Digital Marketing
Public Relations & Digital PR
Brand PR, not link building. If what you actually want is links, the SEO team runs a different and cheaper campaign for exactly that.
Public relations builds reputation through other people: journalists, editors, podcasts and industry press. The Nexclick works on narrative, relationships and share of voice, measured on coverage quality — link acquisition is a separate service, and conflating the two produces campaigns that serve neither properly.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Nobody in your sector’s press has heard of you.
- A competitor with a weaker product is quoted every time a journalist writes about your market.
- You issued a press release and it appeared precisely nowhere.
- Something went wrong publicly and nobody knew who was supposed to speak.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Establish the narrative before approaching anyone
- What you are actually for, what you can say that a competitor cannot, and which of your people can credibly say it. Outreach without this produces polite refusals at best.
- Build a journalist list that is real
- The specific people covering your sector, what they have written recently, and what they need. A distribution list of two thousand addresses is not a relationship — it is why journalists filter agency mail.
- Find the stories already inside your business
- Data you hold, a customer outcome, an industry position worth taking, a genuine change. Most businesses have two or three and have never recognised any of them as stories.
- Build spokespeople who can actually be used
- Media training, an agreed position on the awkward questions, and availability that matches how journalists work — to a deadline today, not a diary slot next week.
- Reactive commentary
- Being the source a journalist can reach when a story breaks in your sector. Reliably the fastest route to quality coverage, and it depends entirely on responsiveness rather than on budget.
- Measure share of voice rather than clippings
- How often you appear in coverage of your market against named competitors, in which publications, and said by whom. A stack of cuttings is an activity report.
- Prepare for the bad day
- A holding statement, a decision tree for who speaks, and an agreed line. Written while nothing is wrong, because it cannot be written well once something is.
- Coordinate with SEO where a story would also earn links
- Deliberately, as a secondary benefit, rather than designing campaigns backwards from a link target and calling the result public relations.
Decision tree
Is that actually a story?
Run your proposed announcement through this before anybody writes a release. Most internal news is not a story, and pitching it anyway spends credibility with the journalists you will need for the one that is.
01You have hired somebody, or moved office
Not a story outside trade press appointments columns. Send two lines there and expect nothing further. Pitching it as news costs you more than the coverage would be worth.
02You hold data nobody else has
A story, and the strongest kind available to most businesses. Analyse it, give journalists the numbers and the method, and make somebody available to explain it properly.
03You have launched a product
Only if it does something genuinely new. "Now with a redesigned interface" is an advert, and a journalist who covers it is doing you a favour they will not repeat.
04A journalist is writing about your sector today
The best opportunity available to you. Reply within the hour with a usable quote and no conditions attached. Speed matters far more than polish in this situation.
05You have a customer with a striking outcome
A story if the customer will be named and will talk to press. Anonymous case studies are marketing collateral and no journalist will run them as anything else.
06You want to announce a funding round
A story for business and trade press, briefly. Have the harder questions — valuation, runway, headcount plans — answered internally before you pitch it anywhere.
07You hold a strong opinion on something contested in your industry
Frequently the easiest coverage to earn, provided you will genuinely stand behind it when somebody disagrees with you in print a fortnight later.
08What you actually want is links from high-authority domains
Then this is the wrong service. Ask for digital PR link building, which targets differently, is measured on links won, and costs less.
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1–3
Narrative and audit
Current coverage, competitor share of voice, the stories genuinely available, and who can speak. Ends with a narrative document and a story list.
- 02Week 3–5
Media list and relationships
The specific journalists, what each of them covers, and an approach shaped for each rather than one release sent to all of them.
- 03Ongoing, monthly
Pitch and place
Proactive stories, reactive commentary against live requests, and the follow-through that converts initial interest into published coverage.
- 04Monthly
Report on share of voice
Coverage volume, quality, publication tier and share against named competitors, with the pitches that went nowhere included.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- A written narrative document, agreed internally before anybody speaks to press.
- A named journalist list with what each actually covers, not a distribution blast list.
- Media training for whoever will speak, including the questions they do not want.
- Share of voice reporting against named competitors rather than a clippings count.
- A crisis holding statement and a speaking decision tree, written while nothing is wrong.
Tools and platforms
- Media databases and journalist request services
- Share of voice and coverage monitoring
- Brand monitoring and alerting
- Reactive request platforms
- Media training materials
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Three months before coverage arrives with any regularity, and six before share of voice moves. PR runs on relationships and relationships do not compress. Two things worth being direct about. A press release announcing something only interesting to you will not be covered, and issuing one anyway spends credibility with the journalists you will want later. And this is not link building. Digital PR for links is a different discipline with different targets, run by the SEO team, and it is usually cheaper because the criteria for a successful placement are looser. If links are the objective, ask for that service by name rather than paying brand PR rates to get them incidentally.
Pricing model
Monthly retainer
Monthly retainer, because PR is relationship work that does not fit a project shape. Crisis preparation and media training can be bought as standalone pieces if that is all you need.
Questions
Public Relations & Digital PR questions
How is this different from digital PR for link building?
Link building targets any site with authority that will link, and success is a link. This targets the publications your buyers and your industry actually read, and success is being quoted well in the right place. The tactics overlap; the target lists and the measures do not.
Do press releases still work?
As a format for genuine news sent to journalists who cover that beat, yes. As a thing broadcast to a bought list, no — that is the activity that trained journalists to filter agency mail in the first place. The release is rarely the work; the relationship and the timing are.
How quickly do we need to respond to a journalist?
Within the hour during working hours, and that is not an exaggeration. Journalists work to deadlines measured in hours and will use whoever replies first with something usable. A better quote arriving tomorrow is not a better quote — it is an unpublished one.
What should we measure PR on?
Share of voice against named competitors, the tier and relevance of the publications, and whether you were quoted or merely mentioned. Also branded search volume, which tends to move after good coverage. A count of clippings measures how busy the agency was.
Do we need media training?
If anyone in your business will speak to press, yes, and it takes half a day. Most of the value is not delivery — it is agreeing in advance what you will not say, how to handle the awkward question, and that "no comment" reads as guilt in print.
Can you guarantee coverage in a specific publication?
No, and anybody who does is describing advertorial, which is bought and labelled as such. Editorial coverage is a journalist deciding your story is worth their readers’ attention. What we can commit to is the pitching standard and honest reporting on what landed and what did not.
What do we do when something goes wrong publicly?
Follow the plan written while nothing was wrong: one named spokesperson, a holding statement issued fast acknowledging the facts, and no speculation. Speed and candour shorten these considerably. Silence and a legal-sounding statement extend them, because both read as an admission.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.