Few leaders in consulting and professional services would dispute the general merits of generating strong publicity through traditional and online media, and utilizing said publicity and press coverage throughout all your marketing efforts.
I research, write, and speak about service business marketing topics fairly often, and I have the advantage of knowing the details of dozens of service firms' marketing strategies, tactics and results. Still, when it comes to the details of PR's future effect, I don't have a crystal ball. I often get some permutation of the following question from firms new to PR:
Assuming I engage PR as a major marketing strategy for my firm, what kind of results can I expect in terms of new business leads, brand improvement, press coverage, blog posts, and search engine placement improvement from each PR push and from my PR over the long-term?
Asking that question is akin to an entrepreneur asking:
Assuming I write a really good business plan and then get the business started, how fast will I get customers? How much margin will I make? How long will it take to reach $10 million revenue?
You just can't know in advance.
PR can pick up steam quickly and then fizzle. PR can take six months to get off the ground then gain steam steadily over the years. One campaign might generate zero coverage and the next one can land you in the Wall Street Journal.
And you can land a story in the Wall Street Journal and get zero business leads. Then you get a mention in a small trade publication and get two major sales as a result.
As I mention in The Professional Services Guide to Online PR available on RainToday.com, the success of PR ultimately depends on a number of factors, including:
How interesting your content and stories are to media, prospects, and buyers
How well you implement each PR tactic (and avoiding mistakes large and small that can derail all your efforts)
How intensely and rigorously you implement each tactic with both financial and human resources
How long you keep at it
Relationships you have (or your PR team has) with media and bloggers
The strength of the rest of your marketing (e.g. your blog, your enewsletters, your general marketing outreach, etc.)
The strength of your brand (e.g. a publication is more likely to publish a study from Harvard Business School than from Jimbob’s Community College)
Assuming you score well on most points above, you should be in good shape and PR (whether you use a PR firm or not) will work well for you over the long-term. Just don't expect that you can know, in advance, how it's all going to pan out. You've just got to take the leap of faith and wait for the story to unfold.
To your point, Mike, there's a lot to be said for mapping out -- as opposed to managing -- expectations when embarking on a new PR pitch or relationship. The phrase "strategic, focused and long term" cannot be pounded home enough. It will still fall on deaf ears half the time, but if PR professionals demonstrate they truly believe and understand this, the client partnership will be much stronger.Tangential but relevant: my favorite PR ROI client quote, "We love the exposure since the PR efforts have taken root, and we're clearly winning more business. But really, how do we know PR had anything to do with it?"The moral? You can pile up results until your powerpoint crashes, but if the client doesn't want to credit PR for new business, it's awfully easy to find something else.
Mike, you make great points here. Sometimes you just don't know. PR will need to know more conclusively before long though. As more and more dialogue emerges talking about marketing integration and PR's role in the mix that usually includes advertising, events, DM, etc. PR professionals will need to tell a similar story of activity tied back to outcomes.