Consultancy
Miles Clayton is a highly experienced Business to Business Technology PR consultant with more than 30 years of experience.
He honed his expertise working within Top 20 B2B PR agencies in Hong Kong for Rowland (Saatchi & Saatchi’s PR arm). After earning a Master’s degree in Public Relations in 1992, he furthered his PR career working for over 10 years in Top 10 Tech PR agencies in the UK including Kaizo, Harvard and Citigate Dewe Rogerson. In 2003, he set up his own agency called Agility PR.
Miles Clayton has provided advice and PR consultancy services to more than 130 technology and other business clients.
PARTNERING
Today, as well as having his own clients (servicing them via a virtual network of affiliate partners around the UK and across EMEA), he also partners with digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies and other PR agencies.
These partnerships are normally driven by a desire to stimulate clients to aspire to be thought leaders in the markets they serve in order to establish strong, purpose and insight-driven platforms for external communications.
Whether this is about selling the value of Thought Leadership campaigning to clients embedded within the agency’s team; or simply executing a powerful piece of market research for that agency’s team and handing over content elements to them, Miles Clayton is happy to prove the value of Thought Leadership and the Agility Insights Method regardless of your business’ challenge.
SPECIALISING IN THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SINCE 1998
From 1998 onwards, Miles Clayton began honing a specialisation, initially called issues-based PR, and only later termed thought leadership campaigning.
The concept was always to help tech firms to gain deeper engagement with their key audiences – helping them talk to their prospects in their language, engage with their pain points, inject new insights and add to key industry debates.
This type of engagement is particularly important for firms which are on a journey to add additional value to customers, not simply sell to them and walk away. From the late 90s more tech software and services businesses were on this journey, looking to build deeper and more valuable relationships with their key accounts.
RESEARCH-LED THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
During 2020, Miles Clayton launched his six step programme called the Agility Insights Method. This programme puts market research at the very heart of a fool proof method for building powerful thought leadership campaigns which offer an assured way of:
- Gaining a deeper connection with prospects and existing customers alike
- Providing a platform for thought leadership content exploring themes which build resonance with your key audiences
- Delivering new insights which ensure you are bringing something new to an existing debate or stimulating a new one – providing the well springs for thought leadership.
- Achieving faster Return on Engagement (ROE) – helping clients to create powerful content journeys which grease their sales funnel, helping more of their new leads become hot leads much faster.
MEDIA RELATIONS SKILLS PROVE VALUABLE IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING AGE
Going back more than 10 years, PR professionals focused on raising their clients’ profile and reputation primarily through securing high profile media coverage in relevant publications.
With the advent of social media and a profusion of digital communication channels, the media are no longer the all-powerful gatekeepers they once were.
However, those media relations skills which Miles Clayton’s generation of PR professionals had to fine-tune over many years, remain critical in the digital marketing age.
Why? Because many of key comms disciplines needed to avoid having your news story spiked by a hard-bitten editor, are still critical in ensuring your message is finely-tuned, well-researched and directed, ideally bringing new insight to a relevant debate.
- Key Audience Selection
- Key Messaging
- Key issues affecting prospects decisions to engage with you and buy your products and services
Straight selling of your offering is not enough to optimise sales anymore, you must have the ‘authority to sell’, built on evidence of a reputation, itself based on track record and commitment to the market(s) you serve.
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.
Agency
Agility PR was established in June 2003 by Miles.
As technology PR specialists, they rapidly identify how best to communicate the unique benefits of an often highly technical offering to different types of decision-makers.
We understand that it is not enough to simply understand your message and audiences. To engage with your markets you have to get under the skin of the issues that key decision-makers are obsessing about.
