When Can I Expect Results From PR?

Have you heard the myth of the overnight success? Once upon a time an entrepreneur set up a business and it took off overnight! They had never worked hard before, they never tried and failed, and they didn’t even develop their success one step at a time. It was all done at once!

Just kidding. 

It would be so nice to be an overnight success, but here in reality, success takes a lot of time and effort. Every time I meet an entrepreneur who looks like an overnight success, a little digging reveals that they actually put in the work before anyone noticed. 

PR is just like anything else worth doing, it’s going to take time and effort before that magical moment happens when you can call it a success. 

So, how long does it take to start seeing results from PR?

In my experience, the best scenarios take a few weeks to land their first media placement. In most cases, it’s going to take a few months.

The media works in advance and depending on the type of publication, that can be a few days, a few weeks, or even months. 

Let’s say you start pitching today and a journalist at some prestigious magazine immediately wants to work with you. Since magazines have longer lead times, you may not see your placement go live for three or four months. 

PR is a long game. 

And how much effort does it take to start seeing results from PR?

PR needs consistent effort over a long period of time to truly be successful. 

In theory, you could send out one magical pitch that lands you a wonderful placement and that wouldn’t be a lot of effort. But just like the myth of the overnight success, this strategy isn’t a very good one. 

PR isn’t hard, but it does take a small amount of effort on a consistent basis. 

I recommend starting with an hour per week. This gives you just enough time to do every step of my OPEN Method and be effective. But the key is that the effort slowly accumulates as you put in a little effort every week. 

For real results, you have to keep it up. 

Do you know what’s better than one media placement? 

Two media placements!

When I talk about getting the media attention you deserve, I mean you deserve a lot. But to get a lot of media attention you have to keep going. 

Fortunately, PR has a bit of a snowball effect. Once you get a few media placements, more people will take notice and take interest. Then that hour you invest in PR every week starts to become even more valuable. 

And remember, it doesn’t cost anything to send a pitch so the ROI is enormous. 

You Get to Reach New Audiences: This is of course the one that people always think about when they do PR. Getting into a publication obviously brings more eyeballs to your products or services. 

You Earn Credibility: This is another big one, and probably the most important benefit of PR. It brings third party credibility to your products or services. It is like the publication is vouching for you. 

You Gain SEO Points With Google: The more backlinks you have to your website from PR placements the more Google is going to recommend your business. Higher rankings for the win!

PR does not take much effort or much time from your weekly schedule, but it does take consistent effort and time. Schedule an hour first thing in the morning every Tuesday (or whatever works for you) and you will be well on your way to seeing results.