FAq's

You might be the latest and greatest in your field but if your market (i.e. your customers) don't know about you, what's the point? Whether you're a start-up or a well-established business, connecting with your market is vital to survival. That's where PR comes in.

If you're serious about increasing your market dominance promoting yourself and your business should be seen as a "need to have" not a "nice to have". Advertising does work but comes at a higher cost and has reduced credibility than the third-party endorsement that comes from public relations.

PR takes many forms these days and there's never a one size fits all. Of course, it's pitching to traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations (which remain the highest value media); but it also involves targeting more niche outlets like podcasts and industry-specific websites.

Then there's social media - the new frontier in PR and something that can make or break a business. In using social media, you should be posting frequently and communicating consistently across all your channels. It's creating highly engaging content across multiple platforms, timed to hit target audiences at precisely the right moment and remaining in theme to grow your following and then ultimately turn them into customers.

Yellowpanda has several packages starting at $1500 for 10 hours of service per month. The $1500 package is suitable for those wanting to simply relieve themselves of the hassle of managing their social media accounts and/or monthly communication tasks like EDMs. Our PR packages start at $2500 for 10 hours but most of our clients work with us on our 20-hour package to produce more results, in fewer months.

Our 40-hour package is our most comprehensive option and is recommended for larger company owners looking to establish themselves as genuine thought leaders in their field. With a combined 25 years in politics and media, and an incredible strike rate for securing opportunities, we can put you in the right rooms with the right people.

PR really shouldn't have an end date on it. If you're adamant about building your profile and growing your business through PR, there shouldn't be any stops (or even temporary pauses) in that endeavour.

PR should be seen as an "essential service" for your business! Much like keeping the lights on, you wouldn't cancel your energy provider for a month just to save a bit of money!

And if you did, you'd find you'd lose so much business, it wouldn't be worth it anyway. Of course, clients do want to see bang for their buck! And usually quite quickly.

In your first month, we'd hope to land you at least a few early media spots for your business but with time, we can properly develop your "story" so it belongs in some of the biggest media outlets in the country (and even overseas).

It's a journey but it does start with a first step.

In short, don't stress (certainly don't give up on PR)! As mentioned, PR is a long game. And for every quiet month, there's likely to be a stack of bumper months either side of it to keep you well in front.

It's important to let us do what we do best for you! And quite often, a quiet month is the result of time spent sowing the seeds of media ready for a big harvest down the track.

Magic trick!? They simply hack newswires. Entrepreneurs all over the world are selling unattainable dreams, from seven figure business courses through to guaranteed coverage.

Take a look at those magicians' websites and Google some of the people who have left testimonials or reviews. These poorly written articles will often have the word 'advertisement' attached (i.e. not PR).

Those who get "featured" in these outlets are failing to disclose they are paying for that privilege. PR is about building reputations.

You need to ask yourself: are you paying for FAKE NEWS?

Most journalists won't just print or broadcast what publicists want them to.

We wish! The media work with publicists but not for publicists. They use their own judgment, contacts and experience to decide if a story is best.

Good PR is all about building credibility and trust in your brand. It's about increasing visibility through coverage and to achieve this, you need to build great relationships with the media.

When you pay someone to include you in an article, you never build a relationship with a journalist who might come back to you next time they need an expert quote.

Absolutely not! We have fantastic (and long standing) relationships with a whole range of outlets and we're not about to jeopardise those by bombarding them weak pitches just to keep a client happy.

In fact, it's not in the client's best interest either for us to just spam outlets in the hope they're desperate and will run an article to fill space. What we like to do is fully workshop a pitch, engage our target outlets (usually with a phone call first) and then put you forward in a very deliberate way that stands the best chance of being picked up. Trust us! It's far better that we land one or two high-value media spots than 10 or 20 that no one sees.

Did you know that only 8% of pitches from PRs to the media are opened by their recipient? While we don't, and can't offer guarantees on media placements, we've never worked with a client who we haven't gained media coverage for before, and we don't plan to start now.

With detailed reporting systems in place, by analysing the number of publications we've pitched to and successfully gained placement in - we have a pretty strong strike rate, sitting at an average of 50%, across long-standing and new clients.

This is well above the industry average!

There are three ways we like to measure the effectiveness of PR, and they are:

1. Audience Reach

2. Cost to pay for similar coverage

3. Referrals

Audience reach and cost comparisons are easy enough to work out through clicks and ratings but referrals can sometimes be less clear cut - unless you perhaps survey your customers on how they found out about your business. 

Even then, you might find that it was the PR mention that helped secure their business while they were hanging around in the consideration phase of the marketing funnel.

If earning the trust of your market to increase inbound sales is your goal, then PR is the tool for the job!

What we can always guarantee, is our execution of PR will increase your credibility with your market.

Do you usually get fries with your burger?

It's hard to say no - the two just go together (it's simply not a meal deal without the fries)

Similarly, PR complements marketing by pitching out the good ideas as media fodder and then leveraging that coverage to market your business.

Some of our best campaigns have come as a result of working closely with our client's marketing team.

That's a very fair question. For those lucky few who might've had a bit of free media, it would be easy to think PR is unnecessary or a waste of money.

But did the right people see your article in the paper? Your segment on TV? Or that blog post you're now so proud of?

The answer is probably no!

If you want your media to count, it has to be seen and heard by your market (again, your customers).

There's no point talking teddy bears in the Financial Review - its readers simply don't care about soft toys.

You need to target an audience and tailor your story so it interests them.

We recommend you give us at least six months to see some decent results.

That's because it takes time for us to truly get to know and understand you, identify your best pitch and then develop it.

We're confident of scoring you some quick wins but as mentioned, PR is a long game so if you want to seriously build your brand, you'll have to invest time not just money.

Just being honest, it may not ever happen ... but we're your best chance of achieving that.

It might come sooner than you expect; it might take years - it really depends on what you're got to offer your dream outlet.

Absolutely no publicist can hand on heart tell you when you're going to be featured on brekky TV or the front cover of an international magazine, for example; but here's the truth, those who are, have usually been at it a long time, slowly but surely building their profile to the point that those big outlets do want to feature them.

Trust us to do that building for you - it starts from the ground up with lower and mid tier outlets but we can get there.

Obviously, you're engaging (and paying) us to do PR for you but the more time you can give us, the better. As a minimum, we need to chat with you weekly, either in person or by phone or video call - this is just to scope out any potential media opportunities that we can pitch out for you (and to ensure we're always on the same page).

Then of course, when we do secure you an interview or photo shoot, you'll need to be available on fairly short notice but we can cross those bridges as we come to them.

Continuation of payment is a condition of being retained as a client with Yellowpanda. It's for this reason we recommend auto-billing every 30 days. Unfortunately, if there's a missed or late payment, our service will have to stop. 30-day auto-billing clients will enjoy industry exclusivity with Yellowpanda.