SCHWARTZ CROSSROADS

Schwartz And HubSpot Lead PR Industry Transformation

We are story tellers at Schwartz Communications. For almost 20 years, our teams have translated complicated technical and medical concepts into messaging that resonates with strategic audiences.

Being a good story teller means that at your core you need to be a good writer. This is why, for as long as Schwartz has been in business, every employee candidate takes a writing test, sitting down at a desk specifically reserved for the task. 

This test continues to be important today as content has become a core aspect of everything we do for our clients. Every company needs content to attract potential customers, partners and employees, and to establish a corporate image to existing customers, partners and employees.

We certainly have moved beyond just the writing test in terms of what we now look for in potential Schwartz staff members. Our employees now are creating YouTube videos, managing social media content, conducting interviews for podcast episodes and suggesting graphics to augment stories. And we teach them to optimize and promote what they create, so our clients receive SEO impact from our efforts.

While content remains king, the tactics and tools available to PR pros in recent years have expanded dramatically. With social media, the ease of creating digital content, and the changing, flattening nature of how people can find information via Internet-driven tools, PR and communications today have become larger, more influential parts of marketing than at any other time. We are also able to measure our effectiveness in ways that directly relate to our clients’ businesses and their strategic business objectives.

Many of Schwartz’s services are, in fact, transforming marketing, creating a direct connection between PR, marketing, lead generation and marketing measurement. Since Schwartz is a top five technology PR, healthcare PR and green PR firm, we have taken a leadership position in defining this connection for our clients and in offering marketing transformation services.

Today, we extended that leadership by announcing a partnership with HubSpot. HubSpot sells web-based tools that help companies create, optimize and promote content so those companies can easily be found online, tools that help convert those visitors into leads and customers, and tools that track who comes to their websites, which visitors become active leads and close into customers---and a whole host of other information.

In many ways, HubSpot’s inbound marketing platform complements Schwartz’s methodology and services. Many of our engagements have capitalized on HubSpot for some time. Schwartz teams use HubSpot to help create and promote optimized strategic content for clients. The analytical tools within HubSpot allow us to see directly how the content Schwartz creates and promotes generates leads and fills the top of the marketing lead funnel. By seeing how many leads the traffic generates, we can repeat tactics that generate significant results.

Inbound marketing and HubSpot software are not new to us, and we certainly are not talking about them for the first time based on today’s partnership announcement. But today’s news exemplifies how PR and communications can have an even closer relationship to marketing and sales---not to mention how PR for innovative companies has changed dramatically in recent years.

Schwartz has maintained its leadership position as a PR firm for innovative companies because it has stayed ahead of the curve in offering services that define how PR is changing. You can expect so see many posts about the topic in the weeks and months ahead.

In HubSpot, we have a partner providing solutions that contribute directly to how PR has changed and how we deliver services to our clients here at Schwartz.

At Schwartz we believe that the modern PR firm should be content-driven, strategic and able to measure its effectiveness. My co-worker Laura Kempke has authored a white paper that goes into more detail, and I invite you to download it. We are constantly evaluating products and services that can be managed by our clients’ account teams and can seamlessly enhance our clients programs. Over the past several months, we have added new measurement, lead-tracking and content marketing programs that are powered by HubSpot. Our clients and their Schwartz teams see the clear benefits of these marketing transformational approaches.

At the same time, we recognize that the HubSpot partnership is based on the premise that, at Schwartz, we are fundamentally still story tellers. What excites us are the new possibilities for telling those stories, identifying and connecting to strategic audiences, and measuring our work. We’re excited by the ways that PR, communications and marketing are all changing, and feel this partnership with HubSpot is a good indication of this transformation.

Watch this space.

Posted by Ross Levanto on May 18, 2010 at 2:06 PM