Now, so that no one jumps to the wrong con­clu­sion (because we all know how wild those his­totech con­ven­tions can get), let me explain. The mix I’m talk­ing about in this case is the often tumul­tuous mar­riage of pub­lic rela­tions, mar­ket­ing, new media and sales. (Yes. I said the “s” word.) And how one of my clients is com­bin­ing all four dis­ci­plines to gen­er­ate aware­ness about his company’s health­care solutions.

My client, Ralph Moher, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing for Gen­eral Data Com­pany (www.general-data.com), is a tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing and PR guy, but he under­stands that to be suc­cess­ful in today’s clut­tered media mar­ket, you can­not be afraid to exper­i­ment with new media to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive brand aware­ness AND sales leads, espe­cially for a pre­dom­i­nantly business-to-business (B2B) com­pany. Typ­i­cally, we see new media being used to hock business-to-consumer (B2C) prod­ucts, such as MP3 play­ers and cell phones. In Ralph’s case, how­ever, the objec­tive isn’t to sell a prod­uct directly to con­sumers, but rather gen­er­ate aware­ness of his company’s bar code-based data col­lec­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion solu­tions among his­totech­nol­ogy professionals.

His­totechs are the men and women who work labo­ri­ously in lab­o­ra­to­ries through­out the world to exam­ine tis­sue spec­i­mens for pos­si­ble dis­eases, can­cers and the like. Pretty impor­tant folks, don’t you think? Gen­eral Data works with major hos­pi­tals and clin­ics around the coun­try to inte­grate Gen­eral Data’s bar code-based solu­tions with exist­ing lab­o­ra­tory processes to Iden­tify and track tis­sue spec­i­mens as they are ana­lyzed. In Ralph’s case, he is lever­ag­ing his recently launched Health­care blog to gen­er­ate aware­ness for his com­pany at the National Soci­ety for His­totech­nol­ogy (NSH) Symposium/Conference (www.nsh.org), a promi­nent health­care con­ven­tion for his­totech­nol­o­gists, in Pitts­burgh, PA, Sep. 12 — 18.

Take a look at Ralph’s blog at www.general-data.com/Blogs/Post.aspx?id=35. You’ll see at least one entry from a peer con­grat­u­lat­ing Ralph for his efforts at “get­ting per­sonal with the Inter­net com­mu­nity” from the healthcare/laboratory arena. By the way, before launch­ing this effort, Ralph did run his idea past the NSH orga­niz­ers, and they gave him an exu­ber­ant thumbs up. And now he’s attract­ing atten­tion from indus­try media. Way to go, Ralph!

What do Ralph’s cur­rent “live blog­ging” efforts have to do with how pub­lic rela­tions, mar­ket­ing, new media and sales can (and should) work together to achieve an organization’s pro­mo­tional and sales objectives…?

Don’t be afraid of the “s” word

Admit­tedly, it took me years to see the honor and virtue in sales. It took me even longer to call myself a sales­per­son. But now that I’m in my sev­enth year in busi­ness as a PR pro­fes­sional and entre­pre­neur, I finally see the light. Sales is a neces­sity for any busi­ness. I think the appre­hen­sion many “cre­atives” and other pro­fes­sion­als have toward call­ing them­selves sales­peo­ple is that every­one still envi­sions sales­peo­ple as smarmy used car guys in plaid-patterned leisure suits who lurk around the lot wait­ing to pounce on the first hap­less browsers they see. (My apolo­gies to any used car sales­peo­ple read­ing this entry; I’ve bought sev­eral used cars in my time. Hap­pily, still dri­ving one.)

The fact is…sales is a pro­fes­sion like any other. And a sophis­ti­cated one, at that. Today, more than ever, sales­peo­ple are search­ing for the right tools to help them get an edge on their com­pe­ti­tion. To find those golden egg cus­tomers before their rivals do. And to do it all with the least bit of inter­rup­tion to their core function–selling! Enter that other very sophis­ti­cated pro­fes­sion that many sales­peo­ple con­sider a nec­es­sary evil to enable them to do their jobs–marketing. Save a very few excep­tions, the two can­not exist with­out each other, espe­cially as the old guard sales­peo­ple begin to retire and the numb­ing prac­tice of cold call­ing is aban­doned by more and more pro­fes­sion­als for softer “rela­tion­ship build­ing” meth­ods. And so, sales and mar­ket­ing con­tinue to coex­ist as unapolo­getic partners.

But one increas­ingly crit­i­cal mem­ber of this exclu­sive club con­tin­ues to be overlooked–PR!

PR tells your story

Most sales­peo­ple and many busi­nesses sim­ply don’t get PR. They come to view PR, whether it be through books, movies, arti­cles, or word-of-mouth anec­dotes that con­tinue to dance through the either, as the fluff sto­ries we read in con­sumer mag­a­zines and watch dur­ing the last 5 min­utes of the evening net­work news­cast. What they don’t under­stand and what they con­tinue to dis­miss, espe­cially in the more con­ser­v­a­tive mar­kets, is that today’s envi­ron­ment of fast-food infor­ma­tion served up almost instan­ta­neously via web­sites, blogs (like this one), pod­casts, e-newsletters, etc. fos­ters PR.

Con­sumers are more sophis­ti­cated today than even five years ago, and they can iden­tify an ad over more cred­i­ble sources. They also crave real-time infor­ma­tion like never before. And they want it at their fin­ger­tips 24/7. This han­ker­ing for news and views of all vari­eties offers up a bounty of oppor­tu­nity for busi­nesses and pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als. And from a B2B per­spec­tive, this new envi­ron­ment in many ways makes it even eas­ier for com­pa­nies to gear their mes­sages at spe­cific audiences.

Finally, one crit­i­cal les­son I’ve learned is that every consumer–B2B or B2C–wants to hear the story behind the prod­uct they’re about to buy. And if they buy that prod­uct, it is typ­i­cally because they liked the story…or the storyteller.

That’s exactly what Ralph is doing today–telling his story.

Dis­claimer

By the way, this entry is also the inau­gural post­ing to my new blog, which I’ve cre­ated to exam­ine and dis­cuss some of the most and least suc­cess­ful pub­lic rela­tions and grass­roots mar­ket­ing efforts hap­pen­ing today, from both a B2B and a B2C per­spec­tive. Fair warn­ing! I will likely fea­ture case stud­ies from my own busi­ness involv­ing cur­rent clients, as I have done with Gen­eral Data Com­pany above. Sorry if that appears self pro­mo­tional, but it allows me to feed the blog and still make time to get some work done. Besides, I am in the busi­ness of pro­mot­ing, after all. And it’s the best way for me to tell my story.