KickstarterForum.org

I see that many big crowdfunding campaigns use PR firms for marketing. How essential is this? Can I get by without using any agency for my project? I see that this is a widely discussed subject in the community: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-PR-age ... g-projects

Yes, you can. You just have to be able to email journalists, that's all it takes to get them to write about you in most situations.

You don't need one, just do it in-house and learn how to do it yourself.

It can be worth it, but only if you've already raised a good amount and you need to kick it up a notch. Beware though because most of them either suck or are scams.

Based on reviews I have read, PR is rife with scams. Just look at this thread on Crowd PR for reference. Yikes.

Agreed, never use an agency for what you can easily do yourself.

Mightee wrote:Agreed, never use an agency for what you can easily do yourself.

easier said than done.

Coffee and Notebook wrote:

Mightee wrote:Agreed, never use an agency for what you can easily do yourself.

easier said than done.

As long as you know how to email, you can do PR.

We've been going back and forth on this one a bit and we're still undecided on whether to use a PR agency or not.

On the one hand if you do it yourself, you need to find journalists, find out what they write about, contact each one of them, and develop rapport with them. There's also those PR distribution sites where you can just submit your press release and then hopefully it gets picked up by journalists. Then you also have to monitor whether all your hard PR work is getting somewhere. It's a fair bit of work if you think about it.

PR agencies do all of that for you so you can focus on other aspects of your project. They'll have a list of journalists they know well, so they'll know how to pitch your story to them to get them to write about your project. Plus, they'll be able to call on favours if they've been in the industry long enough.

We've contacted a few agencies and all of them either said they'll only jump in if you're already there or half way there with your funding goal, or to contact them closer to when your campaign launches. Their prices are pretty steep though. They'll usually offer a fixed fee that you have to pay upfront, then on top of that they have some variable fees that are calculated after the campaign is over. I think some have a cap on the variable fees, but best to ask as it varies from agency to agency.

Our campaign isn't due to launch until September this year, so we'll be doing the PR ourselves from now until maybe a month or so before the campaign starts. Then we'll re-evaluate and see whether we will use a PR agency to help us further. But the main thing putting us off using a PR agency is the cost and uncertainty of how successful they will be.

If anyone here has advice, we'd love to hear.

miscea wrote:We've been going back and forth on this one a bit and we're still undecided on whether to use a PR agency or not.

On the one hand if you do it yourself, you need to find journalists, find out what they write about, contact each one of them, and develop rapport with them. There's also those PR distribution sites where you can just submit your press release and then hopefully it gets picked up by journalists. Then you also have to monitor whether all your hard PR work is getting somewhere. It's a fair bit of work if you think about it.

PR agencies do all of that for you so you can focus on other aspects of your project. They'll have a list of journalists they know well, so they'll know how to pitch your story to them to get them to write about your project. Plus, they'll be able to call on favours if they've been in the industry long enough.

We've contacted a few agencies and all of them either said they'll only jump in if you're already there or half way there with your funding goal, or to contact them closer to when your campaign launches. Their prices are pretty steep though. They'll usually offer a fixed fee that you have to pay upfront, then on top of that they have some variable fees that are calculated after the campaign is over. I think some have a cap on the variable fees, but best to ask as it varies from agency to agency.

Our campaign isn't due to launch until September this year, so we'll be doing the PR ourselves from now until maybe a month or so before the campaign starts. Then we'll re-evaluate and see whether we will use a PR agency to help us further. But the main thing putting us off using a PR agency is the cost and uncertainty of how successful they will be.

If anyone here has advice, we'd love to hear.

Did you end up doing it all yourself?