1. What measures are in place to ensure that your brand’s messaging remains consistent and resonates across diverse channels and audiences?
In 2024, Beyond Trending underwent a thorough rebranding process where we analyzed our company values, vision, voice, and overall messaging. It was a big project with plenty of exploration to truly uncover who we are as a company, the types of clients we serve, and what makes us stand out in the crowded PR industry. Thankfully, when we emerged from that process, we felt crystal clear in who we are – and who we are not. We are the opposite of a big-city agency as we move fast and get stuff done. We are strategists who are confident enough to question our clients instead of just saying ‘yes.’ And we never follow a copy and paste model as we know that PR success is dependent on thoughtful and creative storytelling tactics.
Just as we say to our clients, consistency in your messaging is critical – so we of course must practice what we preach! We don’t try to shift to fit a customer prospect that doesn’t align with our strengths, or offer services that don’t fall within our wheelhouse. We remain consistent across all marketing channels and have messaging guidelines and best practices to further enforce that approach. Because we work with three main categories of clients – tech companies, startups & VCs, and nonprofits – we use those sectors as a benchmark for the content we produce to keep our core audiences engaged.
2. What technologies are currently employed to monitor and analyze media coverage, and how do they inform your PR strategies?
In terms of monitoring to ensure we don’t miss any client coverage, we use a broad range of tools – from basic to more complex, as every monitoring service is a bit different. We have Google and TalkWalker alerts as well as more robust tools like Muck Rack and TVeyes. This helps us ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
By utilizing the analytics capabilities within Muck Rack, for example, we can compare quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year results, conduct competitive analyses, and even see the top publications or writers who cover our clients. This provides us with a picture of where we have strong visibility and as well as areas of improvement.
3. How does your organization track and measure the effectiveness of PR campaigns in achieving business objectives?
The big question for any company looking to hire a PR agency is ROI and that’s something we’re always seeking to measure in new ways. Some are basic measurements that are standard across all kinds of clients, whereas others are measured in more unique ways based on the specific KPIs that a client wants to achieve. At the start of every engagement, and with a review on a quarterly or half-year basis, we discuss those goals and KPIs with our clients to ensure we’re on track, and if the targets have shifted at all for the business, we can adapt accordingly.
Then analyzing the effectiveness of a campaign and the media results, we’re tracking the number of media placements, potential reach (UVM), social shares, and advertising value equivalency (AVE). We also often analyze and track competitive share of voice (SOV) as well as review engagement and comments on article placements.
The real magic happens when we sit down with our clients to learn of the uptick in website traffic, general visibility, and/or secured customers in response to one of our media campaigns. We’ve had many clients share feedback from an investor, partner, or customer who read or heard about them in ‘X’ media outlet and then engagement with the company.
4. What strategies are being implemented to foster innovation and agility in your PR practices?
Everyone’s leveraging AI and tools like ChatGPDT in some capacity – and it would be silly not to bolster your team with the ability to save time and accomplish more. But we’re selective in how we use these AI-supported tools. They serve as a great launching off point for brainstorming as well as outlining things like press releases, pitches, or byline articles. But we never use AI to draft full articles, for example, as the content is cookie-cutter and lacks tone; the human touch is 100% still necessary.
We also use email tracking tools like Mix Max to determine the most opportune time to reach a reporter’s inbox or have visibility into how often they’re looking at our pitches. This helps us tailor and maximize our media relations efforts and ensure we’re giving reporters what they want.
5. How is your organization adapting its PR strategies to align with evolving media landscapes and consumer expectations?
The media landscape has changed dramatically not only over the last decade but even the last year, so in order to stay relevant, you must continuously adapt and evolve. On a granular level, we continue to get more targeted and tailored with key journalists we want to build relationships with, and are straightforward and succinct in our outreach to them. We know reporters are time and bandwidth strapped so we’ve learned to get right to it – no fluff.
Perhaps most important are our efforts to approach communications strategy holistically. What we continue to do is bolster our services through strong partnerships. PR can’t work with a siloed approach, so if our clients are looking for social media, branding, growth marketing, etc., we can pull in the right partners to ensure we’re not only reaching a broad range of media targets, but also incorporating the various ways people consume and digest information.
6. How are you ensuring that your PR approaches remain adaptable to changes in media consumption and public sentiment?
We continuously analyze traditional as well as non-traditional mediums to ensure our clients are being seen by their core audiences, the ones that drive revenue and growth. That means being familiar with all the ways people consume their news beyond just online, print and television – newsletters, podcasts, social media, and more.
