The telecoms industry is undergoing rapid modernization through Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Open Radio Access Network (RAN). Signal strength or coverage reach are the success metrics of the past; instead, enterprise value via upselling and bundling is what matters most.
We run strategic communication campaigns for telecoms brands seeking to influence industry opinion and capture market leader share.
Modernization is continuing apace in the telecoms industry, coupled with fundamental changes to its entire business model from a focus on connectivity to building an integrated service-driven ecosystem. Meanwhile, innovations like Starlink are unexpectedly leapfrogging gaps in fiber coverage and gaining sustained market share from customers in remote areas, as well as in the aviation and cruise markets.
In addition, external audiences, such as investors and policymakers, increasingly want to dig into a telecom firm’s infrastructure strategy, including fiber expansion, latency reduction, and the blending of terrestrial and satellite systems. Management of brand reputation can’t be left to chance in such a situation.
Instead of being on the back foot, a proactive PR approach when communicating with external audiences is the best way to strategically position a telecoms firm across competing stakeholders.
As a boutique PR agency, we offer a senior-only team that works directly with your brand on creating programs that span social media management, content creation and media relations.
Let’s speak about the issues you face and build out a proactive roadmap
Pressures, particularly from modernization, are rising within the telecoms industry. Those who fail to communicate clearly could be left behind, putting PR front and center as a business function that supports growth and expansion.
A digital content audit is a smart approach for a brand to assess where its outputs perform and where they fall short. It enables refinement of topic areas, defining new pillar content opportunities, as well as what formats could be pursued for the future, such as eBooks or podcasts. The purpose in conducting such an audit is to get a complete overview of a brand’s content output and make strategic decisions about how to improve it in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
Telecoms companies need to reach many different stakeholder audiences, making media outlets and their reach a key part of any public-facing activities. Media relations is the approach relied on to engage with journalists in a strategic manner, whereby a brand shares corporate news or offers spokespeople for interview, with the goal being to positively promote the company to publications’ in-built audience of readers, viewers, listeners and followers.
Events like Mobile World Congress, DTW Ignite and Network X rightly dominate telecom brands’ calendars. Chances to meet decision makers like Heads Of Network and VPs of Procurement aren’t to be passed up. Yet wider opportunities often get ignored, such as media interviews and engaging with influencers. An aligned PR plan maximizes visibility across all channels to ensure an exhibition booth isn’t just busy but makes an impact on the bottom line.
Content strategy is no longer judged by the number of blogs or eBooks published, or by pure keyword ranking. LLMs have profoundly changed the B2B buying journey. Content strategy reflects this shift and applies clear thinking and process to overall brand content production, factoring in the need to provide expertise and authority in any pieces published.
Individual social media accounts can now be leveraged for the betterment of an overall organization. In fact, executives, through their personal LinkedIn accounts, often resonate more with audiences than from a company profile page. Executive social media management puts a plan together that identifies topical issues that are authentic to the executive and crafts bespoke content for publishing on their LinkedIn profile.
Without crisis management in place, an unexpected issue can quickly become uncontrollable for a company in the sector. Proactive planning is the essential factor in a brand overcoming a crisis; without a plan in place, silence and slow communications fill the void, while narrative control is lost.
Outsourcing PR support to an inexperienced team isn’t likely to result in a successful communications campaign. We’ve turned the traditional agency model on its head by staffing our teams with only seasoned PR specialists with a minimum of five years of experience. The benefits for our clients are that an experienced team will be managing and optimizing all parts of their brief on a daily basis.
In PR, having experience as a journalist is highly advantageous. Such a background ensures clients have expertise in how content can be created that is editorially sound and how a story can be elevated beyond owned channels like a brand’s website. Our team is composed almost exclusively of ex-journalists and our clients can rely on this background to gain real insight and expertise into how media works and how best it should be engaged with.
Unfocused PR programs are exactly that and will likely not achieve campaign objectives. Custom PR services that encompass both owned and earned channels are what is required for telecom brands. We provide custom PR programs to our wide roster of clients that are mapped directly back to their specific brief. This ensures programs are always targeted and always provide the value needed.
An excellent indicator of whether a brand has found the right agency is an assessment of how long clients have worked with the agency. Long-standing collaborations point to stability and value being provided. Since our earliest days, we have consistently had long-duration relationships in place with our clients and this is a core goal of our agency for every client engagement.
The telecoms sector is facing seismic shifts thanks to the arrival of technologies such as 6G, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), and firms in the sector face challenges and opportunities around their communication with everyone from investors to consumers. A boutique PR agency can help shape your message and hit your business goals. Our streamlined process enables onboarding in just 5–7 working days.
For brands in the telecom sector, it’s very important to understand the brand and what its initial goals are, from dealing with consumer frustration to becoming a thought leader on 6G. A kick-off call will enable your agency partner to understand your needs, along with a comprehensive assessment of all existing content from reports to blogs to sales collateral. This is the foundation for initial strategic approaches.
PR priorities can be pinpointed during the initial kick-off session: many organizations in the sector need to prioritize high-value kick-off activities. Initial PR priorities need to be identified during the onboarding process in order to prioritize. This can include content creation, media relations for launches and taking over social media profiles to enable posting and management of brand pages.
Your telecoms organization has its own story to tell: the way to work out this story, and the best way to tell it, is to draw on the expertise of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) within the company. SME input sessions happen at the onboarding phase and help to nail down key messages and angles for PR content.
It’s now time to craft a PR strategy for your telecoms organization based on the input from the brand sessions and SME sessions. The PR strategy planning document offers a roadmap of activities, along with what audience to focus on and the overarching message the campaign will get out there.
For organizations hoping to be truly defining in the telecoms sector, it’s now time to prepare key campaign assets for use in your strategy. These include tailored media lists (either one or multiple) to target both telecom specialists and mainstream journalists. At this phase, existing brand pillars like press pages and boilerplate content are assessed and feedback is provided where necessary.
This is where it really gets going. With expectations now in line, program activities begin (after approval of public-facing assets). A standard execution cycle in the telecoms industry involves a brisk start with media relations activities and content creation.
From the launch of the campaign, reporting and measurement are baked in. The role of reporting is to keep track of where coverage is placed, which content performs best, along with feedback from reporters. This can take the form of regular status calls and media coverage tracking.
Now it’s time to step back, analyze and regroup. Strategy reviews help to understand what wins were secured during the PR program as well as areas where improvement is needed. This enables the campaign to be refined and change direction if necessary.
A partner to advise on media engagement, creation of content and social media management to ensure your brand goes from securing connections to leading the industry conversation.
Our Founder addresses the position that communications should be in telecoms.
David Claxton
Founder of Wise Up PR
Public relations for telecoms is a vital way to help organizations stand out in a crowded and highly competitive industry. With the sector facing seismic shifts driven by the arrival of technologies such as 6G, software-defined networking and Open RAN, and challenges such as persistent skepticism around 5G ROI and early 6G investment cases, PR has never been more important. Messaging and a switched-on press office help brands stand out, raising awareness and building trust.
Telecoms organizations range in size from enormous global telecoms ocompanies to startups and scale-ups – and PR tactics will differ for each one. Dealing with challenges such as explaining network modernization, Open RAN, and virtualization to non-technical audiences is core to PR strategy for both, but PR needs to fit the reality of each organization. For startups, communications can provide that vital first ‘lift’ which helps to secure investment, while for larger organizations, it can help to unify messaging across different geographies and time zones.
Telecoms PR is well-placed to help plan and draft technical thought leadership pieces for organizations in the telecoms sector. Technical thought leadership is an ideal way to overcome challenges such as the media’s focus on pricing, outages, and coverage gaps over long-term network strategy, laying out expertise. This is usually achieved by calls with subject matter experts (SMEs) to establish a point of view (POV) before refining the message and placing the thought leadership pieces either in sector-specific trade publications or in more general technology or business publications.
There’s no one set of PR tactics that will work for every telecoms brand. Whether an organization is navigating spectrum policy, regulators, and government stakeholders publicly, or facing challenges differentiating operators in an increasingly commoditized connectivity market, it’s best to work out goals first, then assess assets (such as media-trained spokespeople) and decide on tactics to achieve that goal. If you have a full pipeline of media announcements, it may make sense to focus on that as your main activity, for example.
Having a communications function is a vital tool to extract value from trade events. Whether an organization works in telecommunications networks, network infrastructure, or fiber networks, trade shows are crucially important for PR campaigns, with many trade and mainstream journalists in attendance. Even if an organization faces challenges such as difficulty linking infrastructure upgrades to consumer-visible or enterprise value, trade shows are a vital tool to engage with media contacts to secure earned media coverage and opportunities such as podcast appearances.
