR is important, but maybe haven’t engaged a professional PR agency before. That’s why we came up with 3 tips for cannabis companies new to PR.

Cannabis Companies New to PR: “Am I Ready for PR?”

 

If you’re new to PR and you’re asking yourself the question, you’re off to a great start.

If you’re new to PR, you might be confused about what to ask an agency. For more strategic PR partnerships, ask the agency whether they think you are ready for PR. That will tell you how prepared they are to work with a company of your PR readiness. If a firm tells you that you aren’t ready for cannabis PR, what they’re saying is “You aren’t ready for our PR services.” We believe it’s important to consider PR from the very first moment.

The next question to ask yourself is how much bandwidth you have for PR. We started our consumer product PR sprints for very early growth companies or companies without huge budgets. Our cannabis PR Sprints are an excellent way to look underneath the hood of working with a PR agency, without a long-term PR contract. The PR Sprints are also great for cannabis product launches.

A full-scale bespoke PR program is more successful when the PR agency has a key contact at the cannabis company. Bespoke programs are for consumer brands committed to strategic PR outcomes like pre-IPO or investment, or attracting top talent. Bespoke programs are for companies and brands that have a long-term vision for the company and can state their 3-year and 5-year goals. B2B PR are also bespoke PR campaigns because every B2B campaign has dependencies as distinctive as the company’s leadership, product, and ambitions.

Naturally, budget comes into play, but working with a cannabis PR firm is like hiring a contractor – you rarely want the cheapest. If you’re new to PR, you’re in the early stages of reputation and branding, and this is a critical time for new cannabis brands. In particular, a cannabis company needs to invest in trust-first positioning and can’t take risks with the brand, because there is less brand equity.

Another way to know whether you’re ready for bespoke PR? Being crystal clear on cannabis public relations goals and outcomes will make choosing a firm, and a time to start cannabis PR much easier.

How Do I Look, Hunny?

Starting a cannabis business means jumping through a lot of hoops, and sometimes branding and marketing seem like it takes a back seat to the regulatory hurdles for cannabis companies. How does your cannabis packaging look on the shelves at a dispensary? How will it look on the pages of a magazine? Are your product images professionally shot? Do you know who your customers really are? If you’re still figuring out your website or tinkering with formulations, then focus on those items first, or at least go with a shorter-term, very focused PR campaign. Starting with a freelancer could also be an option at this stage as well. But in general, bespoke PR firms are worth the investment if you’re clear on your brand, its customers, and the look/feel of your cannabis packaging and product.

What’s the Best Time of Year To Engage a Cannabis PR Agency?

Journalists and editors are planning months in advance. This means your PR pitching should start months in advance, too. This is one aspect of PR that many new-to-PR companies struggle with: the need to plan in advance. For example, PR agencies will want photos and product descriptions months before

Look beyond 420 for cannabis PR. The fall months are a dynamic time for the cannabis industry. There are cannabis industry tradeshows and conferences happening, award winners announced, and of course, Halloween, Thanksgiving, the December holidays, and New Years’ Eve all add up to massive revenue opportunities for cannabis brands. For consumer brands new to PR, the fall can be one of the most valuable times of year to get editorial coverage for consumer brands. In fact, up to 40% of coverage for consumer brands happens during this time of year, so that’s a great time to pack a PR punch. We developed our consumer brand PR Sprints to include fall cannabis PR for this reason.

For B2B cannabis PR, the equation looks a little different. If you’re looking for a feature on a product launch or an executive, planting that story takes planning on behalf of the journalist and editor who have to fit it into regularly scheduled articles. Starting B2B cannabis public relations in the fall may be right for you if you have big plans for the spring. B2B PR, like thought leadership, speaking engagements, and cannabis industry visibility have more dependencies, some of which – like when speaking engagement submissions close, aren’t in your control. If you miss the window for this year at a particular event, there are only a couple of avenues to take, and most of them include spending a considerable sum of money. Campaigns and activations around crucial industry events may take longer to plan and implement, especially cannabis industry events. In short, B2B PR often requires longer lead times.

For cannabis consumer brands new to PR, there are some advantages to starting PR in the second quarter. But not if you’re planning a big 420 splash or product launch. You really aren’t giving yourself enough time to maximize your 420 if you’re starting in Q2. At that point, the question is really should you do a 420 campaign? On the other hand, if you’re a consumer or CPG cannabis brand who tends to have a summer-based sales cycle, say cannabis beverages, then starting your PR well in advance of the summer is a great idea.

Starting a new PR campaign in January gives most brands a superb runway to plan for everything the year offers, regardless of whether it’s B2B or B2C. We love starting the year off together with new clients, but this isn’t a time of year to start new projects for everyone. If your product does particularly well in February for Valentine’s Day – then starting in January is too late.

Being a cannabis company new to PR doesn’t have to daunting. Contact us with questions about hiring an agency, and what to look for. We love working with cannabis companies in all stages of growth.

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