FAQs

PR stands for public relations. The dictionary says it’s “the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution”. We say PR support is about creating strategies and campaigns to showcase our clients’ brilliant work. We help them get noticed by the right audience, at the right time.

Good question. Marketing spend is sometimes talked about as 10% of a business’ revenue. We prefer to start with what you’re trying to achieve – your objectives – and then work out how much it could cost to achieve them. PR doesn't have to be expensive. Some PR agencies won’t get out of bed for less than £7k a month, but we offer flexible monthly retainers that suit SMEs and startups with smaller budgets, starting at £2k per month. It’s a process that’s well worth committing to for the long-term, because you’ll see relationships with journalists develop and flourish, and regular coverage opportunities increase the longer you do it.

A press release is a good summary of a piece of news, written for journalists. It should give them the key information they need to write their story. We’ve provided a simple press release template on our site. There should be a clear angle in the release, meaning they have a reason to cover the news. We usually start the process by discussing what’s going on with our clients and what’s coming up, advise what could be newsworthy and for whom, and then write any releases with that in mind.

Measuring traditional ROI from PR activity can be tricky. However, as we always say PR is also a very transparent offering – you can see exactly what coverage has been achieved for an activity and measure against agreed objectives.

There’s no magic number – it’s more about when you have news that could be interesting to your target. However, if you want to develop a presence and get recognised in your key media, it’s a good idea to build up some momentum. Don’t expect to get a good amount of coverage each time if you only plan for one piece of news every 12 months, for example.

Ideally, PR and advertising should work hand-in-hand. We’ve done this on a number of projects. But if you have limited budget and new news (such as a launch) and would like to pack a punch, a tactical PR campaign can work really well. PR can be more cost-effective, can garner results more quickly and provide authoritative content to use elsewhere.

There are a number of things you should have in place before you do PR. We often work with people and businesses who haven’t done PR before, and we discuss the process and what might happen after you start to raise your profile. It depends on the type of business, but a good PR consultant should help you to prepare answers to some of the questions you might be asked – both by journalists and by your customers – and how you should think about responding.

This depends on the context and the publication – what’s newsworthy for a title for HR professionals will be very different to for the construction trade press, for example. But generally, new news is important – don’t try and announce a newly launched product if you’ve already launched, for example. See if you can hook your news onto the news agenda and consider the angle carefully. Think about what your target press cover and adapt your news for that.

Success is different by client. We always start with objectives, which vary by client, project and industry. Once we’ve defined and agreed these we can measure against them using metrics, as outlined above.

PR isn’t rocket science. There’s no reason you can’t do it yourself if you have time and inclination and are willing to learn on the job. What a good PR agency will bring is experience and contacts. They should help you craft your message, advise on how to engage press, which ones to target and when to do it. They should also help you amplify your coverage.

Advertising and PR are methods of promotion that can fall under the ‘marketing’ umbrella term. Both can be fantastic tools for business growth and development if used effectively. They share common goals including brand awareness, attracting and engaging your audience and selling products or services, but their means of achieving them and the way in which success is measured is different.

The good thing about PR for small business is that it’s a channel that can really make a big impact. We’re specialists in working with small businesses and start ups and can make a smaller budget go further. There’s no reason that a good product or offering can’t get national coverage.