How do I know if my business is PR ready?

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.

Because if you aren’t known or talked about, people go elsewhere.

A huge factor is 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 work, it helps if a business has other building blocks in place first. 

And these are….

1 / Create 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. For technology firms, a short video to explain the proposition in 90 seconds.

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 >

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 provides a centrepiece to 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, and active messaging to help them identify and solve that problem, to prompt a specific change in their behaviour. 

2 / Build an image library

“No picture, no story” is a newsroom truism that has been amplified and then some in 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 co-founder(s) that (ideally, if possible) contains some branding, a prop, a creative quirk or an indication of what category the business is in, what makes it different, or what problem it solves. 

< What to do >

Getting good photos (ie photos that stand out) may be the difference between a big PR launch getting quality coverage, or nothing at all. Draw up a creative brief and arrange a great photographer; for most founders, the photo is often an afterthought so we recommend getting pictures done as soon as possible. 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 / Clearly describe your audiences

An audience persona is (for example) “founders of UK tech-led startups invested in sustainability / constructive disruption who are in and around Series A stage”. It is not “CMOs” or “brands”. 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. 

PR is fundamentally about exerting influence and changing behaviours. 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.

< What to do >

This starts by being clear about business objectives. Sometimes there is a ‘hidden’ objective behind PR that sometimes 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 ‘prep for exit’ (investor audience).

Similarly, 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 / Explain and define 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. 

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. 

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 but will hold the clues as to how a PR agency can help you play to your strengths.

< What to do >

A PR 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 / Show provable traction

Provable traction is a visible demonstration of product-market fit. 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. Despite being some way down this list it’s perhaps the most important. 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 > 

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, case studies, funding rounds completed or partnerships in place it might be better to do these first as this endorsement will make your PR much easier. 

6 / Set a specific PR budget.

The PR budget will identify a set amount of money that will be available over a specific time period. It will ideally separate PR from other marketing and sales activities, such as conferences, advertising or content marketing. 

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 freelancer, and £3,000+ for a PR retainer from a reputable independent agency. 

< What to do > 

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.

7 / Make sure sales and marketing are working first.

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 marketing. While it is true that great PR coverage (like a BBC Online backlink - SEO Manna from Heaven) can drive leads, traffic and credibility that money can’t buy - achieving this coverage can be extremely difficult and take time.

If driving traffic (to drive sales and leads) is the ultimate objective then other channels are reliable, measurable and easier to manage. 

< What to do >

A PR investment is best justified as a brand and reputation-building complement to paid channels (if sales are the business objective) and/ or should be treated as meeting different (non-sales) objectives. 

Plus, by having a coherent marketing plan in place (eg with content marketing) then a company is also more likely to be able to make PR work operationally.

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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!