by DoogleDongle2018 » Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:25 am
I will share my experience with Crowd PR here. We hired them during december for our indiegogo campaign. We were contacted by one of their sales reps named Dan Butts with two weeks remaining. The call went well, and we were assured that there was enough time for articles to be published about us before time runs out. Public relations seemed to be a great way for us to gain exposure for our campaign. From what I have read online - the media and journalists and instrumental to getting yourself funded. We were given references from past clients which checked out as well.
And that’s when it all started. We paid their upfront fee, crossed our fingers, and hoped for the best possible outcome. In terms of other marketing channels, facebook ads were all we were doing with a small degree of success. Dan updated everyday as promised, which I was not pleased with. I would have strongly preferred 5 updates per day, but that was not something they could accommodate I suppose. Regardless, as days went by we began to lose hope for our media coverage. We were told by Dan that journalists were interested, but they just needed more time to be persuaded to write about us. During this period of time I had no less than 3 furious phone calls with this firm, many of which conversations included heated exchanges of words between us. I was not pleased after day 2 and I was not afraid to tell them about it.
On day 3 of the PR campaign, the results began to show. Nothing major, just a small coverage in tech blogs and a few digital magazines. Crowd PR told me editors were giving them a hard time, but I did not accept that as an excuse. At some point they did get me featured by Cnet and The Verge which I was very proud of. I told them I wanted CNN and New York Times, and they actually told me that was not a realistic expectation. I strongly disagree with that, as I have personally seen a project on the front page of the NYT.
In conclusion, they secured a good amount of media for us. They are a small PR firm, and I don’t think they have ever gotten anyone covered in CNN which was a must for us. My recommendation is that they are a pretty good marketing agency, but if you are going for front page coverage for days on end then you may want to try it yourself doing it in-house.
Doogle Dongle, coming soon to kickstarter!