TOP 5 questions to a PR specialist which every client is interested in

Packaging, slogan, vision, distinguish a brand from an ordinary product. For each company, the beginning of cooperation with PR specialists is a sign of a new stage. Before a PR manager starts working in a company, each client of PR activities is interested in several questions. And today I answer them.

Every company has at least two birthdays. The first one is, in fact, when a company entered the market and started selling its products or services. The second birthday is when a company started working with a PR specialist and promoting its product :)

So, keep reading and get to know the answers to the TOP of really important and tricky questions that sometimes “torture” both customers and PR specialists at 3 AM :)

Is it more efficient to appear in one big media, or on many small websites?

That is a tricky question. Why? Because it is not always a matter of size (scale or popularity of a media (or another communication channel, for example, an event).

There are small media outlets (10–30 thousand visits per month) that are actively read and have real organic activity of the target audience. The one that your project needs.

Big media has a lot of traffic, but it is too general and varied to be useful for a narrow topic (only if the theme or niche of your project is not socially important like big business, medicine and pharmaceuticals, food, education, culture and art; even for startups you need to look for specialized publications).

If you have a small business, it is much more important to work and target your audience purely, not including all people of all professions, interests, ages, locations. Big media will provide you with the traffic they promised if you purchased native advertising or a placing on a paid basis (how they will provide it — in an organic way or bot-wrapping, is another question), but will not be responsible for the results, for example, converting reads into conversions to your website.

Regular competitor analysis and benchmarking are certainly fundamental actions for PR and business development.

So I use Spymetrics — it gives me concrete data and shows media visits per month even if a website has less than a thousand visits.

Serpstat will show advanced analytics and help you objectively compare competitors.

Should we pay for publication of our news?

Publications in the media are just one of the possible budget sections that are often used in PR.

It is necessary to understand the goal: collecting opinions, social polls, researching views of target audiences and analyzing the collected information, building a strategy and PR-planning, attracting experts, creating publicity, anti-crisis communications, etc. Depending on the goals, the budget is dedicated to different areas.

Money can be reasonably spent on cooperation with relevant bloggers, as well as on TV or radio appearances, organizing an exhibition, creating souvenirs, outdoor advertising, for example, banners along a busy highway.

Publications are the same budget item as the rest and depend on the goals. If you have been dreaming of publishing your company news in Forbes and made sure that it will bring you fine results, it is worth paying for it.

If we pitch journalists actively, will they publish our news?

No. Only by themselves, pitches, even the most beautiful and correct, do not carry any result if they are not targeted.

There are two cases when in about 90% of probability you will get a result with pitches:

1. if you from start indicate that you are interested in buying the placement in a media;
2. if your news has a national scale and carries public interest.

In any other case, a professional approach in writing pitches and contacts with journalists help to catch up with points to get the desired result, but it does not give the guarantee we all want.

On the other hand, hyperactive and inappropriate pitching is considered spam. And this was not at all part of our goals.

Then how to create relationships with the media from scratch, for projects that have never been published before, have not built partnerships with journalists and editors, do not understand the difference between the format of paid and free materials?

Understanding the goals of a company, its resource capabilities, understanding products and services provided by a company, and developing an individual approach to working with the media, certainly represent the job of a PR specialist.

Can PR specialists help me to sell?

It may sound funny, but if a PR person promotes, (s)he will raise the brand, and if a PR person sells, (s)he will increase sales. If a doctor, teacher, cook, and other people sell, they have the opportunity to increase sales. And if the same people promote, they have the opportunity to create and develop a brand.

But the question is, after all, why should a PR specialist need to sell, but not a sales manager? Why should we force a specialist from another field to do work that is not typical for her/him?

By the way, one of the modern “sins” of management is the misapplication of the strengths of specialists. Employers delegate flying to those whose vocation is swimming, and vice versa. And after ‘forecasted” unsatisfactory results, come discontent, dismissals, negative reviews about employees. All of this can be avoided by applying a PR specialist's strengths in the right direction. If a PR person is better at copywriting than organizing events, there is no point in forcing her/him to do it.

The work of a PR person in your company, quite possibly, will strengthen the efforts of marketers and salespeople, because PR promotion will create or increase awareness and a favorable image of a product in the perception of a target audience. However, you need to understand that this is not a substitute for a sales manager.

When will PR activities bring results?

PR specialists wait for the results of their invested time and effort as well as their customers. But, alas, PR is usually not the sphere that quickly yields “fruits”.

Although, of course, there are exceptions. Big exceptions.

For example, viral videos, high-profile confessions in the personal life or business affairs of celebrities, a celebrity's birth or death, high-profile investigations and scandals, bankruptcies and foundations of new projects. In these cases, the impact can be expected even in the first seconds. But it happens because a solid and strong broad image and fame have already been firmly developed much in advance.

PR quality depends on the quality of a product, yes.

The quality of PR depends on a news occasion, yes.

And the start mark is different for everyone.

Do many PR people think about how often they are put at risk because of the low-quality products and services of their clients?

If a product is not of high quality (and if a PR person knows about it because it also happens that a PR person puts her/his reputation on the line by promoting a scandalous, malicious, or elementary low-quality product), then every PR specialist should think: do they need to continue? After working on this product, will the media and partners trust this specialist in the future? Of course, you can just pay for ads, and that’s it. But PR is about something else.

If a product is of high quality, then the problem of creating news stories is not an impossible task. And where a high-quality news feed, there is media attention, coverage of the right audiences, and conversion of their readings into actions. And this is the result.