Thanks : )

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/29/popsnap-sarah-meyers-live-online-tv-show/

To cover you. Then watch it echo outwards.

However, in terms of the long tail and staying the course after the press peak, the only game in town remains relevant traffic from the organic serps. One amazing company I saw launch in the seo sector recently, registered a new domain and within 5 weeks reached fist page results on Google for seo terms, (probably the most competitive sectors currently). Now that was amazing!

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/11/29/question-where-are-the-best-sources-of-funding-for-startups/

You’re essentially talking about payment by results, which sounds entirely logical. A key problem with PR is that there are no guarantees. If you want an advertisement, great. You design it, you buy the space and it runs. With PR, you’re always relying on the judgement of a journalist or editor as the whether the story is newsworthy (and, obviously, the strength of the story!). Of course, paradoxically this weakness is also PR’s strength - editorial coverage, when achieved, being far more influential than advertising.

As a result of this PR companies do avoid setting very tangible goals. And there’s definitely a valid discussion to be had around payment by results at some level. But there needs to be a recogntion by the client that an agency will still spend time and effort pursuing results even if they don’t appear (and being willing to pay for part of that) but also a recognition from the agency that if results aren’t achieved then the client should be compensated.

Philip, your examples of PR agency excuses - “well we did contact person X but they weren’t interested” or “we got you coverage in this crappy SEO newswire” or “here you are in the daily mail - a small link right below the classified section” - all have some validity. Some journalists won’t be interested in your company (sorry!); size of coverage in a national newspaper simply can’t be guaranteed by the agency…if coverage in the “crappy SEO newswire” isn’t of value, then why did the agency waste time approaching it? But these things need to be acted upon - change the story, focus your target media.

Final point. If clients want to pay wholly by results, then they need to be realistic about the value of those results. If a half-page advertisement in a trade publication costs £10k - and we agree that editorial is more influential than advertising - then would you be prepared to pay the agency £10k-plus for a positive half-page story in the same publication? I doubt many clients would (which is why PR has often inaccurately been referred to as “cheap advertising”).

Personally, I’m fed up with “this agency is good”, and “this one worked really well for me”, and the agency saying “of course we can get you coverage, and yes we really do understand your business, and yes we know all the bloggers” - where in fact it’s normally BULLSHIT.

Instead of setting goals as “we will contact all the main journalists, 20+” - we should make PR agencies deliver tangible goals such as “we will get you prime coverage on a radio show for 2 mins” or “we will get you on page 3 of the a london paper (metro, londonlite)”, or “a column coverage in the sunday times supplement”, or even “we will deliver x leads to your site”.

If we don’t get firm with these goals and keep PR being “fluffy” then they will get away with things like “well we did contact person X but they weren’t interested” or “we got you coverage in this crappy SEO newswire” or “here you are in the daily mail - a small link right below the classified section.

If a developer or a designer delivered a product that wasn’t completed or full of bugs - you would tell them to go and fix it till it was done. Why not with PR - it’s time we put a stop to it don’t you think?

I’ve worked with a fantastic food’n'health PR who delivered press coverage that, in turn, begat sales, on & offline. The “investment” delivered a profitable return; the timescale was driven only by publications’ lead times.

But a PR might also reasonably be tasked with gererating noise/awareness/footfall, call it what you will.

I guess the point is to know what “success” looks like - and define it a measureable way. Then George Black can have his £ RoI, and Will McInness can have his less tangible (and equally valid) success.

The “best” PR in my experience is the one with a black book of the journalists from whom you’d like coverage - and the relationships to turn phone calls into coverage. Which means that the Best PR for Company A is almost certainly not the Best PR buddy for Company B.

She did deckchair.com and dyson vacuum cleaners.

That was back in the dot com days….

I have no idea what she is doing now…..

But she was very good at selling a story……

Absolutely the CEO has to be the figurehead, but as Ivan says, she or he is part of the PR team. If my startup is serious, I want the CEO being the spokesperson, but not doing the various admin and legwork to getting to that step. I want them growing the whole business, and PR is a job and a specialism in itself.

Secondly, to expect £4k revenue for £4k expenditure is naive - most PR is not done for out and out lead generation. The agencies I’ve been meeting say that PR is usually commissioned by their clients for things like: prove to would-be investors that we are a credible businsess; get on the radar of would-be trade acquirers.

In my business we are investing in PR for - ultimately - lead generation but with our eyes wide open to the fact that many things contribute to generating a lead - and PR is just an important but contributing factor. As such, our expectation for payback is in say 12 months and onwards, not less than because its a momentum activity, a long-term investmet.

If you want to put £4k into a marketing sausage machine and get more back in a time horizon that’s less than 6 months you need to be looking at direct response activities - PPC, DM, telemarketing, and other harder and often more ghastly activities. That’s my experience anyway.

I’m one of the co-Founders of zopa.com - and guess what, PR for us has been and continues to be a critical marketing channel.

In total we’ve used 5 PR agencies - and met a lot of others.

IMHO, I think PR is a bit like any service based business. While a PR brand can perhaps give some quality guarantee, in my albeit limited experience, the actual result depends on the individuals working on your account - and how much energy and empathy they have for your business.

My pick of the bunch were Bite. Robin Wilson was our senior partner and things were handled day to day by Susannah Hardy and Jonathan Hopkins. Robin is a great brain. We needed them to create a new category for us - and they did, Social Lending. I recently heard they’re going well and have picked up the accounts of facebook and Linked in. They really get digital, communities and how to create brands and transaction through PR. I also found David Hargreaves who runs the UK business to be extremely approachable, experienced and bright and willing to go out of his way to help a small business that I guess he must have believed in.

We also use an excellent freelancer, Martin Campbell at Beacon Strategic who does all our personal finance PR. He knows everyone, does business over delightful lunches - and gets excellent results. Who else has got a year old start up 5 mins prime time on BBC1 6pm news.

We also had a good agency for our launch - Sputnik - who managed to get us into every national / tv channel straight out of the door. I think they’re fab for news PR.

Hope this helps - if anyone wants more detail I’m on james@dothegreenthing.com

Funny you should say that…

After having bad experiences with the agencies, we set up our own agency, run by our parent company. Aspiration Media now handles all of our PR, but we also do case by case for start ups. Providing complete services but on a release by release basis as opposed to a retainer or monthly charge.

Having first hand experience of startups and what it takes to make an impact we believe we offer a perfect service for startups. Knowing full well what we wanted when we started!

People referring to the CEO’s importance are 100% correct in my opinion, we have found much more success when CEO’s are available alongside spokespeople.

Andy

We’ve been doing as much stuff as we can ourselves, and using prnewswire for releases, etc. This has worked well, as a means to an end, but it’s early days, in terms of seeing the benefit (very early actually, 9 days and counting!)

Working in retail, we’ve pushed the brands we stock to give us coverage, which has worked well in some cases. I’d definately recommend this to other e-tailers, as the brands are as keen to sell things as we are!

There must be an angle here, for a good pr firm, to take a look at start-ups on a case by case basis, and take a punt on those with good models / ideas. Perhaps a reduced fee / no fee system in the early days, in exchange for more lucrative work down the line. Difficult to tie up, for sure, but we’d take a look at this model, as I’m sure others out there in start-up land would too.

Frankly - I agree with the guys above in that the best PR is that done by yourself where you get to know the key contacts, can communicate your message better than anyone else, and deliver results for much less cash.

The main thing is that it takes time and probably best bringing on an internal PR / marketing person to handle this side of things.

Ask round, get recommendations and you may be surprised how cost effective good PR can be.

Jamie is right… you only get one chance with a good PR story.. if you try it yourself and mess it up its much harder (If not impossible) to use the same angle correctly.

A CEO should be getting out there and meeting people, but that isn’t the whole story. PR should be used along with many other marketing and publicity and channels.

PR isn’t a core skill for a technology start-up and shouldn’t have to be… concentrate on what you are good at and hire the right people for the job.

If you have got the money then great, but keep an eye on the actual value you are getting out of the money you are forking out. £4k a month paid to a PR firm should bring you more than £4k of revenue or equivalent.

I say all of the above as a PR person, but posting here in a personal capacity, so I’m not plugging myself…not even including a website link!

Warning - lots of cowboys. Hear anything like ‘we’ll organise a day in a hotel where journos can come visit’ or ‘ we send out a minimum of 50,000 press release’ run a mile. Our PR has hardly ever sent any press releases. Most of it should be done by picking up the phone to an editor, or face to face, which is why rollerdex is crucial.

So - my tip - dont mess with this one, do it properly, professionally (get the best you can afford), and do it right first time. I use http://www.brianmaclaurin.com and I’ve also heard http://www.sparkpr.com are good