Join us for a captivating conversation with Anand Vaidya ,the PR expert, shaping the landscape of PR and communications at WebEngage. With extensive experience in B2B SaaS, he explores attribution models and the powerful influence of PR on sales.

Introduction

1:01 He stumbled into PR by chance and didn’t have a formal education in communication. However, his early mentors recognized Anand’s talent for building relationships and recommended PR as a potential field for him. Over the past decade, he has been grateful for the exciting work he does, particularly in the B2B SaaS industry. Anand has received a lot of support along the way and is thankful for everyone who helped him get to where he is today.

Favourite campaign

2:22 Anand discusses the unique work that his company, WebEngage, does in the field of retention marketing for internet-based businesses. He explains that this category did not exist in its true sense before they began creating it, and how they have been able to do some exciting campaigns. One of his favorite campaigns is the Retention Marketing 30 under 30 award, which they commissioned with one of the largest news publications in the country. They were able to create a new category and recognize professionals who are doing great work within the sector, while also formalizing the industry as a whole and bringing awareness to the public. Anand notes that a lot of work has gone into this campaign, from a PR and content perspective to community building and events.

First interaction with data

3:46 Anand talks about how the role of data in communications has evolved over time. He recalls his early days of manually tracking, quantifying, and qualifying media coverage with the help of an organization that no longer exists. Nowadays, Wizikey, has automated most of those processes, making it easier for them to identify opportunities, track conversations about topics of interest, and monitor competition. With a complex stakeholder metrics at WebEngage, including people from new economic, old economic, marketing, product, and tech backgrounds, data plays a crucial role in putting all the pieces together. Overall, data has made communication easier and more effective for businesses like WebEngage.

Important metrics to measure

5:31 Anand discusses the key metrics used to measure the success of their PR campaigns. The most important metric from a data perspective is the share of voice, and WebEngage has maintained its number one position for the past 1.5 years, not just in India but also in the Middle East. He also mentions that there are qualitative layers on top of it, including headline mentions, leadership mentions, and the tonality and neutrality of the articles.

Measuring PR Effectiveness and ROI Success

6:18 Anand explains that from an ROI perspective, PR alone doesn’t play a huge role unless it’s combined with different elements of marketing. He notes that PR lies on the top of the funnel for many different organizations and helps bring awareness and convert green fields to brown fields. The basic idea is to ensure that any and every conversation happening outside of the media domain has an inclusion of WebEngage in some or the other sense, which is done through PR, community effort, events, and brand efforts. All of this combined gets fed into a system run through HubSpot, and the data is analyzed from two standpoints: brand building and lead generation. Anand emphasizes that both of these things together help justify the work that they are doing in communications as a whole, and PR plays a very important role.

Dream metric/feature

 7:41 He thinks that it would benefit the larger ecosystem, especially the audience, to have an attribution model that can factor in the impact of PR campaigns on the larger sales process. While it may be difficult to determine the specific campaign that converts a lead into a final sale, PR can play an enabling role. It would be great to see a mechanism that can measure the impact of a particular coverage or campaign on the sales process. This can also help marketers understand which part of their marketing spend is actually lost. He believes that if we can find a way to use technology to solve this problem, it would be a great achievement.

Consolidating PR Strategies for Companies with Different PR Approaches

9:04 When it comes to communication, it’s important to tailor the messaging to different sectors. He believes that startups and enterprise companies require different approaches and languages. For WebEngage he mentions that the strategy is straightforward – they are currently leaders in the startup package for marketing automation and are working towards strengthening their position in the enterprise ecosystem. For startups, their focus is on maintaining a larger share through interviews, articles, and news pieces. On the other hand, for enterprises, the core focus is on building trust. To achieve this, they put their account-based marketing and performance efforts behind all PR initiatives, such as media announcements of onboarding clients. He thinks that it’s crucial to ensure that the coverage is shared with the right audience to amplify the credibility added to media. For example, they make sure that CEOs or CXOs across India receive news pieces about their clients being onboarded, thus building trust in their enterprise ecosystem.

Evolution and Impact of AI in PR

10:40 According to his opinion, AI ,ChatGPT are the innovative solutions that have recently emerged in the public forum. He believes that these technologies will have an interesting impact from a PR perspective, as they provide an opportunity for the industry to learn and experiment with data-driven communication in unique ways.

Moreover, he thinks that the use of AI and ChatGPT will refine the manual labor involved in analyzing ICT, understanding messaging, and drafting content. He anticipates that the sharpest minds in his peer group will leverage these advancements to bridge the gap between attribution and PR.

Overall, he believes that these are exciting times, and he is curious to see how the industry will make the best use of these technological innovations. As these technologies continue to evolve, he is optimistic that the industry will find new ways to leverage them to deliver more impactful and effective PR strategies.

My two cents

12:06 Anand mentions that if you’re a young professional, there are exciting times ahead in the field of public relations. You will have plenty of opportunities to explore, experiment, learn, fail, improve, and succeed. No matter what organization or level you’re at, there will always be interesting campaigns to run and creative, innovative work to tackle.

While the industry’s outcome may limit you to the coverage received, there is a lot more to the job than just that. Building a variety of perspectives and experiences, such as crisis management, government affairs, and strategic communication, will broaden your skillset and make you a more well-rounded PR professional.

So, keep an open mind and continue to grow in your role. The possibilities are endless, and with perseverance, you can achieve whatever you set out to do.