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How to build your PR Tool Stack

Stephen Waddington

This is my deck from a PR Moment event today for agencies and communication teams about building a PR tool stack.

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Innovation in public relations

COVID-19 has been a driver for innovation for the public relations profession. We’ve had to adopt new tools to work virtually.

At the same time public relations has become elevated as the eyes and ears of an organisation not just in the public sector as means of public engagement, but in corporate communications, internal communications, and marketing.

This discussion about the use of tools in public relations is a timely reflection about what we’ve learnt and how we move forward.

Tools serve two purposes in PR. They either enable us to work smarter or they enable us to work more effectively.

There are two areas where tools can be applied:

  • team and client communication and workflow; and,

  • supporting effectiveness and execution.

“The influencer marketing tool market is burgeoning. Access to first party data through credible tools is a boon for the sector. Data has allowed practitioners to transition from: ‘get me Zoella’ to ‘find me the most appropriate influencer for my campaign based on audience mapping, brand sentiment, engagement rates and follower size,” said influencer marketing advisor, Scott Guthrie.

In this presentation I want to provide an introduction to the PR tool market, where to use tools and how to engage with a tool vendor.

Building a tool stack based on use cases

Start defining a tool stack by asking three questions.

  1. Workflow: tools to work more efficiently and smarter as a team? COVID-19 has forced agencies and communication teams to shift to the cloud if they weren’t already. Enterprise social networks, messaging, scheduling, and video have all been adopted.

  2. Effectiveness: tools to deliver better work. Here I’d start by mapping tools against your planning model and workflow. The AMEC or OASIS models are also good places to start. This is a fast-moving area of the market where tools can help deliver smarter insights and more effective work.

  3. Leadership and differentiation: How can you use tools for competitive advantage? Organisations such as Edelman and BOLDT have turned their tool stack into a competitive marketing advantage.

Tool intelligence

You’ve already started your journey exploring tools by joining this event but there are plenty of other sources of information and insight.

“Edelman has a week long workflow review each year where practitioners are encouraged to investigate new tools. It has always struck me as a good idea,” said Stella Bayles.

Bayles urges practitioners to focus on “painkillers rather than vitamins”. Tackle the areas of pain within your day to day work, she says.

Point solutions versus platforms

There are generally two approaches to tool selection.

Choosing a platform as the basis for workflow and campaign delivery or building a stack from a series of point products.

Platforms include Google Docs (office and messaging), Hubspot (content marketing and pipeline development), and Prowly (influencer relations and press office).

Point solutions are typically created by entrepreneurs to address an opportunity in the market.

Most of the innovation is driven outside the PR industry typically from sales or SEO, but there are examples from within the PR industry.

AnswerThePublic and CoverageBook have both been incubated out of a PR agency to support search insights and reporting.

Guild has been developed by econsultancy founder Ashley Friedlein as a platform for messaging and community development.

Propel My PR, an influencer relations and monitoring CRM system has been developed by a former agency team.

“People shouldn’t get too hung up on technical features as none are perfect and you’ll get more value out of one you enjoy using because you’ll use it more,” said Stuart Bruce.

Budgets and the business of free

There traditionally hasn’t been a line item in a budget for tools in PR agencies and communications teams beyond a media relations database and media monitoring. That must change.

In each of the three use cases that I’ve cited there are clear metrics that you can define to measure the value of a tool to your agency or communication team.

“There’s an in-built disincentive in PR agencies who'd model is to sell time to adopt technology which saves time for repetitive tasks. It’s one of the reasons why tool adoption in PR is so much less pronounced than in SEO,” said Darryl Sparey, managing director, Hard Numbers.

Tools should save time and resources and enable you to work smarter and more effectively. Use these as the basis of defining a budget and determining the value of a tool to your business.

The maths is straightforward. If the billing rate of an account executive is £200 per day and they spend a day a month creating client reports you’ve covered the cost of a tool and freed them up to do more valuable work.

There are a lot of free tools that you can use to test and hack. Many vendors sell using a freemium model. These are useful for evaluation but do not make the mistake of building your business on free tools. You’re at the mercy of a vendor and tools come and go. It’s not a scalable or robust approach.

Vendor engagement

Tool vendors will typically have a fixed cost price list especially if they’re selling software as a service. Negotiate on trial periods, contract lengths, subscription cost, number of users, and support.

Watch out for long term contracts and lock in. The business model of a PR agency is at odds with the sales team of a VC backed tool vendor seeking to build recurring revenue based on subscriptions.

Trials are a good way to engage with a tool and a vendor. They enable the agency to gain practical insight into the application of a tool before entering a long-term arrangement.

Onboarding and adoption

Agencies are littered with tools that aren’t used. The adoption of tools into workflow needs careful consideration and thought.

Rejection is common because of poor interface, integration into workflow and user motivation.

“Vendors have a one-size-fits-all onboarding process which does a good job of highlighting the best features of the tool, but a less good job of showing how it can slot into a user's working world,” said Sophie Coley, founder, Search Listening.

The rollout of a new tool should be planned with adequate support provided to onboarding and training.

Postscript: AI and the dark side of tools

A word about AI. It’s like teenage sex. Everyone talks about it, but few actually do it. Vendors are using it as a marketing label to sell tools but there’s limited application in practice.

Andrew Smith and I investigated this issue earlier in the year building on work by Jean Valin. We found that there is limited adoption of AI tools in PR.

There’s an emerging dark side of tools used to create fake identities, media, and traffic. It’s all available to buy on the internet. Make sure you're on the right side of ethical codes.

Understanding the adoption of tools in PR

I’m keen to understand the adoption of tools in PR. I’d be grateful for your input via this short questionnaire. Thank you in anticipation.

Thank you

I want to leave you with five points:

  1. Use cases

    We’ve explored three use case for tools in PR: workflow, effectiveness, and proposition

  2. Information

    There’s a huge amount of information available to support tool selection

  3. Vendor engagement

    Negotiate on trial periods, contract length, subscription cost, number of users, and support

  4. Onboarding

    Plan how you’ll integrate tools into your workflow and onboard your team to avoid rejection

  5. AI

    Vendors are using AI as a label to sell tools but there’s limited application in practice

Useful stuff