What is Full Funnel PR?

Full Funnel PR is the working title of my forthcoming book, and an idea about how PR can be delivered more effectively as a tool for business growth.

I’m writing it because I’ve spent 25 years working in PR and feel that the discipline doesn’t get the credit it deserves, isn’t valued highly enough and isn’t always used to full effect as it lacks a standard model and methodology.

My feeling is that if I can capture a methodology that works well for the companies I tend to focus on - innovative, constructively-disruptive, growth stage businesses - I can both elevate the value of my trade to those firms and make my ideas easier to apply.

Now I should be absolutely honest, that at the time of writing I don’t have a full oven-ready metholdology that is ready to go.

Much of my writing the book is about thinking in ink (consolidating and iterating as I go).

But I do have many of the bare bones in place.

Funnel Thinking

One core principle is that PR should consider all publics (not just journalists) that a business will need to engage to help it grow. These people can and should be modelled with the level of sophistication that you would expect a strong marketing-led business would do with customers.

And every external audience prospect will go through a funnel from unaware (that their ‘problem’ exists) to engaged advocates (of the solution the company offers).

This prompts a deeper level of strategic thinking about who the company wants to engage, what they want from people, and what the value exchange looks like. And if people are not moving through the funnel as we might expect, why might this be?

EOS

A second core principle is that the PR method should be as standardised as possible (so it’s easy to understand) and broken-down into actionable chunks with templates.

A major inspiration for me was Gino Wickman’s Traction, which explains the Entrepreneurial Operating System or (EOS).

This methodology allows an external EOS consultant (which they call an ‘Implementor’) to work with a COO or MD (a role they describe as an ‘Integrator’) to adopt the system.

If EOS is the operational platform for a growth business, then my Full Funnel PR method aims to be an interoperable app.

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