This is a Guest Blog by Matt Phillips, Founder and MD of Matt Phillips PR, who shares his thoughts on 'How to Decide When to Add PR to your Marketing Plan'.
It’s hard for a business to decide when to start doing PR.
Start too soon, and you’ll waste money chasing impossible or unrealistic outcomes. Leave it too late, and you’ll find that your low brand profile may mean people choose your competition; whether that’s customers who buy elsewhere, investors who back your rivals, or employees and partners who team up with others.
A huge factor in determining when to start is your budget. PR is more expensive than other communications channels (especially if you’re not already famous) and it’s far riskier.
By definition, earned media coverage is not guaranteed - so a business has to be in a position to view PR as a longer-term investment and be financially able to make that commitment.
But similarly, for PR to be as effective as it can be, it helps if a business has other building blocks in place first.
1. Do you have a digital footprint?
By this, I primarily mean a clear and coherent website that answers the key questions - who is the customer, what is the problem, and what is the solution? It should also explain what any products are, what they do and how they can either make the customer money or save them time.
From a B2B perspective, pictures of the team, and ideally a blog that indicates the beginnings of a content marketing programme; ideally a mix of company updates, opinion articles, and curated press articles. The design/ imagery/ proposition should also be prominent on social channels, and important third-party platforms like trade orgs, networking groups or databases like Crunchbase.
All of this is important for all website visitors, but as most journalists will Google your brand and people before writing about your company, a good footprint is important as it makes it more likely to take the business seriously.
What to do next if the answer is no…
The first step is to create a strong narrative underpinned by simple messaging.
A written manifesto outlining what the business does, how it is different, who it serves and why it can provide a centrepiece for all communications (internal, external, paid, earned and owned).
Beyond that, develop simple fact-led messages that explain how you can solve your audience/ target market’s problem, supported by market data. Make sure you have active messaging to help them identify and solve that problem, to prompt a specific change in their behaviour.
Additionally, do an audit of where people in the business are profiled online - make sure they are up to date.
Then start producing content for your own channels; video, graphics, blogs, and newsletters. Get into the content-producing habit as this will both showcase your people to journalists who will google them before covering them… as well as help get the business operationally ready for producing content for PR.
2. Do you have a strong image library?
“No picture, no story” is a newsroom truism that has continued over to the social media age.
It’s important to have a bank of images that tell the story of your business; photos of people, photos of the product/ service, stock images and graphics to bring stories to life.
People buy people. Journalists write about people. Ergo, no pictures of people, and no coverage.
Most people in business have portrait photos in varying degrees of quality. Sometimes, in startups and SMEs these are inherited from a previous corporate life and/ or have been done on the fly with an iPhone. But most of these will not cut it for press use.
While a decent hi-res headshot is important - a good founders photo is a wide-angle shot of the founder(s) that (ideally, if possible) contains a quirk; perhaps some branding, a relevant personal prop, creative quirk or an indication of what category the business is in, what makes it different, or what problem it solves.
What to do next if the answer is no…
Getting good photos may be the difference between a big PR launch getting quality coverage, or nothing at all.
Photos can be an afterthought so we recommend getting pictures done as soon as possible; draw up a creative brief and arrange a great photographer.
Licence stock images from an image gallery, and invest in a designer to create a bank of infographics for the blog and social channels.
3. Can you describe the audiences you want to reach?
PR is about exerting influence and changing behaviours.
So if you can’t be specific about which audiences you want to reach, and how you can solve their problems, then you risk creating bland, directionless content that is too vague to capture anyone’s attention.
An audience persona is (for example) “founders of UK cleantech startups who have just closed a Series A round”.
It is not “marketers” or “retailers”.
It is an audience description that is small enough to be specifically targeted and exclude most people, yet large enough to have at least a few journalists writing for it.
What to do next if the answer is no…
This starts by being clear about business objectives. Sometimes there is a ‘hidden’ objective behind PR that even people in the team don’t understand.
Terms like ‘raising brand profile’ can be code for ‘help with hiring’ (employer audience), ‘sell stuff’ (customer audience) or ‘prepare for fundraising or exit’ (investor audience).
Define the audiences, and then describe the ask - what you want each to do based on a best guess of how you imagine their problem, and how you can solve it.
It’s also important as different PR people specialise in different types of PR.
The channels, approach, messaging and materials required for, say, publicity (getting the product or service featured in media titles that will influence purchasing), are very different to B2B or investor-led PR (aimed at influencing and impressing investors, potential partners or employees).
It may be better to employ an individual freelance specialist and start small, rather than invest in an agency to reach all audiences - depending on the audiences.
4. Do you know who is in your competitive set?
Having a simple list of three or four peers will really help for benchmarking purposes, and setting realistic expectations around media coverage.
It is also critical for the agency to understand what makes your company different.
While USPs and product features aren’t going to be the clincher when it comes to PR, they will help a PR professional to advise on the message, and what issues and topics to talk about.
And practically speaking, looking for where peers earn coverage is a useful indicator of which journalists might write about you. It’s also useful to get a sense of what others in the category are talking about, who is visible and where.
What to do next if the answer is no…
There are two wrong answers to this question, the first is “we don’t have any competitors”. As most investors will tell you, if a business doesn’t have competitors it has either not understood the problem it solves, it's trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, or the value of solving the problem is too small.
The other wrong answer is “our competitor is IBM/ Google/ Apple/ Netflix” (unless you are a large corporate). These companies have far greater resources and are bigger and better - it will stretch credibility to suggest your business can beat them, so it's better to describe them as potential acquirers, peers, or complements to what you do.
A PR professional won’t need a detailed analysis of the market, but a list of three to five key names will help their research. Identify a mix of firms; the category leader/ incumbent, an ‘enemy’ if one exists (whose approach and model is the direct opposite of yours), a peer and possibly a challenger.
5. Can the business share a measure of traction?
Provable traction, for startups, is a visible demonstration of product-market fit. Despite being some way down this list it’s perhaps the most important.
It usually takes the form of active customers (either total customer numbers, or high-profile case studies), hired employees, funding rounds raised, or products shipped.
It’s all about credibility, and third-party endorsement. It’s one of PR’s ironies that it gets easier to get attention the less you need it or want it. Provable traction is more important than novelty or positioning.
Journalists won’t write about founders that don’t have provable traction. And I use the word founders (rather than companies or brands) because the founder’s personal brand (and previous track record) matters and can prove an exception to this rule.
What to do next if the answer is no…
Pull together some key metrics that the company is willing to disclose publicly and include them in the brief.
If there are no customers won, no case studies, no funding rounds completed or no partnerships in place it might be better to achieve these before considering PR, as an endorsement and proof of traction will make your PR much easier as businesses are more likely to take you seriously.
6. Have you created a PR budget, distinct from marketing?
The PR budget will identify a set amount of money that will be available over a specific time period.
It should also be clear about what aspect of PR to cover; B2B corporate communications (growing the reputation of the business in the eyes of stakeholders) or B2C consumer publicity (getting the product or service talked about in the communities that matter).
It will ideally separate B2B stakeholder PR from other marketing and sales activities (such as conferences, advertising or content marketing) while B2C customer PR is better bundled into a more integrated marcomms publicity brief that includes a campaign, activation, vehicle, stunt or focal point of activity.
This is important as all agencies are different: some PR agencies bleed into brand and B2B marketing activations, while some ‘PR’ agencies or consultants don’t do media relations.
Fees will vary hugely from sector to sector, but a budget of £350+ per day for an experienced single media relations freelancer, and £3,000+ for a PR retainer from a reputable independent agency.
What to do next if the answer is no…
Be clear about what the scope is, and what it includes. This is particularly important for content and copywriting, with some companies preferring to produce content such as opinion articles in-house (with a marketing lens), whilst most agencies prefer to produce content (with a PR lens).
If you have specific KPIs and outcomes in mind, communicate these upfront in a clear brief. Put the brief into the wider context of what the business is trying to achieve.
If you have no budget, then share your brief with four or five agencies and speak to them about how they would tackle it, and what fees they’d typically charge to meet your KPIs… or, ask them what kind of service they could deliver within a ballpark fee range around the ballparks above.
7. Is the sales and marketing function working well?
For an early-stage firm, a typical marketing plan will include networking/ branding at conferences, some paid search & social, email marketing and/ or lead gen. Often the company has a CRM in place and perhaps a marketing/ sales person overseeing it or an external consultant.
PR does not work as an alternative to paid-for direct marketing. While it is true that great PR coverage (like a BBC Online backlink which is SEO gold) can drive leads, traffic and credibility that money can’t buy - achieving this coverage can be extremely difficult and takes time.
PR is, for me, a mid-funnel activity. The halo of fame can help convince consideration prospects to choose you over a competitor, but there are more effective ways to generate awareness and more effective ways to close sales.
If driving traffic (to drive more sales and leads) is the first business objective then other channels are reliable, measurable and easier to manage.
What to do next if the answer is no…
A PR investment is best justified as a brand and reputation-building complement to paid channels (if sales are the business objective) and its place in any attribution model should be treated with a pinch of salt.
Most marketing experts advocate a split of 60:40 in favour of brand advertising/ direct sales activation in consumer brands, and 50:50 in a B2B context. Of course, those lines are blurred but including PR somewhere in the ‘difficult to measure/ attribute’ brand category is probably right. If sales are flagging, this could be due to a multitude of factors outside marketing & sales’ control.
So as a rule, our advice is to audit sales/ marketing first before looking at PR if sales are a problem. PR is easier from a position of strength, and by having a coherent marketing function in place (e.g. with content marketing) then a company is also more likely to be able to make PR work operationally.
As well as the media relations aspects of PR, our service covers marketing & communications consultancy (getting your messaging right, and putting in place the operations to communicate it) and copywriting (white papers, blogs, social posts and opinion articles).
Please get in touch if you’d like a view from me on your PR readiness!
