By Catharine Montgomery, Founder and CEO of Better Together Agency
Better Together Agency’s work with Talking Talent offers practical lessons on researching audiences, planning media outreach and connecting communications with a client’s website.
When a client wants to reach a new market, we want to know who needs to hear from them and why. A shared language can make UK and US communications feel familiar. It still leaves a lot of decisions for an agency to make.
Better Together Agency faced this assignment with Talking Talent, a workplace coaching and consulting business. The client needed to explain its expertise to HR decision-makers and develop its media presence across the UK and US. Our work covered competitor research, communications planning and website recommendations.
Start with the people making decisions
“HR decision-makers” gave us a starting point. The plan identified chief human resources officers, diversity and inclusion leaders and HR executives in professional services, financial services, technology and pharmaceuticals.
Naming those audiences makes the next conversation more useful. What does each person need to understand? Which workplace problem can the client address? Where does the client have evidence to support its advice?
Talking Talent’s work included workplace connection, inclusive leadership, women’s career progression and support for working parents. The communications task was to connect this expertise with relevant readers and journalists. The audience’s needs help determine which parts of a client’s expertise deserve attention.
For agency owners, the lesson is practical: define the audience before settling on the story. Then test whether the same story has a useful role in each market.
Give research a job to do
We analyzed eight competitors’ communications, reviewing their PR activity, media messaging and customer stories. This gave us material to compare as we considered how Talking Talent could present its expertise.
The customer stories mattered alongside the messaging. A consultancy can describe its approach in confident language. The agency still needs to examine how it supports those statements with examples, use cases or original research.
Other agencies can use the same discipline. Ask what competitors are talking about, what evidence they offer and where your client can contribute informed advice. Keep those questions close to the decisions the research needs to support. A long report has limited value if the team cannot use it to choose a topic or explain a recommendation.
Plan outreach for each market
The communications plan connected workplace themes with HR trade publications, business media and future-of-work reporters. It identified byline, interview and podcast opportunities.
UK outreach had its own track. The plan distinguished an expert interview for HR press from an interview for national or business media. It also proposed turning approved ebook material into articles for HR publications.
Those are different editorial assignments. Each requires a reason for the journalist or reader to care, suitable evidence and a spokesperson who can answer the questions likely to follow.
The lesson for a boutique team is to make local decisions visible in the plan. A separate media list helps, but the team also needs to explain why an outlet fits and what it can offer the audience. This is where a colleague who knows another market can challenge an assumption before it reaches a client.
Consider what happens after someone visits
We also reviewed the website. Recommendations covered simpler navigation, mobile use, localized content and more direct contact paths. They included accessible labels and ways to track traffic sources and conversion rates.
A visitor arriving after reading an article should be able to find the relevant service, understand the client’s expertise and decide how to get in touch. Communication planning needs to account for this next step.
The completed work gave Talking Talent eight competitor profiles, a communications plan and recommendations for future website work. These materials set out decisions about content, media outreach and website development for the client to assess and act on.
Where an owner network can help
This assignment illustrates the questions an international client brings to a boutique agency. It also explains why I see value in relationships with other agency owners who can offer a market perspective or challenge a plan.
PR Boutiques International gives members opportunities to collaborate on international projects, share advice and exchange knowledge through webinars, workshops and meetings. Members can also explore referrals and joint pitches with peers in other countries.