FAQs

Visibility. Press coverage sparks interest in your brand and makes you visible. It instructs andinspires your target audience and gives your brand grater credibility and trust, enhancing your reputation. This is particularly important for small and new brands. A PR strategy also supports your marketing and advertising efforts. Press coverage can also help increase yourwebsites rank in Google, so people can more easily find your business. With greater brand awareness, your target audience will get to know you and your offering helping you meetyour business goals. What do I need to get started? To get started on your PR journey you need the below… 1) How would you like the brand to be credited in the press for expert comment opportunities? Which is usually Name, Title, Web Address 2) Image of yourself / and images you have of your brand / products – these need to be high res 3) One paragraph bio on yourself and your career to date/education 4) Have you been featured in the press before? If so any previous articles you have been featured in are useful to have 5) Have you written any blog posts in the past? I can pitch these to press so anything you may have previously written is always useful 6) Price list of your services / product range

Working with a PR professional over a longer period of time will ensure that you are featured in the press more regularly as it allows the PR to introduce you to their contacts, regularly pitch ideas, have those ideas come to fruition whilst allowing the press feature to come out. A PR might pitch to your ‘dream’ title such as Tatler, and whilst the journalist isn’t working on a feature that your brand/expertise is relevant for now, an opportunity might arise in a few months time or the next week, so it’s not a ‘no’ forever, just for now. Which is while it’s essential to work with a PR professional for a block period of time for the very best chances. J ournalists can also hold onto a pitch / release / idea for months before they get back to in touch to feature. Once the ball is rolling you are likely to receive press features on a regular basis once press are aware of you and your brands offering, most of my clients receive between 4-10 pieces of coverage a month. You might have one month where you receive 2 pieces and the next you receive 6. Coverage is never guaranteed (and no respectable PR professional should ever guarantee anything) but it’s part of a process and the results make it all worthwhile!

As a general rule, media outlets work ahead as follows… Monthly magazines: 4-6 months Weekly magazines: 8 weeks ahead Newspapers + online platforms- Daily or Weekly *A PR cannot guarantee feature dates as these are often changed last minute or brands can be cut from pages by an Editor.

‘Advertising is when YOU say how great you are. PR Is when other people say how great your are. PR is better’ Guy Kawaskai. Advertising is paid media, public relations is earned media. Both advertising and PR help build brands and communicate with target audiences. The most basic difference between them is that advertising space is paid for, while public relations results are earned through providing the media with information in the form of pitches / press releases. This means a PR professionals aim is to introduce and convince journalists to write a story that features your brand, and it then appears in the editorial section of the magazine, newspaper, TV station or website, rather than the “paid media” section where advertising messages appear. So your story has more credibility because it was independently verified by a trusted third party, rather than purchased. After all, how many of us actually read the back advertising pages of a magazine? Unlike advertising PR’s cannot control what a journalist is going to write- they are not given editorial control. You also cannot control where you are placed, sure you can decline a certain opportunity, but a PR cannot control which media outlet will like the sound of your brand. You can’t simply ‘choose’ a title you want to be featured in and expect an Editor of Journalist to write about your offering. A PR CAN introduce you and your brand to the RIGHT journalists and will try their very best to get you featured and on the pages that your TARGET MARKET are reading using their close contacts and experience in putting you forward in the very best way, but if a journalist isn’t working on a relevant story, or doesn’t believe your brand to be relevant to their title and pages then that is out of the PRs hands.

Have you heard of the marketing rule of seven? The rule of seven states that it takes an average of 7 interactions with your brand before a purchase will take place. According to a recent study, 71% of consumers said it was very or somewhat important that they recognise a brand before they make a purchase. Familiarity equals value. This makes sense, as how many of us would buy a highly priced item from an unfamiliar brand? Many of us are more likely to do some research and gain a certain level of familiarity before purchasing or buying into a service or offering. So what defines an’ interaction’? An interaction is literally ANY mention of your brand, both positive or negative. Including advertising, marketing, social media, media mentions, press reviews, word of mouth, google mentions etc. You can see this with the Pelaton, a once unknown fitness brand is now all over the media and your Instagram feed, encouraging many of us to purchase. By that time we should have the confidence to know the price is fair, the quality is good enough and anything else that may get in the way of making a decision. PR will assist with getting your brand SEEN and HEARD by your target market, increasing interactions as part of a customer journey. It can help with sales via ensuring your brand name becomes more familiar to your audience.