Affiliate marketing has become critical in modern PR efforts.

Whether it's leveraging Share-A-Sale, Awin, Impact, Skimlinks, Pepperjam, or whatever the new-and-next one is called (it's not rare for brands to switch affiliate partners), it is incredibly important your affiliate program is dialed with the media first perspective in mind.

A brand that lacks a robust PR-focused affiliate component, with expert oversight, is multiple steps behind the competition for media attention. Some brands have strong in-house teams managing their affiliate programs. Others need help. And sometimes, a strong affiliate program managed by experts in public relations can more than pay for a brand's PR retainer (click here for a video we shared on LinkedIn).

For brands that need help, Remedy PR has its own integrated affiliate marketing capabilities. We can help brands launch their own affiliate programs, or revamp existing ones so they don't hinder the goals of their ongoing PR efforts.

The current media climate dictates that having an affiliate program alone is not enough to compete for media attention. A strong PR campaign requires an affiliate campaign that is competitive in structure, with the daily oversight of a team who understands how to connect with the leading publishers.

Executed correctly, a strong affiliate management program increases the likelihood of repeat media interest, generates important backlinks, and creates longer-term relationships with publishers.

Excerpts from the press release announcing our capabilities below:

“The ‘set it and forget it’ model of affiliate program management is over. For consumer and lifestyle brands, and even those in the B2B and finance spaces, a strong affiliate program is critical for a successful PR campaign,” commented Bill Byrne, managing director of Remedy Public Relations. “Affiliate management is so important to modern PR that I find it incredibly suspect when a potential partner tells us that other PR teams did not ask about their affiliate marketing program in advance.”

We quietly launched our affiliate management capabilities in 2020 after learning some of our partners’ affiliate programs were an afterthought in their marketing initiatives. This coincided with findings from its signature PR audit program, which uncovered that many potential clients’ PR teams were not leveraging affiliate networks and often not insisting that their clients had these resources in place.

With the rise of different models, including ”hybrid performance” compensation, a PR-focused affiliate program must be competitive with rates, and managed by a team that can speak the language of the e-commerce editors at the leading publishers.

“Cookies are going away. Performance-based ads are costing more. PR continues to be an effective resource for awareness and brand building, but it takes more than a simple press release and relationships to make the magic happen,” continued Byrne. “If you don’t have an affiliate marketing program supporting your PR efforts, your product may as well be vaporware.” The full press release on our PR-focused affiliate marketing capabilities can be found on the Associated Press website and Outdoor Sportswire.

We won't blame the pandemic or supply chain issues. We'll blame our partners, who come first above our own marketing!

It's December 2023 and our new site is finally here!

As we refine it, it will include some great articles on the state of the PR industry, answering many questions brands have regarding PR, media relations, and affiliate marketing. Among them, what can a public relations team guarantee a client, what questions to ask before agreeing to a PR program, and the flags you should look for in selecting a PR firm or consultant.

In the meantime, if you want more insight into our PR expertise, check out some of the most recent thought-leadership pieces we've been a part of.

Where does your PR budget go?

Why PR pros annoy journalists.

A foolproof PR strategy.

How to set your goals for PR

he industry experts at Muck Rack regularly ask us to weigh in on media trends and offer advice on what it takes to secure editorial in the evolving media climate.

To ensure success, we develop our programs using a media-first perspective. To learn what that is, click the link.

https://muckrack.com/blog/2020/10/02/media-first-perspective

We've posted before about what journalists want from PR people here. 

PRNewser recently published a great post on the topic and we thought we'd share, without any commentary (which is very hard for PR people to do ;-).San Diego Public Relations TipsWant More tips? Give us a call or drop us a line at PRCheckup@Remedypr.com

 

It's always nice when an industry expert asks us our opinion on public relations.

There's a reason we're called Remedy. We built the firm to solve the issues we were hearing about from friends and partners who were disappointed in what their current PR teams were delivering. Sometimes they did receive exactly what they should be getting. Sometimes they were expecting too much, and often, the agency over-promised.

To begin, look at what they've done for similar brands.

And trust their expertise. You may have launched PR campaigns before, but if you're not in the trenches, what you want may not match the reality of modern media. 

Check out what agency director, Bill Byrne, and other notables, had to say in this article by Meltwater and PR guru, Michelle Garrett (follow her on Twitter, she's awesome).

We're very excited to announce that Remedy Public Relations' managing director, Bill Byrne, has been asked to speak on a panel about best practices for brands and PR people to engage with emerging media as part of a live group panel discussion through the NYC Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

The Pod Bless America event will be co-produced by the media heavyweights at Muck Rack, along with the NY PRSA, and focus on the best way to engage with podcast outlets and other emerging media. You can register for the event here , and more information can be found here.

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Bigger is often not better in PR. How do you measure the results of a PR campaign?

Number of placements? Impression numbers? If that's not how we measure the effectiveness of an ad, why do we translate advertising equivalencies to public relations campaigns?

One of our agency directors was just featured by Bulldog Reporter in an article on the dicey topic of measurement.

You can read all about it here.

If you like this post, please share it on LinkedIn. And let us know so we can thank you later!

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We won a Bulldog Reporter Gold Medal!

The entire team is excited to share that we won one of the highest honors in the public relations industry for a project we put together with SPY eyewear.

Not only did we come home with a Bulldog PR gold medal, but we did so in the Best Consumer Product Launch category, ahead of household names such as Volvo.

You can see the full press release on Sporting Goods Business by clicking here.

There are a few things that really make this award special for us. The first is that the campaign leveraged smart, creative thinking, and a candid approach to dealing with the media. Not a massive budget spend or flashy stunt.

The product we focused on combined our expertise in both consumer lifestyle PR, and consumer tech, two areas our team is deeply entrenched. Lastly, both Oakley, one of the biggest brands in this space, and Electric Visual, were launching similar products at the same time as SPY was during the Outdoor Retailer trade show (the largest event of its kind to date - the outdoor industry's equivalent of CES combined with MacWorld). Oakley is known for producing pretty extravagant stunts and media events. Their display at the OR Show for their version of this product was definitely eye-catching.

The full release is available for download here.

If you find value in this, please share it on LinkedIn!


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Ragan Communications asked us to weigh in on how you can tell if your PR campaign is a stinker. We were happy to oblige!

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How can you tell if your PR campaign is worthwhile? San Diego Public Relations And Social media

Public Relations Results In San Diego

The Two Reasons Journalists Don't Like PR People

Dear Journalist Friends,

We're sorry. We hope this is enlightening as to why some PR people act the way they do.

Dear Friends At Brands,

If you don’t know what we're talking about, you need to read this.

A quick search of Facebook groups, industry scripture, along with Twitter and assorted other forums, will turn up instances where our colleagues, and possibly even ourselves (but doubtful ;-), have rubbed a few of you the wrong way.

And lest we forget that time Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine put some of the biggest PR firms in our world on blast way back when.

Let’s get back to our media industry clickbait-esque headline.

Journalists, do you know the reason you hate (some of) us? 

If we had to read your mind, it would be the nauseating amount of irrelevant pitches you receive and the annoying follow-up calls that come five minutes after we send them are likely culprits.

But do you know why we actually do this?

There are two main reasons PR people push too hard, often in the wrong direction, when it comes to dealing with journalists. It’s a systemic issue that many firms won’t want to address.

Reason 1: PR plans are developed and pitched to clients by senior agency leadership teams who are out of touch

The senior ranks of many agencies are led by people who no longer engage directly in media relations, resulting in grossly inflated expectations stemming from plans based on archaic thinking. They haven’t reached out to a journalist in years. They’re not in the trenches regularly communicating with our friends on the editorial side.

As a result, plans are developed based on outdated knowledge and experience.

Touchdowns help to win football games, but the style of play has significantly evolved over the years. As an easy example, we're often told by clients and industry colleagues that <<brand / product / event>> would be perfect for Maxim. They’re usually right…if this were 2001. They haven’t opened the mag or looked at Maxim’s site or magazine in years. Its content has evolved. Are there avenues for the pitch they have in mind? Possibly, but the lack of direct media interaction and knowledge of the current media climate steers plan development in the wrong direction.

A good PR person pushes back on clients and internal stakeholders as appropriate. Despite being experts, when we do push back a bit, the response is often that we must not have strong enough relationships with the media we’re targeting. And if that’s the perception, we could lose the account or our jobs.

While good PR pros know that landing killer media coverage takes a lot more than strong relationships, none of us want to lose our jobs. So we push on and follow orders.

Reason 2: There is a lack of trust in PR teams and understanding of how long it can take for a journalist to show interest, let alone file a story.

That is our only explanation for the following, very common, scenario.

Click for video.

Sometimes agencies are expected to have boiler room-esqueoperations. In addition to update reports, PR firms are often asked by clients to provide call logs for review. This was asked of me at big agencies and later after co-founding Remedy PR. Detailed records of who we contacted, when and their response.

The result of that is intense pressure on the PR agency to tangibly show how our time is spent, even showing how our time is actually spent is not the best use of our time or the budget of our partners.

Do we keep logs? Yes, most agencies do. Some people keep pretty detailed notes. I can tell you where one editor’s significant other went to school, who refs hockey as a passion side-job, and who dislikes a certain feature on a certain type of product.

Our notes aren’t always appropriate to share with our partners, and sometimes we’ll reach out to a journalist about multiple brands, or maintain lists that are relevant to multiple client partners. When that’s the case, if a client wants a call log, we’re often spending extra time drafting something that is specific for them. Not the best use of our time.

And this doesn’t take into account the time spent researching media and refining pitches so they make sense to that Tier-A journalist you want to be interested in your story.

The misunderstanding of how much time things can take is where things take a major turn for the worse, not just for us on the PR side, but you, our friends on the editorial end.

PR people grossly outnumber journalists (6:1 according to some), and some receive hundreds of emails a day, a large part of them irrelevant. These stats get worse when the journalist writes for a high-profile media outlet or is an influencer (define that as you will). This makes it critical for those of us on our side of the desk to follow-up (sorry, we know you hate that) when we have a good pitch for you (we really do!) that may have buried in the previously mentioned hundreds of emails you’re receiving.

Giving a journalist time to get through their inbox and run something through the chain of command doesn’t make for a strong call log for our clients.

Again, the call log doesn’t account for the time we should be spending on strategy, or looking at a journalist’s coverage, tweets, etc., to get a handle for what they could be into in terms of potential story ideas.

We find it strange that many don’t grasp that even a response, let alone action, by a journalist, can take some time.

Most of us probably have friends and family members who may not to respond to a text message or email for days, if not weeks. If it’s not urgent and doesn’t require an immediate response, you probably don’t text someone every other day to check in. That would be annoying.

So why do we expect a journalist to get back to us right away?

Journalists aren't public servants. They’re not firefighters – waiting and obligated – to rush out when the call comes in.

Unfortunately, the pressure some of us receive to generate these logs is the reason for the incessant follow-up.

If you didn’t get back to us on Tuesday, we need to call you Thursday and email again the following Friday to ask if you received our last email and call. And then we send a DM on Instagram.

So we smile, and dial (or the modern equivalent of that), and log every call for review later.

What’s the fix?

There are ways we can around these issues in PR. There are paths we can take that will get brands and PR teams on the radar of the media, and strengthen the relationships between journalists, PR people, and the brands they represent.

We need to change our thinking a bit, and we’ll get into that soon.

This article was originally posted on MuckRack.

 

 

 

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