Bateman Group

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company provides payroll benefits and workers' compensation through software. We operate on a monthly subscription, and our clients are small business owners and HR administrators for companies of all sizes.

What is your position?

I am the PR manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Bateman Group?

My company had a rebranding in September [2015] – more specifically, we announced it then. The business goals were to generate awareness and get the media coverage we needed – given our growth.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They were hired to provide us with public relations services.

How did you come to work with Bateman Group?

During my two years with the company, we tried using a different agency than Bateman Group, and it didn't work out. We didn't see results. We were wary about working with another group unless they'd bring in a lot of value.

We reached out to many of the top firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. We ended up only bringing two agencies onsite to meet with us. One of them was Bateman Group. I'd known about them beforehand through a couple of different means. I had a former colleague who joined Bateman and is now a director there. He enjoyed his work and spoke highly of his new agency. Also, having worked at a PR agency in the past, I'd heard good things about Bateman Group.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them officially in May 2015. It's an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Bateman Group understands our business and messaging well. They made an effort to meet with our leadership in person, and this equips them to pitch the right stories for us to the right publications. With their help we've recently had meetings with The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune. While those meetings don't always result in coverage, we know that we're reaching out to the right reporters. We do eventually expect to get bigger results from them. They are very successful at keeping things going and getting as many results as we are looking for.

For example, when we tell them that we need more brand awareness because we have a new name, and we need some quick hits, they definitely provide results. They make sure that we're in the smaller blogs while also setting up relationship-building meetings for our CEO so that we can eventually crack into the business press. We have had success with top business and tech press in the past, and that usually comes after a big announcement.

What distinguishes Bateman Group from other providers?

They feel like an extension of our team. Having worked at an agency, I know that it's sometimes very difficult to produce great results while working from the outside. They do a very good job at extracting what they need from the rest of the team and me so that they can succeed and help us at the same time. It's a very holistic approach to PR.

Is there anything Bateman Group could have improved or done differently?

You always want your PR agency to produce spectacular results. PR has the burden of big expectations. I wish that sometimes they would push back on our expectations or help our executives understand what would be a better option or plan. At certain times, they may overpromise.

The other thing: like other companies, we get a lot of press naturally after making big announcements. However, they haven't shown that they can produce big results when we haven't done that. We'd love to see them do that.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is simple and elegant marketing for businesses. We have been around for more than a decade and have offices in Australia and in the United States.

What is your position?

I work on the Public Relations [PR] team here.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Bateman Group?

The company really wanted to fuel its global expansion and growth. That's why Bateman was brought on board; to really get PR work done for the first time.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Bateman was brought on board at the same time as I was. It was the first time that our company had ever done PR and communications as a function. Before that time, the company only had customer support and engineering, and they grew by word of mouth. Bateman was brought on board to help strategically identify our messaging as a company, our story, and the audiences that we needed to spread it to. Before this, if you asked the fifty people at the company, what the company did, you would probably get fifty different answers.

How did you come to work with Bateman Group?

We went through about ten different agencies. We knew that we wanted a little firm, and we interviewed about ten different agencies, from the small boutiques, to the boutique global agencies, to the large-scale firms. We brought in just three agencies to speak with. Bateman brought in some of their senior staff, but more importantly, the people that would be on the account. They were a great cultural fit, and also had a data-driven approach. They also brought something unique to the table: being really strong in contact creation. For our account specifically, it was something we didn't do well.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

That is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We still work with them, and have zero staff turnover.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

In January and February combined, before they really started, we had ten total news mentions. Bateman Group averages forty mentions and news features a month. They've secured our first ever coverage in The New York Times, USA Today, Fast Company, and Fortune.

How did Bateman Group perform from a project management standpoint?

What I really appreciate about the team is that they're extremely proactive, they never forget anything, and they constantly push us, to make sure that we're delivering on our timelines. I've never worked with a team that cares about leadership as much as they do.

What distinguishes Bateman Group from other providers?

We trust them, and they're very honest with us. They'll push back on me, and are not afraid to tell the truth to me or to anybody in the team, from our Chief Excutive Officer [CEO] to our Chief Marketing Officer [CMO]. They do understand that we have business goals at the end of the day. I love that they'll constantly push us for more data, and a more interesting point of view, but they never lose sight of the business, just to get the coverage. They're very strategic about it all.

Is there anything Bateman Group could have improved or done differently?

When we give them something that is probably not as compelling as we think it is, they could probably push back a little harder on us. However, they already do this very well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Netskope is in the cloud security space. The segment is called Cloud access security brokers. We help organizations find, understand, and secure the cloud services running in their environment, and set policies to control usage and secure data. We are headquartered in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Our customers span the globe and we have offices around the world, including in Toronto, London, and Sydney, Australia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Bateman Group?

When we first engaged, we were a young startup. We are now 250 people, so a medium-size, later-stage company. What I was primarily concerned with at the time was telling our story to the market, garnering interest from press and taking the things we have at our disposal like data and using it in an effective way to tell a story. We wanted to be able to tell a story about shadow IT [information technology] and cloud app security.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Bateman Group helped us to figure the storytelling process out. They have actual press experts and former journalists on staff who will speak truth to power. They also have people that help to get the press on the line and arrange meetings. They have strong relationships and great connections. Working with Bateman Group has been great. All of our launches have been well supported. We do have another firm that we work with, out of London, and Bateman Group works very well with them. Typically, when you have multiple PR firms, they don't always play well together but, in this case, it's a smooth relationship. Bateman is also culturally in line with our company: low-key, down to Earth, and not chest beating.

How did you come to work with Bateman Group?

They were my PR firm in my prior company. I've been in marketing for a long time, so I've worked with many PR firms, and Bateman was the one that we selected at that company, and we had a great experience. They were, of course, favorable candidates for selection when we launched Netskope.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

This initiative is crucial to how we market both Netskope as a company and our suite of products, so it is one of the largest annual spends in our marketing budget.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been in business since October 2012, and Bateman has been our PR firm since about July 2013. They've been with us for a long time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics, or other feedback from your work with Bateman Group?

I look at a few different things. One of them is share of voice while others include the quality of the things that we're saying, and the customers that we bring to the table. We also look at two other binary measures: one, are we in articles that mention our space or not? If someone is doing a thing on CASBs (Cloud Access Security Brokers), and they mention a couple of our competitors, but not us. That's not good. We also look at the binary measure of being mentioned in an analyst round up. Obviously, we want to be positively mentioned, and we very frequently are, but that measure is simply to do with inclusion.

In terms of inclusion in articles that mention CASBs, anytime someone speaks about that topic, we're almost always mentioned, which is an increase since we began our engagement with Bateman. Also, the awareness of the space has risen. As you would expect, we have a high volume of being mentioned in CRN, eWeek, Ars Techinica, and other publications, such as Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.

What distinguishes Bateman Group from other providers?

They're very scrappy and roll with the punches. To give you an example of their incredible dedication: One of my colleagues had an immediate family emergency, and it was at the same time we were about to have a launch. Bateman had just recently been brought on, but they stepped in and, at no extra cost, dug in, and within 24 hours were up to speed, as if they were a member of the company. They helped us do the best launch that we'd ever had in the company. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was around two times the coverage, compared to our expectations. They worked around the clock. I can remember being up at two in the morning, and sending someone from the firm an email, and getting one right back. I think it speaks to the culture that they've developed in their own company. They're stringent about the customers they choose, and I think it shows. They treat their people well, they choose the right customers, they work very collaboratively with them, and they're very honest.

Is there anything Bateman Group could have improved or done differently?

Nothing ever gets significant one way or the other because we are very tight with them. I probably talk to them by email or phone multiple times a week, and people in my team do it almost daily. If they ever start going off the track in one direction or the other, we are on it, and bring them back up to speed.