Fast PR. Can It Also Be Affordable & Good PR?
As the saying goes…
You can have it fast, good, or cheap. Choose any two.
Every PR firm tries to balance these three competing qualities, to one degree or another. Perhaps some PR firms aren’t super-focused on the affordability component, but any PR firm that can’t get good PR won’t last long, and there’s only so long a client will wait for results.
TRADITIONAL PR FIRM FOCUS
Most PR firms have a focus that looks something like this, when it comes to balancing speed, quality, and affordability.
Traditional PR firms care little about being cheap/affordable, and speed takes a back seat in many cases, but the highest priority is high-quality, strategic PR that gets results.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with this model. It has worked for at least a century, and will continue to be the dominant model for PR.
SUPER-CHEAP PR
On the other end of the spectrum, you have PR firms that sound too good to be true. They promise lots of high-quality PR at unbelievably low prices. In reality, their priorities look like this.
These super-cheap PR firms focus on being low-cost and fast, but quality suffers. It’s not an apples to apples comparison, because what they deliver often isn’t even real PR. For example, a super-cheap PR firm might advertise that they can get you in thousands of top-tier outlets for $200. Do you think they’re delivering the same thing a PR firm that charges $50,000 per month is going to give you?
What these super-cheap PR firms tend to do is have someone overseas (or these days, probably AI), write a press release which gets distributed to the press release sections on thousands of low-end websites. It costs the PR firm $50-$100 to provide this service, and they make a nice margin. They then try to get thousands of clients to sign up for this service.
Do the press releases lead to real articles? No. They end up in sections of local news websites that you would be hard-pressed to find, and a week later they’ve been removed. Fast and cheap, but no good.
THE CANVAS PR MODEL
If you’re expecting me to say that here at Canvas PR we have chosen the best way to balance speed, quality, and affordability, then I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint. I’m also not going to lie and tell you that we’ve found a way to maximize all three areas.
At Canvas, our focus looks like this.
We may not be as fast as the super-cheap PR firms, and we certainly aren’t as cheap, but we provide deliverables that are very good, in some cases just as good as what you get from a top PR firm, although we focus less on strategy.
We tend to be faster than top PR firms, and we’re relatively inexpensive. In other words, when you balance speed, quality, and cost, we’re the best fit for certain clients.
For example, let’s say your boss tells you that you need to get your company into a Forbes article within the next six weeks. If you go with a super-cheap PR option, they won’t be able to do it, or the quality will be so bad you’ll wish they hadn’t.
On the other hand, if you hire a top PR firm then you’re going to pay tens of thousands of dollars, and in six weeks you’ll have a really great strategy in place, but work on getting a placement won’t even have begun.
With Canvas, you’ll have a good article (a full editorial article/earned media, not a paid placement or advertorial), published live on Forbes, and while it will cost you a lot more than $200 it will cost you a lot less than the $20,000/month retainer you’d pay a top traditional PR firm.
FAST PR VS. GOOD & CHEAP
Jeff Bezos said he gets this question a lot:
What's going to change in the next 10 years?
Perhaps in the future, AI will make it possible for everyone to get fast PR that’s also good and cheap, but chances are it will just make things more competitive and it will take even more creativity to stand out.
The question Bezos said he doesn’t get asked nearly as often, but which he likes to ask himself, is:
What's not going to change in the next 10 years?
Fast PR will continue to command a premium. Quality will always be a factor of great PR. And nobody is going to quit caring about cost.
While the details of how PR firms deliver speed, quality, and affordability will change, you can bet that 10 years from now we’ll still agree that all three matter, and that providing all three at the same time is a challenge. The real question for you to answer is, “What’s the right balance for me?”
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