As it changes its name from Collaborative Communications to Collaborative Insight, the agency will broaden its offering from simply public relations to expertise on lead-generating customer programs.
The Cambridge, MA, agency will target small to mid-sized companies for programs that deliver sales leads and shorter selling cycles.
“While we were offering PR services, what we found is that in the vast majority of those engagements, very often these companies did not articulate their value proposition to customers and emphasize themselves as solving their problems,” said Susan Hodder, director of Collaborative.
So it will offer services such as sales programs for shortening sales cycles and increasing lead generation and its Foundation Marketing program for strategy for startups, opening new markets and launching new products.
It also will offer strategic counsel, customer intelligence tools and, of course, PR. Though the agency will not execute direct marketing campaigns, it will bring in vendors.
“We're going to go in and tell them what's most effective for them and then help them create that campaign,” said Cheryl Salatino, senior vice president at Collaborative.
The 7-year-old agency has 12 employees. It serves clients such as Web testing tools firm Empirix, financial software maker By All Accounts, virtual serial communications service DialOut.net and performance metrics firm CustomerCentric, formerly netGenesis.
