Securing coverage is no small feat and some pieces are harder to come by than others. That’s why I’m a big believer in squeezing every last drop out of each great piece of coverage that goes live. So I was thrilled to be joined by the brilliant Sarah Kissko-Hersh in a recent webinar, where she shared her top tips on maximising the impact of your PR coverage. You can watch the full webinar here, but if you’re short on time or prefer a quick rundown, here are some of the tips.
1. Celebrate the Win (But Don’t Just Hit Forward!)
- Don’t expect people to always read the coverage, so briefly explain why it’s awesome (placement, quotes, reach) and share it with everyone involved.
- Think beyond marketing – the data team that helped gather info, the designer who whipped up great visuals, and maybe even someone who stepped in to be a spokesperson. Give everyone a shoutout – it’s a team effort 💪
- Use the coverage to help change minds and silence naysayers. PR doesn’t always have a good reputation and get the credit it deserves, so when a great piece goes live, it is your chance to prove the effort is worth it and show its impact.
- Don’t be shy—sharing the coverage is a great conversation starter about your work (and can even secure additional funding).
2. It’s not about getting more clips – it’s about getting the clips you have to work harder
- PR your PR! Share those clips on social media, from X (Twitter) to longer LinkedIn posts. You can even put some budget behind it (check out this blog post for some tips).
- Create a digital newsroom. Press articles are great third-party endorsements that can help convert customers who are looking at your website. If you don’t have a newsroom set up, at least showcase them on your blog.
- Make sure your sales team knows about them. Again, third-party endorsements carry a lot of weight and are great to reference in sales material, from email marketing to ‘as seen in’ point of sale material or even excuses to get in touch with hot leads.
- Your HR team can also leverage great endorsements. They can use glowing reviews to make the company more inspirational when recruiting and to help raise the team’s morale internally. You could help the teams include them in job adverts and internal comms.
- Don’t forget about them the following month and the month after—evergreen content (stuff that is not timebound) can be repurposed by all these teams throughout the year.
- Keep an eye on the metrics. Videos will keep generating views, and online articles can start to appear in search results or be picked up by influencers and shared months after they go live. If you see past campaigns getting more traction, let everyone know—it’s a great conversation starter!
3. Make it Real (Like, Literally Real!)
- Print those online articles – especially the ones with great visuals.
- Include them in board meetings or create a brag board (a.k.a. a “highlight board”) showcasing your PR successes.
- Or print off an entire book—it might not be read from cover to cover, but it will have a ‘thud factor’ when your clients or boss see how thick it is!
4. Track Additional ROI
- Train your team to report on any business outcomes (e.g., leads, sales) generated by the coverage. If you haven’t already, try our free tool, CoverageImpact, to plot these along your coverage.
- Think about long- and short-term reporting. When coverage lands, it might be too soon to track any impact. Keep returning to past campaigns and see if they lead to anything. It’s a great way to keep conversations open with budget holders.
How CoverageBook can help
- Use CoverageBook’s comment feature to highlight key quotes and adjust screenshots to emphasise relevant parts of the coverage.
- Create slides within CoverageBook reports to showcase key publications, quotes, timelines, or specific achievements.
- Duplicate reports and quickly customise them for different teams (sales, social media). Here’s how. Again, you can use slides to teach different teams how they could use the coverage to support their own objectives.
- You can download reports as PDFs and print them for your next meeting.
- In the Vault, you can filter by highlights to easily create reports showcasing your best pieces.
- Look at past campaigns and refresh their metrics to see if video views or engagements have increased since you last presented your report.
So go ahead and shout about these wins. If this has got you thinking and you want more details, you can watch the full webinar here and view Sarah’s presentation here.
