“We sell PR services to help businesses and experts get featured in the media. Tell me what your strategy would be to book calls for our sales team. What sorts of advertising tactics would you use to get short terms results?”
First off let me applaud this question being found in resume prescreening questions for a “marketing director,” because nothing shows proves "Necessity is the mother of invention" like the desire to find a career.
These are great question(s) they have outlined when it comes to new business development. As we know, the term "PR" has become diluted with the likes of inbound and social media services. Many businesses require a re-up on the education on the benefits and long-lasting value that comes with strategic "hits" and behavioral position. I know first hand having worked with the PRSA on educational outreach.
While I would not wish to appear boilerplate but much can be done strategically by having sales.
Some quick hits:
Join key business associations, leads groups, and networking functions.
Observe and join in Facebook community group conversations within specific verticals and geographic locations.
Create a robust trend & mentions dashboard to key verticals and use this content to trigger "thought leadership" messaging to potential clients.
Maintain and an active database of experts and seek to find future content developers much like HARO.
Participate and establish guidance in trending content distribution applications like "ClubHouse" and others.
Create a series of online seminars where you can forefront a position of "actionable content" for all manner of businesses ranging from B2B, B2C, B2E and others — the key here is that messaging must contain some real value that the potential (or current) customer could use on their own without paying your firm. Then it will be your 'call to arms' to show why "blending" efforts with paid PR services would be an exponential reach multiplier.
Don’t forget to have a robust set of condensed e-books, white papers, case-studies and lists that you can use to for landing page signup bait. Key to any long-term strategy will be a CRM focused drip program that will allow another distribution point.
Lastly, you want to offer a complete understanding of all marketing services (properly directed), ranging from SEO/SEM, behavioral, CX design, email, CRM integration, and all inbound marketing abilities; otherwise, you'll eventually be replaced with the client's agencies preferred partner OR you won't be able to substantiate organic growth by showing how your services complete the loop.
Mining results:
There are still benefits in participating and engaging your potential sales objectives by engaging in a one-to-one conversation with the clients you wish to reach. For instance: I hope to *woo* a meeting with Jane Doe, CMO of XYZ company. I then write a trending article on things shifting within their competitive landscape. Then we seek out their @handle or professional profile and suggest they read our "smarticle." The key to this content will be to create a genuine sense of action for ALL players if they wish to capitalize. Next, and this is where it gets tough, is to continue to feed the potential client smart insight.
The key to kickstarting PR with a new client:
There's a running joke in the marketing world "Well, there's never a budget for more marketing (or your great tactic) until you've convinced Dad (in this case your client/decision-maker) that it was S/He's idea." And you simply cannot do that without proper care and feeding.
How many times has a client come to you and said, "I was having drinks with a guy that does Facebook marketing, and he said we need to be doing "lookalike audiences" — are we doing that? We gotta' do that! Drop everything and start doing that so the money can flow in like a waterfall." The point of this moment is that drinking buddy had something shiny, and without that, there will be no fish caught.