Getting your HR consultancy seen by the right people is a niche skill.

Your marketing, PR, and content strategies need to be tailored and tweaked with two things in mind: presenting a clear, concise, yet thorough understanding of the HR sector you’re serving, stitched seamlessly with the consultancy’s own business objectives.

It’s a lot to consider; there’s a lot to get right, both strategically and in execution.

This is where a marketing and PR consultancy, like our team, could be invaluable.

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We’re one step beyond your average marketing and PR consultancy

At Transform Comms, we’ve worked with HR consultancies and businesses for decades.

Our past clients include regional, national, and global experts in occupational psychology, talent management, recruitment, assessment, learning and development, employee engagement, and HR tech — it’s safe to say, then, we understand much of the HR industry. This, we think, makes us a unique team to work with: our offer of specialist HR marketing and PR support helps to build your brand, amplify your voice, and establish your expertise.

But the crucial decision: do you DIY or find a marketing and PR agency to support you?

Of course, a lot of that comes down to budget and capacity.

That said, our breadth and depth of experience means we don’t quite see ourselves as an ‘agency-and-that’s-that.’ We’re HR service consultants. Our founder, Veronica Hannon, has worked with HR, recruitment, and talent management businesses for more than 20 years, and that knowledge has been embedded into the rest of the team. We understand the issues, challenges, and subjects a sector as complex and broad as HR face and, within this space, we’ve built effective partnerships to help consultancies grow, sometimes even sell, their business. How? By using media relations, public relations, thought leadership, content marketing, award entries, digital marketing, and / or fully integrated marketing and PR campaigns to bring everything together in one holistic strategy.

We’re your trusted partner, confidant, sounding board, and extension of your own team.

Here are some of the projects and teams we’ve had the pleasure of working with.

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Spreading the word about emotional intelligence, with Talogy

JCA Global (now PSI and Talogy), experts in emotional intelligence (EI), needed to:

• spread the word about the power of EI,
• increase the use of their EI assessment and development tool, and
• establish their position as experts in talent management and the application of EI to drive business performance.

Through media coverage and thought leadership content, we created and managed a two-year campaign to achieve those objectives. We placed more than 50 articles in leading business publications, including The Times, Forbes, and Headspring, plus expert commentary in the national media.

When PSI International acquired JCA Global, we worked with their full team to align the two brands using thought leadership content (white papers, guides, blog posts, email campaigns, and social media campaigns). In 2022, we again supported the organisation when the recruitment tech arm of PSI rebranded to Talogy.

Some coverage we achieved for Talogy include:

• New game in town (pg. 45) in HR Director.
• The new portrait of leadership in Authority Magazine.‍
• Why preparation is key to workplace resilience in People Management Insight.‍
• Businesses are not putting people in the right jobs — how tech can help in WorkLife.
• ‍How L&D can support company culture in a hybrid setting in Training Industry.

Kristin Paxton, Senior Director of Global Digital Marketing: ‘We undertook a major, complex rebranding initiative and relied heavily on Transform Communications to launch the new brand and gain traction and attention across all our key markets — this was across all aspects of our communication and PR strategy. What we saw was high-quality, targeted coverage with the metrics to back it up. It was a positive experience for our internal stakeholders, which was critical for us, and Transform offered valuable insight and recommendations as things came up along the way. One of the things I appreciated most was their ability to collaborate. I’ve worked with a lot of agencies and consultancies — Transform delivers in a way that none of the others have. We look forward to our continued partnership in years to come.’

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Artificial intelligence and data-driven HR, with Cognisess

Cognisess is a unique entrepreneurial start-up for HR directors and business owners. They use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to revolutionise the recruitment and talent management process.

We worked closely with the fast-growing team to establish Cognisess as experts in the fields of both AI and human capital management, through targeted thought leadership campaigns, a media campaign in sector publications, and brand message development.

We prepared article ideas and synopses that demonstrated authority in the market, and subsequently managed to place commentary and commissioned pieces across multiple media outlets, including: Forbes, HR Director, and People Management.

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Launching a new psychometric test, with PCL

PCL (Psychological Consultancy Ltd) wanted to launch a new product. For the 'Risk Type Compass' they had the tools but no data to back it up.

We partnered with media publishers in different sectors (police, fire, nursing, accountancy, IT, HR, business press) to survey their readers. This delivered a great deal of press attention, which was followed by a series of articles on the findings, then publishing the overall research results alongside the launch of Risk-Type Compass.

Geoff Trickey, Managing Director at PCL: ‘The work Transform Comms did for us was an effective door-opener. Their media relations programme provided written material, speaker material, and helped us to build credibility as thought leaders in risk management.’

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Creating a digital content marketing library, with PSI

The e-assessment arm of PSI needed marketing collateral to introduce and address the concerns of clients considering secure remote assessments for the first time.

We produced a series of ‘Tell me more about…’ books, printed in A5 and available online. Starting with ‘…Test Security’ — and covering other subjects like psychometrics, micro-credentialing, and data forensics — the series covered complex topics related to test development and delivery.

The books were taken to conferences, as well as shared in blog posts, social media content, case studies, product marketing collateral, emails, and other website content, all to serve and broaden their reach, subsequently strengthening PSI’s position in the growing assessment market.

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Redefining a brand for online learning, with Upskill People

Upskill People are a specialist e-learning provider for retail and hospitality. They needed to understand what customers loved about their products and services, and how to use this insight to attract more business.

Through a customer research project, we identified a unique brand proposition that transformed how the company promoted itself. We then reinvigorated the brand, overhauled their tone of voice, launched a new website, created social media campaigns, and fostered partnerships with key industry bodies.

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Content marketing and PR, with Festo Training & Consulting

Our work with Festo Training & Consulting was the perfect example of the intersection between content marketing and PR.

Working with Festo’s consultants, we produced evergreen guides and white papers on topics related to employee engagement in the manufacturing and engineering sector.

From these content pieces, we created animated email campaigns, developed article synopses, then successfully placed in key sector publications, including: Works Management, Training Journal, Manufacturing Management, Professional Engineering, and more.

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Transform Comms are your HR consultancy marketing and PR specialists

Our website has plenty to read up on to get started — perhaps our blog posts about creating successful SEO strategies, how to use ChatGPT for your content marketing, and why microcopy matters. We’re a creative bunch, always exploring new subjects and angles.

With the increase in digital communications and online interactions, integrating digital marketing into your marketing and PR strategies is more important than ever, too. That’s why we work with our colleagues from Transform Digital to ensure all marketing activity is aligned and adapted to suit each client’s unique needs.

Alongside the clients mentioned above, we’ve got a bunch more stories to share about what we do — including Wiley, NHS Professionals, Disruptive HR, Personio, and Mindbridge — and we’d love to hear yours, too!

If you work in the HR service and consultancy space, get in touch to talk through your unique goals and challenges.