What’s the difference between proactive and reactive PR?
When and why should you use each tactic?
Read on to find out how both tactics can be utilised as part of a full PR strategy.
What’s the difference between proactive and reactive PR?
Utilising a mixture of proactive and reactive PR builds the backbone of an effective PR campaign, enabling you to deliver a drumbeat of positive news stories about your business alongside expert comment on topical news stories.
Proactive PR
Proactive PR will often look at the everyday news coming out of a business, such as appointments, promotions, financial results and investment – all topics which are of interest to news organisations.
Reactive PR
An effective way to supplement this is with reactive PR – where you monitor the news agenda in your sector, identify the topics journalists are writing about and pitch expert comment to add real value to the story.
Reactive PR can often be the most effective way of gaining top-tier media coverage, such as national and international news titles.
How do you ensure you have an effective reactive PR strategy?
The key to reactive PR is speed. To be in with the best chance of securing coverage, you need to be responding to enquiries as soon as you see them – waiting even a few hours can be the difference between achieving coverage or seeing that vital brand awareness going to someone else.
To ensure you’re best-placed to take advantage of these opportunities, you need to identify a range of key spokespeople from across your business who can speak with authority on their chosen topic.
Those people need to be fully briefed on what you need from them – which, in many cases, is no more complex than talking about the knowledge they use in their everyday job role.
The key here is trust. In a world where fake “experts” and AI-generated copy is being accepted by major news outlets as a credible source, demonstrating your knowledge, expertise and credibility has never been more important.
Read our guide to reactive PR to get started.
Our reactive PR coverage
Some examples of our reactive PR coverage achieved for clients includes:
- National coverage in The Express for Prime Accountants Group, commenting on a little-known inheritance tax rule which can cut an individual’s overall tax rate by 4% by making charitable donations through their will
- A comment and backlink from global news outlet Forbes for Customs Support Group, talking about the EU/US trade deal
- A huge volume of backlinks for law firm Blythe Liggins, including from The Mirror, providing clear, expert comment on a variety of legal questions
Find out more about our approach to PR and our impressive results.
What are the pros and cons of using proactive and reactive PR?
How you split your proactive and reactive PR strategy will depend on your priorities as a business.
Would you most value a drumbeat of positive news about your business in key local and B2B titles, showing you as a credible, growing outfit which is a great place to work? In which case, a campaign which majors on proactive PR is best.
Would you most value gaining top-tier national coverage, gaining increased brand awareness but following and responding to the narrative rather than setting it? If you’re in this camp, reactive PR works best.
Finding a balance
In practice, a healthy mix of the two will ensure a great spread of coverage and a great mix of local, regional, national and trade news coverage.
This will enable you to reach your target audience, build brand awareness and establish your thought leaders as the experts in your industry, while delivering SEO benefits alongside your PR goals.
Talk to our team about proactive and reactive PR
Are you looking to develop a PR strategy for your business? Talk to us to learn how we can use proactive and reactive PR to position key personnel as industry thought leaders, build brand awareness and support your SEO activity.
