About
Miles Clayton is a Business to Business Technology PR consultant with more than 30 years of experience. He also provides virtual and face to face training and coaching to marketing and PR professionals as well as C-Suite executives looking to build their thought leadership platforms.
EARLY PR AGENCY CAREER SUCCESS
After working in Honk Kong for the PR arm of Saatchi & Saatchi after leaving University, Miles Clayton completed a Masters degree in Public Relations at Stirling University before working with 4 of the UK’s Top 20 Technology PR agencies from during a successful career which saw him serving a wide range of technology firms over a 10 year period.
He ran a large team in the technology agency within Citigate Dewe Rogerson. Highlights including running campaigns for electronic data capture software firm Focus Solutions Group, helping it position and communicate the unique capabilities of the company prior to its successful listing on AIM in early 2000.
PIONEERING RESEARCH-LED THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
During this period, he developed a model for helping tech firms to fast track their thought leadership status, helping them to build and working with his team to execute numerous market research-based thought leadership campaigns to help businesses engage more deeply in the markets they served, thereby increasing their authority, media coverage and sales success.
PR ENTREPRENEUR AND COMMS INNOVATOR
After a career of more than 12 years, Miles opened his own PR agency – Agility PR in 2003. But the market research-led campaigning continued and formed the cornerstone of Miles’ Agility Insights Method which he formalised in 2020.
Today, technology businesses increasingly must have an aspiration to thought lead to be successful. To stand out from the crowd today, they must be willing to communicate their unique views on the market(s) they serve, commenting regularly on the pressures and opportunities that the market is facing and where it is heading in the future.
Straight selling of your offering and its feature set is not enough to optimise sales anymore, you must have the ‘authority’ to sell, based on evidence of a reputation, which in turn is based on a clear track record of commitment to the market(s) you serve. In this way you earn the right to speak to decision-makers as a peer not merely as another supplier of another product.
Miles Clayton helps companies to find their voice and build their thought leadership platform. The PR agency he founded Agility PR can then help execute powerful campaigns infused with rich, original, and unique insights. Promoting the resulting stand out content in relevant media publications, on your website, social channels, and digital marketing campaigns.
VIRTUAL TRAINER AND COACH
Miles has used the COVID-19 period to pivot to virtual training and coaching. He has given 6 webinars to audiences of 5 to 15 people on topics as diverse as ‘Executing Market Research which delivers both business intelligence and highly shareable, newsworthy insights’; ‘Building Powerful Content Journeys which turn more of your prospects into customers’; Without Thought Leadership you cannot differentiate’, ‘Discover how to ensure your marketing spend is delivering through a downturn’ and ‘How to Create Engaging Marketing & PR Content’.
AUTHOR
Miles will publish an eBook entitled ‘Market Research as the source of thought leadership campaign success’ on 1st May 2021. Sign up here to be mailed a PDF of the eBook free.
COOKING AND SKIING
Miles is a keen skier, completing an annual pilgrimage to the Swiss Alps every year except 2021 since he was seven years old.
Whilst at home, in lockdown or not, I’m often seen putting together a vegetarian dish for my wife and a hearty roast for my adult children if they are back from University for a few days.
To sign up for Miles’ latest webinar please go here.
Agility PR Limited was set up in June 2003 when Miles Clayton exited Citigate Dewe Rogerson after running a team as an Associate Director in their Technology division for 5 years.
It is important to publicly express the thinking and views of the founder of a boutique PR agency like Agility PR – that’s me, here. It’s more like a blog-style site than a formal company website. The emphasis is on generating fresh content – news and views, as well as showcasing regular discussions with peers from right across the marketing world.
Right now, Agility PR only employs one other employee so it is a very personal business, offering very personal service to a small number of B2B technology businesses. I have a specific take on PR and Earned Media which is best represented here in my personal brand site. Agility PR at agilitypr.co.uk, by contrast, shows some of the wider history and long tail expertise of me and our employees, past and present.
Traditionally, PR has had a very wide remit extending to managing communications with all stakeholders or ‘publics’ relevant to the success of the business including internal audiences and extending out to investor and government relations work (where appropriate for the success of the business).
PR today owns the remit which is very often called Earned Media. Again, Earned Media offers a wide brief to PR professionals extending to all areas where clients can potentially earn or ‘command’ the right to speak on a topic relevant to their focus and expertise.
This command differs from ‘control’ which involves what we used to call ‘above the line’ or paid marketing: advertorials, advertising, Paid Search etc.
We do handle media buying for clients which want a fully integrated marketing approach. This works very well for tech firms serving specific markets which are themselves served by a number of highly specialist trade publications, for example. We work with a digital marketing agency partner on PPC campaigns and for specialist socials advertising for example.
I have more than 25 years of expertise promoting and helping to build the reputation of technology businesses, often helping them to articulate how they can meet the needs of specific buyer decision-makers in specific markets.
Most of my focus today is on helping B2B Tech firms articulate the benefits of their products and services – helping them to communicate the benefits of the tech expertise they can bring to clients.
A good deal of this work is about articulating their market leadership and unique offering(s) by designing Thought Leadership-focused PR campaigns which deliver unique insights, premium content as well as regular newsworthy content.
Customer Advocacy is about getting your customers to sign your praises. Happy customers are always going to be your best advert. They will talk effusively about the great service your people provided and how brilliantly your products and services met their needs and what positive results they gained from engaging you.
The content you develop in collaboration with your customer has an ever green quality which can open up opportunities in similar types of businesses perhaps in the same market or with firms wrestling with the same issues you solved for that customer advocate. Customer Advocacy creates the potential for momentum building.
Case studies often form part of winning award entries and your responses to tenders. They are one of the most reviewed sections of your website. In short, they provide credible third party and yet first hand evidence that you do what you say you can do and do it brilliantly.
Original market research, rather than simply quoting others market research findings is a very powerful statement for a company. It says, ‘we are committing to serving this target group or sector and we are determined to bring some new insights which will help you, our customers, serve your markets even better.’ On a practical comms level, original market research creates the potential to uncover new insights which are not only interesting, but feed into the need for your products, services and expertise.
From a PR perspective, research also offered a source for multiple news stories, typically 6 but sometimes as many as 10 news stories/press releases flow out of recent market research studies I’ve designed. Market research also provides the basis for premium content including Management Reports (capturing all key finding with illustrations showing results), white papers, and even customer and trade association presentations.
For consumer studies, you can support all the quantitative results from the online questionnaire responses with more qualitative reaction content by conducting vox pops interviewing target groups on the street or in local hotels.
Firstly, it is important to select the awards which are of high value in the market(s) you serve. Avoid going for the awards which are effectively bought and aim for ones which have a combination of a strong reputation and a solid system for judging them. Look at the rigours of the awards entry process.
Try to determine the quality of the judging panel and how many categories judges are requested to judge, and how they do this, alone or by committee and how long they have to do that work. Determine if there is a viva processes or any secondary stage to help select the winner from successful finalists. Find out which trade bodies and trade publications support the awards and what people in your industry say about it. In short, do your homework.
Most specialist areas have only 2-3 awards which are worth are truly prestigious. Don’t waste marketing resources in trying to win awards which fail to move the needle with your target audience.
Finally, when you write your entries for the valuable awards, make sure you follow the instructions for your entry. Follow the word length restrictions and provide evidence, case study materials and other evidence to strengthen your entry. Focus on answering the questions being asked of you directly and completely. Do not be tempted to over relay on re-use generic marketing copy already written for promoting your company or its products and services.
Your entry must be tailored to the specific category and questions within that category. All good sets of awards will have put a great deal of thought into designing category entry requirements. Failing to respond accurately to the category questions can be enough to disqualify you straightaway. If in doubt consult your PR agency or specialist award writing service. Agility PR offers a specialist awards writing service in several markets including the Security & Fire Awards for Excellence.
We currently in several parts of the fintech world including advisertech, paytech. We specialise in working with tech firms serving wealth managers, IFAs, pensions operators, wrap and investment platforms for example. We also have a mix of clients in the physical and cybersecurity markets. We have recently completed proposition development, launch and promotional campaigns for climatetechs and cleantech firms in recent years. We are partnered with a like-minded agency which works with enterprise tech players as well.
Socials are like any other comms channel. You need to work out how many of your target audience are there, are you already connected with them or do you first need to do the work to expand the connection base. Also, it is important to provide a mix of informative and/or newsworthy content. Don’t simply rely on straight promotional pieces on your latest product launch or expo that your are speaking and/or exhibiting. Remember in people centric socials like LinkedIn it’s valuable to share people stories like staff promotions, new appointments, etc.
LinkedIn is also ideal for publishing and sharing of your Thought Leadership articles, promoting other premium content like your latest video case study, white paper or awards accolade. Remember engagement comes from offering a mix of different types of content with links into your website to continue their content engagement journey. Try to keep it as personal as you can, while not being too overt in your promotion of specific products and services unless it is in the context of an informative article or newsworthy development.
Unlike many of the large London agencies which demand base-line retainers of nearly £6,000 per month to start, we only require a commitment which enables us to deliver at least one piece of unique content for you each month. That way we know we can add value month in month out.
Agility PR has a much more flexible approach to billing which enables it to work on projects as simple as a single video case study or award entry, right through to regular Thought Leadership content engagements which demand the creation and publication of just one Thought Leadership piece per month for as little as £1,600 per month. At the other end of the spectrum, we take on multi-faceted, multi-country PR briefs demanding event support, press releases, articles, blogs, trade media buying, award entries, case studies, video content, social marketing, lobbying, and much more, billing a multiple of that entry-level figure.
