If you’d like advice to help make the most of your recent funding award, feel free to book a call with the PR team at GroupWhistle.
How to earn industry recognition from project funding
If your business has just won public funding for a consortium engineering project, you’re likely focused on the engineering challenges that lie ahead. But projects provide a great platform to promote your capabilities to the industry.
Here’s ten tips to help you and your consortium partners achieve good marketing outcomes from your new project.
1
What’s your mission?
Building a mini value proposition at the start of the project will help to guide your communications and messaging – what problem will you solve and what new opportunities will the project outcome produce? This value propositioning process also assists with partner alignment
2
Look through a customer lens
Think of all project comms through a customer lens – worry less about looking inward at engineering progress and focus more on technical developments that will help customers
3
Tell stories, speak plain English
A project led by engineers will almost inevitably want to plunge into the detail and embrace industry jargon. Instead, communicate simply and be clear about the problem the project aims to solve and how this will be achieved
4
A picture = 1,000 words
In the early stage of a project before anything has been built, or for wholly digital engineering projects, finding visual representation of the project’s outcomes can be challenging. But persist. Virtual image creation is now straightforward and should be prioritised as a key project marketing asset
5
Build an identity
Remember your project is competing with many established businesses for a share of voice, so spend a limited amount of time and budget on developing a professionally-rendered project ID. It needn’t cost the earth and will help with industry recognition
If you’d like advice to help make the most of your recent funding award, feel free to book a call with the PR team at GroupWhistle.
6
Now build channels
Consider a pop-up brochureware website as a central focus for all content and updates for the project. For limited investment and time, it will lend all partners a sense of common purpose as well as keep the industry and media informed
Click here to see an example engineering project website
7
Content planning around engineering milestones
Anyone will tell you that consortium projects never run to time. Building a marketing plan that is too tightly tied to engineering milestones is a recipe for failure. Instead, develop a communications plan that is not completely reliant on the project timelines
8
Talk to your audience
With limited progress to communicate in early stages of projects, use short-form comms. Building a list of industry groups on LinkedIn, for instance, can provide the perfect channel to update the industry and your company’s business prospects with short – but routine – posts. Expand into LinkedIn articles once project momentum allows
9
Use industry events
While engineers work on realising project objectives, apply for speaker slots at industry events and use keynotes to communicate what the project is aiming to achieve. This keeps your work in the industry’s eyeline before you have something tangible to share
10
Early media planning
Before you have deliverables that can be demonstrated, start planning for a media event. Remember, press will receive around 300 pitches and invitations each week, so get your event in their diaries in good time and ensure the editorial pitch is convincing and well-communicated
Here’s what good trade media coverage should look like
Speak to us
To discuss your communications requirements call us on +44 (0) 1865 600 495 or
Above all else, make sure you have quick but routine meetings with the project partner PR and marketing teams. Good luck with your project!
We’ve helped over 20 projects and more than 50 automotive companies achieve clear commercial value from their projects by ensuring dissemination and exploitation budgets are wisely spent.
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