Only ‘Swipe Right’ On Your Next PR Agency If These Three Things Aren’t In Its Dating Profile

Why putting your brand in their hands deserves more than just superficial ‘attraction’

Last month I told you all about swiping left—about how to avoid a lot of the hassle and time-wasting that can go into a hi-tech software and services company finding the right PR partner. That’s worth getting right, as you're making a big commitment of trust, time, and cash, so recommendations from people in the know count for so much (like it also helps in blind dates).

At the very least, it can help you cut through the early rounds of the beauty parade. But what if you don't have the luxury of great agency recommendation, how do you go about finding the right PR team to take care of your brand and give it the exposure it deserves in the channels you most care about?

Logically enough, let’s now investigate when you really should swipe right on your short list. Choosing the right PR agency isn't just as simple as the listicles might suggest; in fact, we’ll learn more if we work backwards—what about what seemed like the ideal date that didn’t work?

In my 20 years-plus of the dance, this is what I know goes wrong—and what we have done to stop it.

1: The pitch band was AC/DC. The working team was AM/FM

Numero uno and the standout one is that often what disaffected potential clients tell us is that the account pitch was from the head honcho—but fairly quickly, the day to day delivery was handed off to the office Junior.

Sound familiar? In my experience, this is the single main reason for discontent with a PR agency. At Sarum PR, that leads to one of our long lasting differentiators: you can't be handed over to the office junior post your onboarding, simply because there isn't one. We only have deep-experience PRs and journalists on the team; and chances are the people who pitched you really will be your everyday contacts. What you saw really will be what you get.

2: They just didn’t get us

Second thing you’ll tell me is that getting the new PR team up to speed on your tech stack and keeping them there just took up too much time. As a result of this learning curve/knowledge lag, you had to do so much editing of the copy it started to feel quicker to have written it yourself.

Well, that won’t happen here either, as we all come from the tech industry, and (touch wood) there have been no tech stack so far that we've not been up and running with very quickly indeed. Plus, the writing bench are old tech and business journalists, so you won't be wielding a red pen much over our copy. We do our own constant machine learning too: we often talk to our clients about strategies or plans that have worked well with other clients, so we're giving something back to the conversation, we all keep learning and improving, and everyone benefits.

That means we do the heavy lifting, the idea generation, the writing, the pitching and the delivering

3: Continued p94

And then the third one, the biggie: you didn't really rate the coverage you got last time round. “We weren't in the publications we expected or were quoted around the topics we care most about.”

This is the heart of the PR agency value here. Luckily, we have always worked with some highly rated editorial brands and people who write for them; we genuinely know what it's like to get repeated coverage in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The FT, and so on. We know what the writers are looking for in a good story and thus your realistic chances of making it to publishing.

So, we strategise with our clients to get their voice heard by the people they want to influence and sell to. We keep looking at what your ideal buyers read or listen to, what topics are trending in your field at conferences and in the most-read publications and then we guide our clients and (very important!) internal subject matter experts to tap into those trends. We will advise you on what you need to do to stand a chance of being covered in the top tier—if indeed top tier is what keeps you awake at night.

We create a strategy with you to do that, and will be honest with you about what is achievable. I stress the honesty; it’s a fool’s errand for both sides if you don’t hear what we’re trying to tell you.

But summing up, you deserve it to work, so talk about what I’ve said goes wrong, see if you believe what they say back (and what they back it up with)… and if you do like what you hear, go forth and swipe right with confidence.