WIT Strategy: What It Takes to Succeed in Adtech PR

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Mark Naples, the founder of WIT Strategy, a strategic comms firm that has worked with hundreds of adtech and martech companies over the past 20 years, joined us to cover how adtech companies can grow with communications.

Mark covers what makes a great adtech PR or strategy firm as well as how adtech companies and individuals can move the needle with communications. In short:

1. PR is not about creating content or getting a story covered because the PR person has a relationship with reporters. It’s about offering value to reporters, analysts, and influencers so consistently that you become a go-to resource. This is how you build a reputation and a brand to the point where people are citing you even when the story isn’t about you.

2. The best PR firms don’t just help get your company story out there. They help you figure out how to offer that aforementioned value to the space beyond your individual story. They might even challenge the way you think about your business, which can lead to new idioms for describing what you do or even a new business-level strategy.

3. Long-term PR client-agency relationships are built on a trusted advisory relationship. When an agency expands the client’s perspective and helps them share that broadened perspective with the market, they earn the right to advise the client over the long term. Note: This means the agency’s value needs to go well beyond securing ‘placements.’

Here’s a condensed version of our conversation:

JZ: How do you sell marketing strategy to people who are resistant to it?

MN: Not every company can be a good client. If they think it's a rubber stamp where we're just going to give them some content and that's going to make a difference for them, it won't. It's not about the reporter having a good relationship with me, and therefore they're going to do the story, either.

Rather, you nurture your relationship with reporters, analysts, and other influencers by adding value to them over time. Any given story might not be the one that the reporter can do anything on. It doesn't have to be. If you continually help reporters better understand the space, they’re going to give you the references that build a brand.

So, the best clients tend either to understand journalism or have a broader curiosity and intellect beyond what their company does.

The people who want to just get a story out there and have their brand appear in the press won’t get the most out of comms. The ones that stand out are the ones who do the reading, who understand that their job, if they're going to engage journalists or analysts, is to help them understand not just their own company but the segment.

That's really hard to do. That's a much heavier lift for the client than just talking about their own company.

JZ: The way I often think about this is you'll do much better with PR and content if you have a genuine thesis on the space that extends beyond “We have a problem that we're solving, and we're good at solving it.”

Someone like Joe Zawadzki, who's been in the industry for such a long time and has been involved in so many different things, it's very obvious that his participation in adtech goes beyond, “I founded a DSP, and here's what we did.” Ari Paparo is another example. Yeah, he built Beeswax, and it had a good exit. But throughout that entire time, he was building a reputation as someone who genuinely has insights about ad tech.

Not every act of insight sharing affects the bottom line. But over time, you become a go-to resource, and that translates into business.

MN: Rich Cherecwich and I worked with Ari. When you get a client like that, it becomes a bit of a challenge match. You're going to try to challenge each other about your ideas and about what reporters, analysts, and the market are going to be receptive to or not.

JZ: I think the hardest thing in our sector is when you get a client who doesn't really have a thesis on the space. That's where they need another level of work from the PR firm because they need the firm to help them develop that perspective, to help them see how their product ladders up to a broader view on the industry.

MN: The whole notion of "purchase funnel" is something that we invented with Atlas when they were a client. Now everybody just uses that idiom as an orthodoxy. “We want to get people to this level of the purchase funnel.” Yeah, we made that up wth Young-Bean Song, one of the smartest people I've ever had the opportunity to work with.

Sometimes it's as simple as building an idiom that way. Other times, it’s even more fundamental than idioms. For example, there was one company that thought it was a yield management tool that could be sold to publishers. And when I got under the covers, I said to them, “Why don't you sell this to networks?” This is before programmatic. This goes back 16, 17 years. And I introduced them to some folks to do early adoption with the networks. They ended up selling that company for real money in 13 months because there was so much demand for it.

If you do understand the market at least as well as your client, and you can add that level of strategic value, it's not even about comms. Ultimately, comms are going to come into it, but that strategic thing is really core.

JZ: Another thing you're talking about is the importance of vertical expertise.

MN: Yeah. I think that that's true. I'm a big believer in the ‘fish rots from the head’ motif. Whoever you're working with at the PR or strategy firm, their weakest link is going to be the best they can do.

JZ: We talked about what makes a client a good fit in general, but I think there's another dimension to it. Someone can be a good fit on paper. But is there another dimension that allows an agency-client relationship to endure three or five years?

MN: It comes back to that challenge match thing. It's a willingness to engage in not just the business of the client but the segment as a whole. If you can expand their perspective and help them share that broadened perspective with the market, you earn the right to advise them over the long term.