10 things PR teams need from clients to do good work

Good client management skills are essential; however, even the best PR professional in the world is only going to be as good as the client’s collaboration

Media relations, what many think of as “PR” isn’t a magic button. PR people don’t have mythical powers that can suddenly produce coverage.

While journalist relationships can help, too many in PR feign familiarity with a reporter and pretend it’s a relationship. A reporter will take a story idea from a PR if it’s solid, timely and newsworthy, no matter the relationship.

From a B2B perspective, PR is about matching a client’s ideas to news trends and helping them articulate those ideas in a newsworthy fashion to the right person. Relevance matters. So does intrigue, novelty, and timing.

There’s no doubt that media relations is more challenging today than when I started out years ago. I’ve come to believe that’s why a lot of PR people don’t like media relations work: it’s hard work, and like salespeople, you face a lot of rejections.

You’ve got to find a way to push through it. That’s why I enjoy it. I tend to see it as an intellectually stimulating problem that’s (mostly) fun to solve.

Good PR people learn how to snoop useful information out of clients that aids in developing good pitches. It’s about eliciting ideas, kicking them around, and figuring out where and how they apply to current news trends. Below are a few things that PR savvy clients do to get more out of their PR teams.

1. Access to information

A good PR person is a consummate consumer of information. They should be continuously developing good pitch ideas. But they can’t work in a vacuum; PR needs regular updates about what’s happening inside a company.

I say this all the time: thought leadership requires actual thought and actual leadership. Clients are the SMEs on their business and technology; PR’s expertise rests in communicating that expertise. It’s the delta of those two things that makes all the difference.

A few good ways to facilitate information flow include:

Dedicate a portion of a monthly call to what’s new in a client’s business;
Schedule dedicated 30-minute brainstorming calls with a different executive every month; and
Send clients ‘viewpoint’ questions by email about emerging trends.

For its part, PR should never be afraid to ask basic questions, even if you already know the answer. Letting a client articulate their answers and listening carefully often leads to new ideas for pitching and old topics.

2. Responsiveness, especially to reporters

PR spends a lot of time and effort trying to persuade reporters that a certain view merits inclusion in a story. When they get a bite and ask a client for an answer, the client has to answer responsively.

Whether it’s scheduling a call or sending a written answer, you absolutely have to be responsive, or you miss your chance. If you drag your feet, you may get written off in that moment for the next opportunity, too.

3. Impeccable timing

When a client asks me how we landed certain coverage, my first answer is usually timing. Some people call that luck, but I think luck is the intersection of good preparation and timing.

In media relations, good timing means having a view that nests well with current news. Maybe that timing is around a holiday, maybe it’s around a long-standing trend, or maybe it’s about an emerging issue. Few things matter more in media relations than timing.

4. Let PR lead new announcements

Generally, every new announcement, if it has news merit, should be led by PR. Not with email marketing. Not through a product page. Not with an advertisement.

Why? Reporters avoid covering something that’s already been “covered.”

There are some nuances and exceptions to this idea. A study, for example, should be hung on a company page just before pitching. Why? Reporters want a source to cite.

5. An appetite for risk

News is something that defies expectations. Ideas that defy expectations are scary, and they’re often lonely. You’ve got to have an appetite for risk. This means having a willingness to say things that other people are thinking but are too afraid to say aloud.

An appetite for risk does not mean callous, although the sensationalized headlines that are so common today are tempting. It doesn’t mean saying wild things for the sake of attention.

It means having a willingness to speak to aspects that make you uncomfortable. It’s not the successes that make a good business story – it’s the setbacks. I’ve always found that if a pitch makes me a little nervous to send, it’s probably a good one. That’s true for blog posts, articles and press releases as well.

6. A bias for action

Too many good PR ideas get kicked down the road because they require effort, and clients are busy. We’ll write that report one day. We’ll do that survey another time. We can look for a customer case study on that point after the quarter ends. Often, those good ideas get put on a shelf and collect dust for infinity.

Putting some effort into deep thinking and thoughtful long-form analysis is crucial for thought leadership. When clients oblige and dig into the details, they wind up with a successful initiative that leaves them with one thought: I wish we had started doing this sooner.

7. Be open to feedback

I’ve worked with marketing executives who perform extensive PPC and social ad testing. They often have a strong view, based on data, on which ad performs the best. That view informs how they frame announcements, and sometimes that comes into conflict with PR.

News works differently from ads. One is trying to sell a product, while PR is selling a story. Testing ads on buyers may not necessarily produce results on how best to frame pitches or press releases. That’s what PR brings to the table – the context and angles that are being reported or are likely to be reported.

What businesses want from PR and what the media wants from PR have small sections of overlap. Clients have to be receptive to such feedback if they want coverage.

8. Avoid second-guessing pitches

PR will draft a press release and send it to a client for review. The client typically has several people review the release and it comes out very different at the end of that process.

I never let a client review and approve my pitches (although I’ll share them after the fact, completely transparent). I’m an agent. I’m acting in their best interest. When the press release machinations happen, I’ll do the client a favor and use my original draft as the pitch, which leads me to this next point: avoid second-guessing PR pitches.

I say avoid because you don’t want willful ignorance to reflect poorly, but if you’ve got an experienced professional working for you – get the heck out of their way and let them work. Your role here is to feed them information as you get it and be responsive to media inquiries.

If they make a small mistake, consider that an investment. Ask them this question: What did we learn from this mistake?

9. Consistency and patience

Think about this question from a B2B perspective: How often have you purchased a B2B software product based on a single email the first time you received it? For most people, the answer is probably “never.”

Something similar is at play when you are pitching reporters. You can’t expect magic the first time you show up, because you haven’t earned a reputation yet. Reporters worry about credibility, hype and misinformation. Reliability and trust are earned over time. You’ve got to show up consistently, with good ideas over time, to earn your way in.

10. Honesty

Your lawyer can’t help you if you aren’t completely honest. Your accountant can’t help you if you hide numbers. Doctors can’t make an accurate diagnosis if you withhold that embarrassing symptom. The same is true for PR.

You’ve got to be completely honest about the good and the ugly for PR to work effectively. If you lie to a PR person and they, in turn, unknowingly lie to a reporter, you’re going to get caught, and you are going to be blacklisted.

As one beltway pundit once said about crisis communications: tell it early, tell it all, and tell it often.

It’s about collaboration

One of the things good PR professionals at outside agencies and consultancies strive to do is be an extension of your team. But that only works when it’s a two-way street. A lot of this comes down to learning good client management skills; however, even the best PR professional in the world is only going to be as good as the client’s collaboration.

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