In the rapidly evolving field of retail technology, effective communication between software and hardware developers and retailers is essential. However, many industry professionals have noted that these developers do not communicate enough with retailers. To explore this issue, we spoke with Sarah Cole, Head of PR at Fieldworks Marketing, a public relations agency which specialises in retail technology and is known for its exceptional client care, earning a five-star rating from the editorial department of International Supermarket News (ISN).
Interview Questions:
Communication Strategies: What methods do retail technology companies typically use to engage with retailers? Are there specific practices that stand out as particularly effective?
Some of the more traditional PR practices used by tech providers to engage with retailers, like thought leadership articles, media briefings and customer stories, remain valuable PR vehicles within comms programmes.
But, where we see communications becoming increasingly effective is when a technology provider can use anonymised data, aggregated from their systems, to report on or make predictions around retail events or trends, as well as regular data reporting, such as monthly benchmarking. This not only creates data points for media to generate news traction, but, because the news story is based on insight, by its very nature it also gives value to retailers.
In the context of in-store technology, take for example store analytics solutions – aggregated data on footfall around key trading days, such as Black Friday or Peak (Christmas) Trading, becomes a great tool for reporting on overall store performance. This becomes even more powerful if you can offer year-on-year or store location (i.e. convenience / out of town / High Street) splits with the data. Another example could be a POS or payments provider reporting on aggregated sales data or an inventory management or OMS solution reporting on stock availability or out of stock levels, for instance. Ask your PR teams to think creatively about your 1st party data sets and you could open up new PR stories and data flows that engage press whilst offering up valuable insight to the retailers you’re looking to reach, engage and sell to.
Another key step change is that it is increasingly important to remember that when we’re talking about Public Relations, you need to remember all of your ‘Publics’ – don’t just rely on traditional media relations with journalists. Instead, consider whether analyst or influencer communities play a role in your business reaching retailers. What about new media, such as podcasts? Are the retailers you’re targeting plugged into the industry awards scene or speaking circuits? Think about where your retail audiences are and how you can show up there and be where they are through a mix of traditional and new media.
Barriers to Engagement: From your perspective, what factors contribute to the limited communication from software and hardware developers to retailers? How can these obstacles be addressed?
Retailers’ attentions spans are short – and never more so when it comes to messaging from technology providers from whom they receive hundreds of marketing and sales pitches every day. So, rather than it being a case of limited communication from software or hardware vendors, often it’s a case of too much, untargeted communications, which simply don’t work because they fail to put the needs of the retailer and the retail business first.
I’m talking solution-focused press releases that are so jampacked full of tech jargon we might as well be playing buzzword bingo. Or generic PR content with so many acronyms (and, let’s face it, in tech as in tech PR, we do love an acronym) and technical specs where a technology provider has waxed lyrical about their own product. These sorts of communication are a big ‘no, no’ and likely mean nothing to the retailers these tech businesses are seeking to reach and is often where we see the disconnect happening.
Instead, PR narratives should focus on messaging explaining the wider business benefits, outcomes and use cases of a technology in the specific context of a retail organisation or the wider retail industry. And this requires an in-depth understanding of both the retail market and the technology landscape, which is why increasingly we’re running Strategy Research, retailer and shoppers polling and competitive analysis when putting together PR campaigns for our clients, ensuring the messaging and narrative is on point and cuts through the rest of the noise.
They key is to craft PR stories around the requirements of the retail business, fully considering the priorities and pain-points of the target persona and the retail organisation behind it, whilst demonstrating how this fits into the wider retail landscape and evolving trends. By addressing this first – and only then overlaying the tech or solution benefits messaging on top – you’ll end up with much more meaningful PR outputs that resonate with your target audiences.
Customising Messaging: How critical is it for retail technology companies to adapt their messaging to meet the unique needs of retailers? Can you share examples of companies that have successfully tailored their communication?
We’ve touched on some of this above – but you’re right: targeted, customised messaging is central to PR success in any walk of communications, but especially in the crowded retail tech PR space.
A good example of this is a company we’ve worked with for a number of years called Pricer, which is a leading Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) solution provider, which works with the likes of Carrefour in Europe and Co-op over here in the UK. If you think of the role or the use cases of ESLs, they can integrate with so many other in-store tech over and above just pricing – from inventory management and replenishment to ecommerce picking and food waste reduction via dynamic markdowns all the way through to retail media. That’s a lot of scope and capabilities to cover. Each application of the technology requires a nuanced PR message that we put together based on the persona or the decision-maker involved in procuring that particular piece of in-store tech or ESL use case.
Another example of this within grocery is of our other clients, Retail Insight, which is a store operations execution software – it targets both supermarkets, like Asda and Co-op, with its inventory, availability and waste prevention solutions, as well as Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands with its revenue growth management technology. This requires a distinct messaging and story line for each audience, as well as differentiated media targeting for PR placements. This approach has not only been effective in driving target press coverage, but it’s helped our PR activity drive in-bound sales calls from UK grocers – which, when you consider PR is essentially a brand awareness or top of the funnel marketing channel, was a big coupe for us.
Success Metrics: What indicators do you consider when assessing the effectiveness of communication efforts between retail technology firms and retailers? How do you ensure your clients meet their communication objectives?
Whilst this will differ depending on the unique objectives and goals of each client, in addition to the usual KPIs, such as reach (opportunities to see), targeted media inclusions, solus pieces and backlinks, increasingly we’re building in Share of Voice (SoV) into both the planning and the evaluation of our campaigns.
Increasingly, SoV in earned media is a critical benchmark in creating meaningful competitive advantage via PR. It not only measures how much retail prospects are hearing about your solution compared to the competition, but also ensures PR strategy remain agile, allowing you to go toe-to-toe with competitors or capitalise on comms opportunities they may be missing. More and more, we use a proprietary PR tracking tool to analyse campaign coverage, showing our clients what their media and press coverage footprint looks like for a campaign, and how it ranks against a set of competitors, giving them a SoV ranking.
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Sarah has spent over a decade spearheading PR at Fieldworks, connecting innovators and technology providers – from enterprise solutions to fast-growth scale-ups and disruptors – with retail businesses. Before joining Fieldworks, Sarah spent almost a decade delivering PR and comms campaigns for leading international retailers and brands, including M&S, Diageo, Nestlé, Yakult and Accor Hotels.
About Fieldworks: Connected to retail like no other agency, Fieldworks is the UK’s only specialist retail technology PR and content agency, and has been delivering pioneering PR for retail tech for over 20+years. With its team made up exclusively of retail tech PR specialist and a content team curated from ex-retail journalists, Fieldworks connects technology providers to their retail prospects through meaningful communications campaigns and impactful content.