In my last blog, I shared how closer collaboration between PR, marketing and sales teams can unlock greater value for fast-growing businesses, providing a competitive advantage when budgets are under scrutiny and expectations continue to rise.
I had the chance to explore this further with a brilliant panel of marketing leaders from Coupa, Eviden, HUT 3 and Tyto, as part of our Break Down the Silos webinar.
One of the most compelling parts of the discussion was how a growing number of tech companies are moving beyond the traditional split between brand and demand, and embracing more integrated, full-funnel strategies.
This shift isn’t just a reaction to leaner teams or tighter budgets.
The B2B buying journey itself has changed. Buyer groups are larger and more complex, and there’s more content than ever competing for their attention.
Against that backdrop, the opportunity for PR to warm up markets, engage prospects throughout the funnel, and contribute to commercial outcomes has never been greater. It’s encouraging to see more B2B tech firms recognising this and embedding PR as a core part of their full-funnel approach.
Here are some of the key insights from the session:
You’re not selling to a single buyer anymore – you need to influence an entire group
The days of focusing on a single decision-maker are behind us. Today’s buying decisions are made by committees, often spanning multiple functions, geographies and levels of seniority.
Carmen Overton, Global Head of Growth Marketing at Eviden (part of the Atos Group), highlighted the scale of this shift: “Getting one lead from one person in an organisation really doesn’t cut it anymore. We have to inform the whole buyer group and give them the content they need in the way they need it to solve their own specific problem.”
This has clear implications for how we structure campaigns. Targeting individuals in isolation with siloed brand or demand activity is no longer effective. Campaigns must engage multiple personas across the funnel, while PR activity must be integrated to ensure that credibility and trust is built and nurtured from the off.
Content creation isn’t the problem – it’s how we use and amplify it that needs more attention
Despite the huge investment in content creation, more than one-third of the materials we create are rarely or never repurposed beyond a single channel.
The issue often isn’t the content itself, but how it’s shared with internal teams and used throughout the buyer journey.
Anthony Tate, Senior Director of Segment Marketing and Communications at Coupa, pointed out the cycle many teams fall into: “I love creating content, but sometimes we forget to ask why are we creating it? As a result, you can get stuck in a cycle where you’re trying to optimise and atomise content rather than explaining to your sales leadership and their teams how and when to use it.”
It’s frustrating when assets don’t live up to their potential and it can become a lot of work to rectify. There are common reasons for this – often it’s because the sales team wasn’t involved in the creation of the content or because the enablement piece was missing, and assets were underutilised.
The solution is a more intentional approach to activation. To ensure that assets live up to their potential, involve the sales and marketing teams earlier in the process and ensure that content is easier for them to use. Tagging content to a particular pain point or stage in the buyer journey is a quick and easy way to do this.
Full-funnel success starts with shared ownership
Another theme that resonated with me was the importance of early alignment – brand and demand can’t be bolted together after the fact.
Whether it’s bringing sales into content planning or clearly defining roles between PR and marketing, integrated strategies only work when teams share ownership of the process from day one.
Carmen Overton shared how this approach has paid off for her at Eviden: “We involved key members of that stakeholder community. We got their buy-in right up front and they became really invested in the programme. And it became their programme, in fact.”
We also touched on the need to clarify roles between different functions to avoid confusion and duplication. The role of PR and marketing often gets blurred, particularly when organisations scale quickly or bring in new leadership.
Anthony Tate sees the divide like this: “In essence PR is building the credibility whereas marketing is building that and converting the demand.”
That simple distinction can go a long way in helping teams work better together and reinforces why PR belongs at the heart of a full-funnel strategy.
What this mean for PR and comms leaders
The shift to full-funnel thinking isn’t just a trend, it’s a huge opportunity for PR to deliver an even greater commercial impact.
When PR is used to build credibility at the top of the funnel, and that credibility is carried through into mid- and bottom-funnel engagement, comms becomes a core driver of pipeline and revenue growth.
In turn, this makes demand generation efforts more effective than they would otherwise be as standalone initiatives.
Carmen Overton stresses the need for PR to be in the mix: “We’re not doing demand generation campaigns on their own anymore. We’re doing full funnel strategies and that’s what’s working. It’s not about leads now, it’s about engagement with accounts and with buyer groups.”
In other words, PR isn’t a supplement to demand gen – it’s a multiplier.
It’s a powerful mindset shift and one that unlocks huge opportunities for comms teams to play a more central and strategic role in driving business performance.
Watch the full webinar on demand
If you’re reviewing how your PR programme drives business outcomes, don’t miss the full Break Down the Silos webinar. It’s packed with actionable insight from B2B leaders who are putting full-funnel thinking into practice – and seeing results.
About the author
Siân Gaskell is Managing Partner at Tyto and leads the Content Studio. She was worked with countless brands including BlackBerry, Zendesk, Outbrain, and First Utility.