In our latest blog, our Director Lisa Gingell discusses how businesses can educate and influence the market and drive sales with corporate comms
 
Decoding the tech speak, interpreting the jargon and removing the industry terminology is one of our favourite tasks for clients. It’s an overlooked piece of the corporate communications puzzle; many businesses assume their target market, trade media, clients and those they want to influence understand their ‘trade talk’ – but they often don’t.
 
This is a job for corporate communications experts, and one we relish. We work on blog content, copywriting for websites, marketing brochures, sales literature and presentations, assist with trade shows, sales strategy as well as media briefings and press releases for many clients who talk in one language but need to communicate in another.
 
Translating the tech speak into bite-sized, relatable, and understandable parlance is essential for many reasons, from education to sales and product knowledge. It’s also critical to understand that education is vital; you need to influence and understand what’s being discussed in the market to ensure your corporate comms externally ‘hit the mark’.
 
My on-the-job experience of setting up, growing, and selling an IoT energy and building controls technology business means that I know how to explain an IoT solution, an ESG strategy or a building controls device to the unfamiliar. We understand the energy industry and how technology can help commercial and residential sectors to shed and shift energy consumption or transition onto renewable and clean tech solutions.
 
Back in early 2000s with my technology business t-mac, the editors and industry were perplexed with the notion of having a device installed in a building that can be remotely accessible through a web interface and allow for remote monitoring and control of building assets to help improve operational and energy efficiency. The most confusing part, it seemed, was the remote-control aspect, and I remember vividly one newspaper editor asking whether it involved a remote control; like for a TV!
 
All those years working closely with web application and software development and operational teams have never left me, and I fully understand the opportunities (both current and evolving) that technologies and IoT systems and services can provide. This knowledge helps with decoding language and drafting content that ultimately sells.
 
How we can do this for your business:

• First of all, we start by understanding the technology - working closely with the development, technology and operational teams to identify what the solutions/services offer now and what development roadmap we could create to identify opportunities, new market reach and USP for the future.
• Considering how the product compares to the competitors and ensuring these USP and competitive advantages are articulated at every touch point with the customer.
• Establishing the current opportunity and potential future for the product/services, we look outside the business to see the current reach and where the business wants to get to. This aligns with the growth aspirations as well as the art of the possible with the new solutions and the investment needed for the future solutions. Bringing to the business an analysis of the marketplace and potential channel markets. 
• We then employ the PR and Marketing disciplines which are the backbone of 3Eight, to deliver the message, to start talking to our client’s current and future marketplace. Ensuring the current opportunities understand the technology and solutions, the benefits to them and, of course, the ROI and ESG factors.

 
And for the future marketplace, it's about educating as, for the most part, we’re looking to promote and sell something the industry may not yet know it needs.
 
If you’d like to know more about how we could help your business, please get in touch with the team at 3Eight here

Our Founder Lisa Gingell explains why the team at 3-Eight is a PR and Marketing agency with a difference.
 
Building a brand, developing a product, finding a route to market, and showcasing a business to the industry isn’t a job for one person; much like raising a family, it takes a village of experts to market a business.
 
This is the premise of 3Eight. We are more than purely a PR and Marketing agency; we are (your) extended family!
 
With a comprehensive suite of expertise under our belt, we pride ourselves on being able to offer all corporate communication services - we touch upon every area of communication that can help create and forge a brand and product development strategy and delivery into the marketplace. 
 
It is important to our clients (and our team) that we are offering corporate communications support from a place of factual knowledge, over 20 years’ worth! And that is just from my experience setting up, growing and selling an IoT energy and building management solution. This ‘lived’ knowledge has stood me in good stead when it comes to both industry expertise but also for marketing and market messaging.
 
We work closely with clients to formulate and create new product propositions and marketplace opportunities for existing or new products, SaaS solutions and services.
 
We work by getting stuck-in at the beginning, influencing the development roadmap with feedback from the market analysis and looking at future opportunities.
 
Working with clients, we can help form a product/service development and market strategy for product/service delivery and call on the PR and marketing disciplines embedded in our business, to aid in the deployment and sales strategy work as well as brand and product awareness.
 
We’ve worked with large corporates integrating with the team to help devise and build an IoT proposition and then take that to market, as well as start-up enterprises in energy management, procurement as well as renewable generation and clean tech.
 
If you’d like to hear more about our market expertise and how this fits with your business and PR/Marketing needs, please get in touch with Lisa Gingell here
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