Achieving clarity through strategy

Achieving clarity through strategy

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy

AzteQ is a small and dedicated team of IT professionals who put people first.

A technology service partner, they help clients optimise their technology investment, maximise adoption and improve productivity.

AzteQ CUBe

AzteQ Case Study

EC-PR Quote marks“AzteQ has seen an incredible transformation, with return on our investment in EC-PR within months, particularly in building more depth of business with our current clients. From the messaging labs to the launch event, EC-PR has taken success way beyond what I thought possible.”

Pip Thomas

Customer Experience Director, AzteQ

Dangers and Desires

When we first joined forces with AzteQ, they’d recently merged their three separate technology businesses into one. They fervently believed that through unification, they had a powerful market model which brought enormous benefits to customers.

AzteQ were unsure who their target customer was and therefore felt compelled to chase all sales opportunities without knowing how to qualify them first. This was wasting time and resources and meant customers who were brought on board weren’t always the best fit for the brand.

Messaging was also poorly defined and inconsistent. None of this was helping AzteQ achieve its goals. It was clear that this lack of clarity needed correcting for the business to successfully drive business growth, and so they sought the help of EC-PR.

Design

While AzteQ had visionary leadership, senior expertise and a firm commitment to doubling in size over two years, it lacked a clear and defined market offering. Our solution was to get to the root of the company’s values and outline a communication strategy to help form the narrative moving forward.

Campaign delivery

  • Messaging Lab workshops
  • Value proposition
  • Communication strategy
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Media Lens

Messaging Lab workshops

Creating a clear communication strategy was at the heart of our design. To do this, we facilitated two Messaging Lab workshops. The outcomes of the workshops allowed us to answer the following questions about AzteQ:

  1. What is your value proposition?
  2. Who are your target customers?
  3. What is your positioning statement?
  4. What are your key messages?
  5. Which industries do you prioritise?

Value proposition

AzteQ operates in a highly competitive space. It was clear to us from the beginning that a value proposition was needed to inform prospects why they should choose to work with AzteQ over a competitor.

Although AzteQ might not have immediately recognised it, they did have a unique approach. This was their people-first method which was a key differentiator in the industry. We helped the company to articulate this USP (unique selling point) through a method statement.

This collaboration between EC-PR and AzteQ resulted in a tangible outcome; AzteQ CUBe — the people-first framework for digital transformation.

Stakeholder engagement

Compiling a communication strategy cannot be an isolated exercise. Customers/stakeholders must be brought into the equation. That’s why we interviewed a cross section of AzteQ customers, asking them for their feedback. This feedback helped shape the company’s priorities and refine the communication strategy.

Communications in action

Once complete, the new communication strategy was used to brief the branding agency and the web designer. This ensured all marketing was cohesive and that messaging was consistent.

Media Lens

Now we had a comprehensive communication strategy in place, it was time to put it to best use, by using it to inform the next steps in the marketing programme — the PR. We carried out a Media Lens exercise which determined the topics AzteQ could talk about to gain most media attention.

Distinction

AzteQ called the results of our work ‘transformational’ for their business, commenting that a return on investment was seen in a matter of months.

The company cited 14 discrete benefits they’d enjoyed since our work was completed. Among these were being more visible and highly valued in their marketplace; a renewed understanding of who their target customer was, which saved them time and resources; more interested prospects; an aligned leadership team; and more engaged employees.

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Our Case Studies

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges and goals, and develop tailored strategies that deliver measurable results.

Our case studies showcase a range of successful projects, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing thought leadership in their respective industries.

Our experienced PR professionals have a wealth of knowledge and expertise, which they bring to each project, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible service. We use a data-driven approach to track and measure the success of each campaign, providing our clients with clear and transparent reporting.

Whether you are a start-up or an established business, our case studies demonstrate the value of effective PR and the impact it can have on your business.

Shaping Share of Voice

BMT Group

Distinction in Defence

AzteQ CUBe

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy

Concirrus

Igniting Interest in Insurtech Startup

A strategy for standout success

A strategy for standout success

A Strategy For Standout Success

Believing passionately about the world’s transition to net zero, ITPEnergised is a team of technical consultants who work with their clients to deliver renewables asset management services and expert advice on all environmental matters.

Through guiding their clients on issues relating to energy, environmental impact and engineering, they facilitate the transition to net zero.

The company has unparalleled experience and provides consulting services to over 2500 small to large scale projects across 150 countries.

ITPEnergised

ITP Energised Case Study

EC-PR Quote marks“Thanks to EC-PR’s support, we now have a blueprint which clearly defines how sales and marketing will assist us in delivering the business plan, providing us with clarity as to where we need to invest our resources for greatest impact. We now feel a sense of empowerment, and it has renewed passion and pride in what makes the ITPEnergised brand so special.”

Jonny Clark

Managing Director, ITPEnergised

Dangers and Desires

At the helm of ITPEnergised is Jonny Clark, an ambitious and visionary Managing Director focused on business growth. Jonny recognised that to achieve his business growth goals, certain aspects of the business required immediate attention.

The absence of a clear communication strategy meant there was a lack of consistency when it came to communicating with the target audience. The organisation had no clear line on how it differentiated itself from competitors, nor on why customers should care whether they worked with ITPEnergised or someone else.

Jonny chose to work with EC-PR because of our experience and track record in building marketing strategies and providing companies with a blueprint for how to achieve marketing and communications success.

Design

Developing a communication strategy means starting at the beginning and addressing the key questions surrounding the personality of the brand and how it wants to be perceived by the target audience.

A collaborative approach was needed here, with our role being facilitator. We proposed a fact-finding, research-led route to discover the values that lay at the heart of the company.

Campaign delivery

  • Messaging Lab workshops
  • Communication strategy
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Validation research

Messaging lab workshop

The first step to building the new communication strategy for ITPEnergised was to hold Messaging Lab workshops. In these sessions, we worked closely with the organisation’s senior leadership team to discover how they viewed the company, what they felt the key differentiators were and who they saw as their main target customers.

Communication strategy

The resulting communication strategy featured five key components:

The value proposition

This inspired ITPEnergised to recall what drove them from the start. In working with them to refine their value proposition, we helped them create a simple statement that defined them as a company and differentiated them from competitors.

Target customer personas

Companies can get lost in the everyday melee, forgetting which kind of customer it is that brings them the greatest return, in terms of profitability and satisfaction. Through this exercise, ITPEnergised was able to define which type of customers they really wanted to focus their energies on attracting.

Positioning statements

The next stage on from defining target customer personas was to create a positioning statement bespoke to each one. This addressed the key pain points the customer typically experienced and explained how the company could offer solutions and reassurance to ease this pain.

Key messaging

Ensuring they were reflective of their positioning statements, we worked with ITPEnergised’s senior team to agree on their key messaging — what it was they wanted their customers to understand about them. This information fed into the communication strategy, providing angles for narrative.

Industry prioritisation

Like every business, ITPEnergised did not have endless marketing budgets. This meant they needed to drill down on the industries most important to them. Doing this gave them direction in where to focus their attention when it came to marketing activity.

Validation research

Engaging external stakeholders is an important aspect of building a communication strategy. That’s why we conducted validation research amongst a small group of ITPEnergised’s customers — to ensure the strategy was in line with their perceptions.

Distinction

The communication strategy we built now forms the backbone of all ITPEnergised’s marketing activity. It offers clarity and guidance on communication and gives the company a clear way forward, providing a much-needed structure that was previously lacking.

Much more than just a comms strategy

ITPEnergised’s Managing Director commented that thanks to EC-PR’s support, the organisation has been given a renewed sense of empowerment and pride in what makes their brand so special.

From our point of view, it was a privilege to be involved in a project with a company whose work is so important to the world we live in and we’re delighted we could make such a positive difference to how they view themselves.

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Show your brand’s mettle and grow it into its memorable, gorgeous potential.

Our Case Studies

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges and goals, and develop tailored strategies that deliver measurable results.

Our case studies showcase a range of successful projects, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing thought leadership in their respective industries.

Our experienced PR professionals have a wealth of knowledge and expertise, which they bring to each project, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible service. We use a data-driven approach to track and measure the success of each campaign, providing our clients with clear and transparent reporting.

Whether you are a start-up or an established business, our case studies demonstrate the value of effective PR and the impact it can have on your business.

Shaping Share of Voice

BMT Group

Distinction in Defence

AzteQ CUBe

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy

Concirrus

Igniting Interest in Insurtech Startup

Shipshape media engagement

Shipshape media engagement

Shipshape Media Engagement

Lloyd’s Maritime Academy, a subsidiary of Informa Plc, offers an enormous portfolio of online training resources to maritime professionals worldwide.

Lloyds Maritime Academy

Lloyds Maritime Academy Case Study (brand awareness)

EC-PR Quote marks“EC-PR played an instrumental role in helping us to develop our communication strategy, so it was only natural for us to turn to Liz and Lorraine to help us execute it.

“Their support in building a strong portfolio of material, which has reinforced our capabilities and the importance of through-life career development, has been fantastic.

“We’ve recognised the momentum that has been built in increasing brand awareness and hope to continue to elevate the brand in 2020.”

Veronica Araujo

Head of Performance Marketing, Informa Connect

Dangers and Desires

Following our work developing her brand’s communication strategy, Veronica Araujo wanted to highlight the brand’s new positioning statement of ‘lifelong learning’ through the power of media engagement.

However, the team at Lloyd’s Maritime Academy had limited experience of proactively working with the media. They needed to leverage the knowledge and insights of industry professionals to create maximum impact, but how? The natural choice was to appoint EC-PR, with whom they had previously worked with to achieve great outcomes.

Design

Focused on highlighting the brand’s new positioning statement of ‘lifelong learning’, we curated a PR programme that would help to increase awareness of Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s extensive training portfolio and engage with maritime professionals.

Campaign delivery

  • Identify and target key media outlets.
  • Distribute news releases.
  • Create case studies.
  • Secure feature articles.
  • Gain exclusive one-to-one journalist access.

Key media outlets

The team at EC-PR have developed a deep understanding of media in the maritime sector over the past two decades. We have worked with countless trade journalists in the industry, cultivating strong relationships across a broad range of media outlets.

This meant we were well placed to home in on the journalists and influencers that would help elevate Lloyd’s Maritime Academy out of the darkness and shine a light on the brand’s new ‘lifelong learning’ message.

Once we had created our list of the ideal people to approach, it was time to amplify Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s offer.

Feature articles

Limited resources to develop new content meant that Veronica and her team were keen to draw on EC-PR’s strong technical writing capabilities.

Our years of experience in the sector enabled us to quickly identify the editorial ideas needed to resonate with the Academy’s target audience. We created a series of informative feature articles that positioned Lloyd’s Maritime Academy as experts in professional development, while addressing the concerns and interests of their target audience.

Case studies

Working with two ​​former students of Lloyd’s Maritime Academy, we created two case studies that were distributed to relevant media.

Each case study outlined the students’ individual experiences of the courses they completed, including the reasons why the Academy should be the ideal choice for other professionals looking to develop their skills.

Exclusive journalist access

Building awareness in the media landscape can be a challenging prospect – it relies heavily on reaching journalists who are often inundated with information and emails from brands all vying to be heard.

Industry events and exhibitions are an ideal chance to capture journalists’ attention. For the maritime sector, a popular annual event is London International Shipping Week, where many of the industry’s key players, influencers and journalists are in attendance.

We saw the event as the perfect opportunity for us to arrange interviews between members of the Lloyd’s Maritime Academy team and journalists on a one-to-one level, creating an ideal platform for the team to highlight the brand’s lifelong learning message in more detail.

Distinction

During a 9-month PR campaign, we secured 36 pieces of coverage in industry-specific press, of which 80% were featured in media outlets with a domain authority (DA) score of more than 40.

Our generated coverage resulted in an overall impact score of 301,000, giving authority and credibility to Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s offer and helping to increase awareness of the ‘lifelong learning’ message.

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Stay up to date with the latest insights, case studies, and PR guides.

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Show your brand’s mettle and grow it into its memorable, gorgeous potential.

Our Case Studies

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges and goals, and develop tailored strategies that deliver measurable results.

Our case studies showcase a range of successful projects, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing thought leadership in their respective industries.

Our experienced PR professionals have a wealth of knowledge and expertise, which they bring to each project, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible service. We use a data-driven approach to track and measure the success of each campaign, providing our clients with clear and transparent reporting.

Whether you are a start-up or an established business, our case studies demonstrate the value of effective PR and the impact it can have on your business.

XTM International

Making SaaS Marketing Marvellous

ITPEnergised

Net Zero Heroes

2i

Building a Bolder Brand

AzteQ CUBe

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy

Building a burgeoning brand

Building a burgeoning brand

Building A Burgeoning Brand

Predatar provides data resiliency SaaS solutions that enable traditional value added resellers (VARs) to rapidly evolve into profitable and sustainable managed service providers (MSPs) by delivering their own-branded data protection offerings.

CEO, Alistair Mackenzie has been instrumental in developing the Predatar brand.

A visionary leader with a strong interest in marketing communications, Alistair is the former MD of Silverstring. It was during his time overseeing Silverstring’s transformation that Alistair recognised the requirement in the market for this service.

Predatar

Predatar Case Study

EC-PR Quote marks“EC-PR has really focused on understanding the business, and it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t just about building brand awareness – we needed to have absolute clarity around our value proposition and our messaging throughout the different stages of the buying cycle.

“EC-PR helped us to formulate this, which was instrumental to ensuring the brand awareness campaign was aligned and laser-focused on our target audiences.

“Tenacious and challenging, coupled with a great spirit, Lorraine and Liz are committed to raising the bar and delivering a PR programme that is dynamic and impactful.”

Alistair Mackenzie

CEO, Predatar

Dangers and Desires

With more than 17,000 competitors in the SaaS industry, standing out from the crowd is a huge challenge.

Alistair needed to find a way to build brand awareness and credibility quickly among ambitious CEOs of VARs who were looking to evolve and expand into MSPs.

Articulating the brand’s vision for supporting business transformation and engaging with its key target audience were pivotal to Predatar’s success. Predatar came to EC-PR to ask for our help, as we were known in the industry for supporting brands with building awareness and kudos

Design

For this campaign to yield the right results, we needed to identify key players in the IT industry and create engaging and thought-provoking content that would position Predatar as the expert in SaaS solutions for business expansion and transformation.

Campaign delivery

  • Communication strategy
  • Roundtables
  • Whitepapers
  • LinkedIn articles
  • Thought leadership articles

Communication strategy

In a market that is saturated with competitors all vying for attention, developing a communication strategy that would cut through the noise and penetrate the places that mattered, was essential in communicating Predatar’s concept to those who would benefit the most.

Identifying key individuals was pivotal to building Predatar’s credibility in the market. Focusing on the pain points of business transformation and the aspirations of ambitious VARs through a series of communication methods allowed Predatar to develop a trusted voice, articulate its vision and encourage engagement among key industry players.

Roundtables

EC-PR proposed two roundtable events that would focus on the pain points and challenges VARs faced when it came to evolving and transforming their business model.

The first step was to ensure the roundtable would effectively target those we wanted to engage with most. Securing expert participation was therefore essential to this work, as was attracting key decision-makers to ensure that awareness of the Predatar brand reached the right prospects.

With participation secured, Predatar was ready to be catapulted into the IT hemisphere.

Whitepaper

Capturing the attention of key decision makers in VAR businesses was crucial to the success of Predatar’s business. Therefore, we set about creating and launching a whitepaper that focused on hard-hitting insights and data that would position Predatar as leaders in the SaaS solutions industry, while harnessing credibility among its target audience.

LinkedIn articles

To help maximise exposure of Predatar’s offer, we utilised the power of LinkedIn to target key individuals and decision-makers in VAR businesses.

Focusing on the themes and information that would most closely resonate with Predatar’s target audience, we created a bank of LinkedIn articles that were posted to Predatar’s company account and delivered directly to a carefully curated list of recipients.

Thought leadership articles

We produced a series of thought leadership articles, which addressed the challenges facing VARs who were looking to transform to MSPs, providing them with the ideal solution in the form of the Predatar concept.

Our articles were expertly crafted to target specific trade media with audiences in Predatar’s key industry sectors.

Distinction

As a result of EC-PR’s work, Predatar has become a leading voice in the SaaS solutions market, experiencing increased growth across all areas of its business. The firm’s offering to its VAR customers is well-known and highly respected in the industry, making them a force to be reckoned with against even the biggest players in the market.

As well as building brand awareness, the campaign provided Predatar with much-needed clarity around the alignment of their own communications and operational phases, which allowed them to flourish further and with confidence.

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Sign up

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Show your brand’s mettle and grow it into its memorable, gorgeous potential.

Our Case Studies

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges and goals, and develop tailored strategies that deliver measurable results.

Our case studies showcase a range of successful projects, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing thought leadership in their respective industries.

Our experienced PR professionals have a wealth of knowledge and expertise, which they bring to each project, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible service. We use a data-driven approach to track and measure the success of each campaign, providing our clients with clear and transparent reporting.

Whether you are a start-up or an established business, our case studies demonstrate the value of effective PR and the impact it can have on your business.

XTM International

Making SaaS Marketing Marvellous

ITPEnergised

Net Zero Heroes

2i

Building a Bolder Brand

AzteQ CUBe

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy

Shipshape media engagement

Getting back brand control

Getting Back Brand Control

Lloyd’s Maritime Academy, a subsidiary of Informa Plc, offers an enormous portfolio of online training resources to maritime professionals worldwide.

New to the business and leading a marketing team of six, Veronica Araujo’s prime remit is delivering successful performance marketing campaigns. Her team’s work is centred around generating leads to fill the hundreds of courses that Lloyd’s Maritime Academy offers globally.

Lloyds Maritime Academy

Lloyd’s Maritime Academy Case Study (Communication Strategy)

EC-PR Quote marks“The communication strategy development programme EC-PR delivered, returned control and authority to the marketing team. We feel a greater sense of brand ownership and appreciate the enormous value of the Lloyd’s name, which had become lost amidst delivering everyday tactics.

“As a marketing team, we are better aligned and empowered, and we are working hard to put our clients back at the heart of everything we say, do and develop.

“We now know exactly what we need to say to support our different target audiences at every stage of the buying cycle. The clarity and structure of the communication strategy, which EC-PR has provided us, has given us the set of tools and the plan we need so that everything we do makes sense. It is still very early days and I look forward to reporting on the impact the new strategy has had on our business.”

Veronica Araujo

Head of Performance Marketing, Informa Connect

Dangers and Desires

Veronica’s team sits under a sub-brand called KNect365 Learning. This was causing a great deal of confusion and dilution when marketing the Academy’s courses.

Veronica and her team had become aware that the business was not only operating in silos but was functioning on a tactical level rather than with an aligned strategy. As a result, Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s world-famous and prestigious brand was not being leveraged to its full effect.

When looking for a partner to help rectify and improve the situation, Veronica turned to EC-PR. Well-versed in the industry and with a track record of successful campaigns, we were perfectly placed to help the team achieve all their communication strategy goals.

Design

In an ever-increasing competitive landscape, it became clear that a more targeted and focused approach to Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s marketing and communications activities was needed.

Veronica had already initiated a quantitative brand perception study when she appointed us to design and deliver the branding programme.

The purpose of our work was to design a programme that would clarify how the brand was perceived by its key stakeholders, as well as develop a communication strategy that would provide clarity and consistency in its approach.

Our work would form the backbone for all marketing communications, and serve as a guide for all activities, including the PR programme we would subsequently deliver.

Campaign delivery

  • Identify the value proposition
  • Distinguish industry prioritisation
  • Develop a brand persona
  • Create positioning statements
  • Improve messaging

Identify value proposition

We undertook a full analysis of the industry sector to uncover and identify the Academy’s sweet spots and establish greater understanding of its value proposition.

The aim was to establish the Academy’s USPs that ultimately set it apart from its competitors and would help us to form the strategy that would clearly communicate the Academy’s benefits to maritime professionals looking to develop their knowledge through training.

Develop a brand persona

Working closely with Veronica and her team, we undertook a series of exercises and activities that mapped out the Academy’s key traits and tone of voice that would ultimately form the brand persona.

It was only once this important work was completed, and a brand persona established, that we could move onto creating the correct positioning statements to improve messaging across all channels.

Distinction

As a result of EC-PR’s work, Veronica and her team could confidently refine their marketing activities to deliver consistency and clarity across all channels, while leveraging the Lloyd’s brand to maximum effect.

The team felt that as well as harnessing the famous Lloyd’s name, they were better equipped to deliver their work and focus on clients’ needs.

The communication strategy work presented here was only phase one in what is set to be an ongoing undertaking of Lloyd’s Maritime Academy’s marketing, but, importantly, it sowed the seed for future success, allowing the company to move forward with certainty and clarity.

Subscribe to our updates

Stay up to date with the latest insights, case studies, and PR guides.

Sign up

Request a callback

Show your brand’s mettle and grow it into its memorable, gorgeous potential.

Our Case Studies

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges and goals, and develop tailored strategies that deliver measurable results.

Our case studies showcase a range of successful projects, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing thought leadership in their respective industries.

Our experienced PR professionals have a wealth of knowledge and expertise, which they bring to each project, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible service. We use a data-driven approach to track and measure the success of each campaign, providing our clients with clear and transparent reporting.

Whether you are a start-up or an established business, our case studies demonstrate the value of effective PR and the impact it can have on your business.

XTM International

Making SaaS Marketing Marvellous

ITPEnergised

Net Zero Heroes

2i

Building a Bolder Brand

AzteQ CUBe

Achieving Clarity Through Strategy