White-Label PR Best Practices
A large chunk of our PR business comes from our white-label partners. Here's what those relationships look like, and how we've seen them work best for mutual benefit.
Becoming a White-Label PR Partner
To become a partner is easy—just email us.
These partnerships are open to other PR firms, marketing agencies, and other organizations and individuals who have groups of individuals and companies they want to resell our PR to.
White-label PR partners receive discounted pricing and access to special offers.
Working With Us As a White-Label PR Partner
We strive to keep the relationships with our partners straightforward and simple.
You tell us what you want
We tell you if we can get it for you
If we can, we bill you upfront
We strategize together on headlines and articles
We get the placement
Challenges As a White-Label Partner
Here are challenges we've seen arise in these partnerships from time to time, and how to avoid or overcome them.
1. Billing upfront. We bill upfront, so if you, as a white-label partner, bill on the tail end, you've got to float the cash in between. We recommend you bill upfront, just like we do. This mostly gets rid of issues like the client not paying for what they bought, although not 100%.*
2. Deliverable details. We know how it goes—no matter how many times you tell a client what they don't want to hear, they won't hear it.
For example, with rare exceptions we never promise that an article will include a photo, a link, or more than one mention or quote. No matter how many times we explain this to the client, there are still times when we'll get the article published and the client asks, "Where's the photo?!" When we point to the contract that says "No photo included," they say, "I don't care! I want a photo in the article!"
Sometimes no matter how much you try to prepare clients for this, it still becomes an issue. However, to minimize the times when it does, we recommend you be 100% open with the client, prior to any money exchanging hands, and tell them openly, "This is not a feature article, no photo is included, we only guarantee one mention/quote, and we'll try to get a link but we can't guarantee it."
Put it in the contract.
Tell them again.
And then tell them again.
3. Communication. Talk to your clients a lot. Keep them in the loop. Don't let weeks go by. Even if nothing is happening, reach out and tell them what's happening. "Nothing is happening, but we wanted to let you know that's we're on top of everything."
4. Share the process. Some PR firms sign a client up and the client doesn't know what's happening until the PR firm says, "Here's a new article we got for you!"
At Canvas, we work with our clients (and white-label partners) to craft headlines together.
Then we work on the article together.
By sharing the process, it gives us a chance to deal with client issues before the article gets published and is set in stone.
*5. Dealing with darned clients. There are great clients, clients, and darned clients. When you deliver a placement for a client, and it's a good placement, and then they do a chargeback and leave you in a lurch...that's a darned client. Happened recently to a white-label partner of ours, and unfortunately there's not much we can do in those situations. Our partner asked if we could remove the article for that client, and we couldn't even do that. Once an article is up, it's up for life, unless there's something really wrong with it, in which case that's a whole other set of problems. For more on dealing with darned clients, see #1, #2, #3, and #4 above.
However, sometimes clients are just the darndest clients and darn it, there ain't much you can do.
Benefits of White-Label PR Partnership
The main point of this post is to share the challenges inherent in the PR business. No matter how you manage it, it can be hard work with tough times. But most of the time it's hard work and good times, and we're here to do the hard work. As our partner, all you have to do is manage the communication between Canvas and your client while we take care of the heavy lifting.
Once again, if you'd like to become a white-label partner of ours, shoot us an email with some details about who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. We'd love to sign you up!
Or check out our basic pricing:
