ChannelEngine´s story began in 2013, when they saw an opportunity in how the evolving online marketplace was becoming one of the most important elements of the global e-commerce market. This opportunity was the need for businesses to have access to powerful platforms to trade online. 8 years later, they have built one of the most complete marketplace management suites out there, facilitating the sale of over 3 million products from 1500 brands to over 100 digital marketplaces.
Their suite means a business can integrate their webshop with multiple online marketplaces, making it very simple for brands and business owners of any size to expand their reach and connect with more consumers. With automated sales, and margin filters optimizing profits, ChannelEngine gives its users complete control over their e-commerce.
Having grown successfully since their launch, ChannelEngine raised their Series A funding round of 5 million to continue expanding, looking to roll out into the US/UK global markets, as well as Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. They approached PRLab to help secure coverage of this funding announcement in key markets. With their move to go global, they needed an international media presence and they needed it fast. Our challenge was to tell their story in an engaging way and produce an in-depth press release tailored to four different markets in four different languages, and ensure that it resonated with ChannelEngine’s target audience.
As with all our clients, our first step is research and analysis. Because ChannelEngine was expanding into multiple new markets, we had to conduct extensive research on the media and competitors within each region.
Our team split the regions between them to quickly produce a list of media outlets, carefully selecting the top tier publications and journalists that would be most interested in the news as well as providing the most reach to ChannelEngine’s new audiences.
As well as the top tier media outlets, our team also builds an extensive list of 2nd tier publications to pitch to and secure even more coverage for our client.
After conducting research on relevant media outlets, it was imperative to also research the market trends in the different regions ChannelEngine was looking to expand to. The trends we would identify would then be used as a foundation for our press releases. This is because a press release’s success depends upon its relevance and its potential to engage with its readers. We researched economic, political, technological trends for each region, doing an analysis of competitors to identify the trending stories and perspectives that were getting the most attention. This gave us an insight into how each press release should be focused on and the standard of content we needed to aim for.
With the media and market research complete, it was now time to produce the press release. The key was to produce a relevant story to frame the news of ChannelEngine´s funding announcement.
From our experience with PR, we know the importance of giving news this context and making it an exciting story that journalists will want to pick up. By focusing on newsworthy elements, our content writers turned ChannelEngine´s funding announcement into four different press releases focused on each region. Having a press release focused on locality and discussing the well-researched impact on that region is essential to get picked up by top-tier publications.
Using the detailed lists of media outlets, we now pitched the content to the relevant journalists around the world. To ensure our success, we personalize our pitches for the top tier publications, crafting different angles for different journalists, researching their previous work to make sure our efforts are as concise as possible.
Not only were these pitches based on specific market research, but they were pitched in four different languages, a testament to PRLab’s global outreach.
While we had success in many regions, journalists in Germany, a key target region for ChannelEngine, were busy covering bigger stories happening in that market that week. The PRLab team isn’t one to shy away from challenges, and given the importance of expanding into this region, we didn’t want to return to our client empty-handed. So we adapted our strategy, and in order to secure coverage, we instead developed some thought leadership content for German publications so our client could begin to grow their brand authority in the region.
Having already researched the industry trends in that region, we produced thought leadership articles that would demonstrate ChannelEngine’s expertise, and begin building trust in the German audience. This meant that while their funding announcement might not have been successful this time around, ChannelEngine is still being established as a credible company in a new market.
The setback to the German market meant we had to adjust our strategy, and we successfully pitched the thought leadership content to 3 German marketing blogs, setting up ChannelEngine for future efforts into the German market.
This PR campaign was a huge success, and adapting our strategy made sure our client could continue developing their brand authority in addition to proving the quick thinking of PRLab and our commitment to helping our clients grow their business.
