My company is considering hiring a PR firm to help secure reviews in pro audio magazines, and generally to help drive brand awareness and ultimately sales. We have no prior experiences working with PR firms, and so we wanted to reach out to the community here to see if anyone could give us advice or comments.
So: if you have have knowledge in this area, we’d love to hear.
is it worth hiring a PR firm?
how much should it cost on a monthly basis, for a small company? (one product!)
I was not involved when hiring a PR firm at my previous job, but was affected by the fallout, so here is my opinion:
If you cannot do it yourself, yes you need one
If you can contribute the content yourself, do it. Nobody loves your products like you do, and that’s what people want to hear. Best is to have somebody reading it before publishing, and that could be that professional firm as well.
When choosing the firm, ask for references and look what they did for them. It should be a reference of your field, so you know the people can connect to your product. If they don’t understand your product, they can’t help you.
Have analytics in place, so you can measure the impact that PR firm did. Only that way you can decide, if they are worth the money spent. Also let them deliver metrics, how many views, leads and conversions etc. they generated.
Personal recommendations, word of mouth and conversations are way more important than just setting up a facebook or google ad, ask if they have people answering and entering conversations on these media.
IMHO endorsement is the way to go. Better than finding a PR firm is finding an artist using your product and get a testimonial. People love to think “if I buy the gear XY has, I can sound like him/her”.
Be generous to artists and influencers. Free licenses to people that run audio gear blogs are the best investment you can do. And it doesn’t “cost” a penny if you are lucky and they like it.
Some influencers may ask for additional rewards for covering your product, that negotiation is up to you.
