When should you start a PR campaign?
It depends on what sort of news you’re pitching, and to whom you’re pitching it. Sometimes the turnaround can be a few days; other times, it can take months.
There’s no definitive right or wrong answer about when to start a PR campaign, but there’s definitely a wrong time. It’s after something newsworthy happens. If something important for your brand with a degree of popular appeal or relevance to a trending topic, and you are two weeks late in getting the news to the local or national media and don’t have any timely pictures or video to share, you’re too late. When that happens, what you typically hear from most reporters and editors is, “I wish you had called us the day it happened or given us some prior notice.” Then all you hear are crickets, because you just blew it.
So when should you start a PR campaign? Is there a point in time in the build up to a big event or announcement when you should bring on outside PR help?
A lot depends upon the nature of the news itself (hard or soft), as well as what kind of media (print, TV, online) you want to pitch.
Soft news
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