How CEOs Can Profit from 3PR

• June 12, 2018

An independent research with over 700 professional services for CEOs proves that the #1 source of business is “making warm calls to existing clients” – no surprise there.

But the #1 source for generating NEW clients is “speaking at conferences, seminars and trade shows”. (Wellesley Hills Group, Trends in Professional Services Lead Generation Report)

So if you want to win NEW business from NEW clients and customers, speaking may very well be your most direct path to that goal.

Yet if you’re like most CEOs and business owners, you haven’t yet cracked the code on how to put all the pieces together to make speaking pay off for yourself, your company, and your team to consistently attract YOUR best customers and clients.

Learn how CEOs can profit from 3PR in your company’s business development efforts, including the #1 strategy – speaking.

As a business owner, executive, or entrepreneur… Is this you?

• “We often get beat up on price because we have no credibility with prospects who’ve never heard of us before.”
• “I’m constantly asked for new marketing tools, brochures and presentations but nothing seems to help.”
• “How do I know which marketing strategies and tools will help us close more sales?”
• “There has to be a more systematic way we can market our company.”
• “There are so many new ways to reach customers these days; should we be using social media, blogs, podcasts, video? And do any of those even work in our industry?”

If any of the above statements sound familiar, then it makes sense for you to explore the power of 3PR — Personalized Professional Public Relations.

Let’s unpack specifically what we mean by 3PR – Personalized Professional Public Relations:

Personalized: Your company is made of up of individuals. Each member of your team has specific strengths, capabilities, preferences and personalities that can be leveraged in marketing, positioning, and amplifying the messages you want to impress on your prospects, your customers and your influencers in your target markets.

Professional: 3PR has one goal – professional exposure for your company’s collective expertise, products, services, and value proposition. Many top executives shy away from the spotlight of 3PR saying, “it’s not about me”. While this is true, it certainly IS about YOU providing value, expertise and guidance to help your target market succeed.

Public: Your team may be top-notch with proven expertise that generates amazing results for your customers. However, if you don’t make your expertise public, you will suffer what many small and mid-sized firm CEOs describe in frustration as the “Best Kept Secret Syndrome”. 3PR puts your expertise in front of prospects — exactly where it belongs if you want to generate new business more easily and more often.

Relations: Stop thinking in terms of “closing the sale” and focus rather on building relationships with your audiences, readers, followers and fans. The content that you share in a typical 3PR campaign is useful, valuable, actionable, specific and insightful. Do this consistently and you’ll build trust, likeability and a reputation for excellence. So when a need arises, you and your company will be on “speed dial” and your prospects will consider it a serious mistake to buy from anyone else.

The three pillars of a typical 3PR campaign:

1. Speaking: Targeting profit-rich speaking engagements in front of audiences composed of high-probability prospects. Then developing a “marketing magnet” presentation that will engage, attract and convert prospects to take the next step in your new customer acquisition process.

2. Writing: Articles, white papers, special reports, blogs, tip sheets – anything that your prospects will find valuable and relevant. You and your company need to become known for creating and sharing a consistent stream of high-quality information that solves your prospect’s problems. Yes, even before they buy from you! (Note: Traditional PR – placing articles in hardcopy and digital venues that your prospects read and respect – although possibly important for your company – is generally icing on the cake since the web has made ALL of us into publishers.)

3. Social media: Social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn now generate up to 40% of website traffic for companies with a healthy online presence. If you and your firm are not taking advantage of these social media platforms to offer value and invite engagement with your target market, you are missing a significant opportunity to generate new leads and stimulate meaningful prospect conversations.

The overall impact of a 3PR campaign can be boiled down to one word: Expertizing.

Expertizing is the cumulative effect of your speaking, writing and social media efforts. Taken to the extreme, it might even result in you writing a non-fiction business book to position you and your company as thought-leaders.

It includes the ability of SEVERAL of your company executives – including the CEO, of course – to clearly and confidently deliver a powerful value-rich presentation at trade shows, conferences and industry events.

It includes positioning your company’s key leaders as experts via your website, videos, media kits, social media presence, articles in trade publications, regular blogging and perhaps even establishing an internal speaker’s bureau function to more efficiently pursue, track and land speaking engagements for your key executives in front of audiences that matter.

So the question is… How successful are you at these 3PR strategies to drive your company’s credibility, visibility and revenue?

And do you do it “once in a while” with mixed results or “in between projects” when you have some down time?

If your company is already consistently doing a great job – welcome to the 1% club.

If not, give these 3PR strategies some serious consideration at your next leadership meeting or discuss this article with your team for feedback. The results of implementing your 3PR campaign will be immediate and lasting.