No PR agency can legitimately guarantee you results because editorial coverage is earned from journalists, not paid for like advertising. When you’re paying for PR services, you are paying for the PR’s time and effort in pitching your business to relevant journalists.
However, we understand that it can be frustrating to pay for PR services while not seeing as many results as you’d like. Below, we’ve included 3 ways to increase your chances of securing editorial coverage and achieving ROI on your PR investment.
Optimise your brand story
To stand out from your competitors, it’s important to craft a really strong brand story. This is because storytelling is key to creating connections between your customers and your brand and fostering loyalty among your audiences. If your brand storytelling resonates with both customers and press, you’ll be in a much stronger position to achieve editorial coverage. Time spent on achieving this is a great investment in the future of your brand and can eventually help generate more editorial coverage.
High-quality imagery
When pitching to press for both print and digital editorial coverage, it’s important to share high-resolution imagery to illustrate their articles. In our experience, we’ve heard of brands not making the final cut because their imagery wasn’t strong enough. To avoid this, have both product pack shots and lifestyle imagery available for all your products. We recommend creating a Google Drive press library folder with subfolders of labelled images for journalists to easily search.
Build lead times into product launches
Sometimes, brands will launch a new collection and only pitch it to journalists once it’s being retailed. However, journalists like to receive new news and if your product has already launched, they are less likely to feature it. Instead, to maximise your chances of achieving press coverage, pitch your news to journalists three to four months ahead of when you would like to see coverage published. This means you’ll need to build significant lead times into your product launches because you will need all your imagery and product information, including pricing, available three months before the retail date.
For more information about owning your PR in-house and saving on monthly agency retainer fees, contact us via hello@fallowfieldmason.com.