When is a good time to start a PR campaign?
It’s great to see the lockdown restrictions being cautiously lifted and businesses in the manufacturing, food and construction sectors again looking to increase their PR and digital marketing activity. After 20 years of working with clients to develop PR and digital marketing campaigns, here we reflect on some frequently asked questions and how you really can make the most of working with an agency like Dragonfly PR.
FAQS
When is a good time to start a PR campaign?
There’s no straightforward answer to this, but the fact is that the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll start to see results! Many companies are coming out of the lockdown and reviewing their profile and positioning in the market and working with an experienced agency like Dragonfly PR on a digital PR and content creation campaign. These are great ways to get a business back on track for growth. We are working with a number of manufacturers, food companies and building products manufacturers to put forward PR campaigns with specific aims and objectives to enable them to gain lost ground. The time is definitely right to get back into action and start targeting markets, UK and international, that you may not have reached before!
Do I need to let you know which magazines or digital platforms to target as part of a PR campaign?
The simple answer is no, but if you do have existing relationships with certain magazines or bloggers, or if you’re in a niche area and have specific magazines or papers you want us to target then this is certainly useful information for us. We have access to an online global media database of over 100,000 contacts, including trade magazines, newspapers, local press, bloggers and other digital media outlets. Our strength is that we build relationships with the media on your behalf – and they come to us for comment and thought leadership articles when they are writing relevant features. We also proactively target the most relevant magazines with feature ideas, building a comprehensive plan of activity throughout the year, so we ensure we can achieve consistent media coverage on our clients’ behalf.
What if I don’t have stories every month?
This can often be the case where, for example, the client is a manufacturer and theirs are long term projects that can take months or years to secure or complete. This is why we build up the features programme with the magazines, through thought leadership articles that position our clients as the experts at what they do.
Do we need to supply the article?
We never ask the client to supply a written article, although they have the option to do so if they wish. We work closely with our clients’ marketing and technical teams and often it is useful if they can provide background information, plus features and benefits, plus direct us to any resources they may have. We usually prefer to have phone calls or (where possible) meetings with contacts to ensure we can gain the best information for a story. We then write the article and secure their approval, plus interviewing any third parties and seeking their approval, plus photos, prior to publication.
How long will it take to see results?
As many of our campaigns are now predominantly focused on online media, we can demonstrate results much more quickly. This is very powerful for clients which are launching new products or services and where we also manage their social media campaigns, they can start to generate enquiries almost immediately. For clients that have a press cuttings service, we collate coverage every month to demonstrate that the PR campaign is generating great value for money.
I don’t have a large budget, would I be best investing in PR or digital marketing?
Both are cost effective when running a campaign with Dragonfly PR. If budget is really restricted, it may be best to run a social media and SEO campaign with us to start with and build up from there to a full PR campaign. With social media, it can generate results quite quickly and our organic SEO campaigns can have a huge influence in generating more traffic to a website.
How will I know if the PR campaign has worked?
We review and evaluate PR campaigns, usually at six and 12 months, in line with client requirements. This means that you can see the full results during that period and the campaign can be updated and adjusted moving forward. As a results-driven PR company, we are aware of the need to demonstrate good return on investment and this is a constant focus for us.
Have you worked with other companies and generated results in similar sectors?
We are comfortable and highly experienced in working in many areas of manufacturing, food production and construction products, however we do also work in other areas, such as technology, power generation and public sector. We also have great media contacts in these areas. If you speak to us, we will be able to demonstrate previous experience on campaigns for similar companies, which should give you the reassurance that we know what we are doing!
How do we get started?
Just drop us a line hello@dragonflypr.co.uk or call 0114 349 5341 – also take a look at our website case studies www.dragonflypr.co.uk/casestudy
As a dedicated PR and digital marketing agency, we have the capacity to work on Public Relations, social media and digital marketing campaigns with our Sheffield-based team ready and here to serve you.
We look forward to hearing from you soon!