Category: Brand Awareness

In this blog, Hugh Cadman, Senior Content Writer, at Whiteoaks talks about the battle marketers sometimes have when they need to boost brand awareness and visibility but have trouble persuading their boardrooms to back them with investment in PR.

It covers:

  • Where Performance PR can make a convincing case for investment
  • Two real-life stories of building brand awareness
  • The cost of inaction

 

We see the same scenario play out time and again. Senior marketing decision-makers within technology firms know PR raises awareness, builds authority and strengthens campaigns – and they typically want to move forward with it.

Yet, momentum stalls when the conversation reaches the boardroom. The investment is delayed because senior leaders are preoccupied with the short-term hit, especially if there is no immediate return in terms of leads and revenue.

It is short-term thinking that misses key steps in the journey. In B2B tech you must build brand awareness and visibility before you can deliver conversion.

Convince the boardroom to press GO with Performance PR

If they are to achieve their goals, marketers need to convince the board that by failing to press the “GO” button on PR investment now, they are missing out on the long-term financial gains of raising their brand awareness and visibility today.

After all, brand visibility translates into benefits further down the line. For instance, having case studies and customer-win stories gives the sales team tangible proof of real business benefits. These are not only useful to convert prospects into customers, but are also vital when moving into new markets or territories.

To convince the C-suite of the value of PR, marketers need to be able to commit to actionable results.

That is where Performance PR can play a key role, ensuring that KPIs are agreed at the beginning of every campaign, setting targets to build brand visibility fast through expertly crafted content that is specifically tailored to the business’ target audiences. That way, boards have the reassurance of knowing their investment will deliver measurable value over time as visibility builds.

Two cases to prove the point

Take the case of AspenTech, for example, the global leader in asset management software delivering optimisation and digital transformation in industry.

Whiteoaks created and delivered a campaign that eventually influenced Emerson’s decision to acquire AspenTech in 2025.

The PR programme had accurately reflected AspenTech’s genuine expertise and changed as the business evolved from focusing on process simulation and optimisation to asset performance management and industrial AI.

AspenTech first engaged Whiteoaks to increase its presence in EMEA, targeting top decision-makers while further enhancing its reputation as the international frontrunner in industrial software. The Performance PR programme homed in on energy, industrial data-management, power-and-utilities, and metals-and-mining.

Over 17 years Whiteoaks built an in-depth understanding of AspenTech, its technologies, business units and their markets. The UK market was foremost but Whiteoaks also led an international campaign to ensure AspenTech benefited from consistency of planning, brand promotion, messaging and reporting.

The campaign combined thought-leadership, press releases, expert commentary and media briefings. In the UK alone it achieved almost 800 pieces of coverage that included The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian. The entire campaign delivered high performance over the best part of two decades.

Bridewell – cyber security in CNI

Another good example of the impact of Performance PR is Whiteoaks’ work with Bridewell – now a major cyber security company specialising in the protection of critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the UK and US. Whiteoaks worked with Bridewell from 2019, aiming to increase brand awareness among CNI organisations and to highlight its managed services.

The keystone of the campaign was an annual report into CNI cyber security which filled an important gap and provided authoritative insights.

The report, Cyber Security in Critical National Infrastructure, attracted the attention of important decision-makers in CNI protection and became the standard trends barometer. It was supported by high-quality thought-leadership in top-tier media, along with corporate profiling.

The outcome of this campaign was that Bridewell elevated its brand awareness as the UK’s leading CNI cyber security services provider.

Research among 600 cyber security leaders found it had climbed from ninth place in 2023 into the top five UK CNI cyber security providers for “unprompted consideration”. In other words, being at the forefront of minds in its target audience.

Work out the cost of doing nothing

Businesses may nevertheless feel that when budgets are tight and market conditions difficult, postponing investment in PR is the safer option. Inaction, however, usually costs brand visibility, which comes with steady erosion of relevance and credibility.

All the while, competitors shape the prevailing narrative and grow in profile.

This is the hidden cost of doing nothing – which mounts up quickly.

Whiteoaks’ Performance PR approach addresses many of the concerns businesses have about cost and outcome. This focuses PR activity on what matters most, aligning with business goals and proving value through metrics that go beyond impressions to become part of the growth engine.

If your business is struggling to plant its flag and your board would benefit from a more strategic approach, read our eBook about the Hidden Cost of Inaction and get in touch with our team to find out how Whiteoaks can help.

In this blog, Hannah Buckley, Head of Content and Service Development, explores:

  • The role of leadership visibility in building credibility for businesses
  • The growing influence and reach of personal LinkedIn profiles
  • How executive visibility programmes help extend the reach of B2B PR campaigns

 

“People buy from people” is something we hear a lot in B2B, and it definitely rings true. Today, people don’t just buy from companies, they buy from the people behind the brand. Whether it’s a prospect checking LinkedIn before a meeting, a journalist looking for an expert source or a potential hire deciding where to work, they want to see the people behind the brand.

All this makes it even more important that business leaders and executives are visible. For brands to cut through the noise and make an impression with decision-makers, they must ensure the human voices behind the business are seen, heard and trusted.

When senior figures are visible, they bring authority and authenticity that brand channels alone can’t replicate. They become trusted sources of industry insight, ambassadors for company culture and better able to forge stronger connections. This visibility is what turns awareness into trust and, ultimately, it’s that trust that will drive action.

Trust becomes a competitive advantage

In markets crowded with similar products, services and claims, trust is often the deciding factor. Decision-makers want reassurance that the people they’ll be working with are credible, informed and engaged. When leaders share their expertise and perspective publicly, whether on LinkedIn or in the media, they make that trust easier to build and it then becomes harder for competitors to undermine.

Opportunities start to find you

Media interviews, panel invitations, industry awards, even judging awards are all opportunities that don’t just happen by chance. They’re often the result of being visible and active in the right places. Journalists and event organisers look for experts who are already demonstrating thought leadership and authority in their field

Visibility strengthens your talent pipeline

Top talent wants to work for leaders they admire. When executives are known for their expertise and values, they naturally attract candidates who share those values. This not only helps to improve the quality of new hires, but also reinforces your company culture from the top down.

It amplifies the brand work you’re already doing

Brand PR, marketing campaigns and corporate messaging are vital in building visibility, but are even more effective when they’re supported by strong personal voices from within the business. Leadership visibility adds a human layer that helps brand messages resonate and inspire action.

Why Now?

The digital landscape is noisier than ever as AI-generated content continues to flood feeds, making it harder for generic corporate messages to stand out. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s algorithms continue to give individual profiles more organic reach than company pages and as has long been the case, journalists look for credible individuals to quote rather than anonymous brand statements.

For B2B organisations, this has created a window of opportunity. Companies with visible, trusted leaders will set themselves apart in every possible way: awareness, influence and impact.

Taking the Next Step

Consistent, strategic leadership visibility doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a plan, the right positioning and content that’s authentic to the individual while aligned with the business.

That’s why we offer the Executive Visibility Programme – a structured, fully managed way to help leaders and executives strengthen their presence on LinkedIn, in the media and in the market, without adding to their already overloaded schedules.

If you’d like to understand how visible your leadership team is right now and where the opportunities lie for both them and your brand, get in touch.

Here, Whiteoaks’ Chief Client Officer John Broy discusses:

  • Why the summer months offer a chance for profitable introspection
  • What to do if your PR is losing its edge
  • Boosting PR performance with KPIs

 

In many industries, the few weeks after the schools break up are a quieter time, when due to holidays, the daily demands on a business are not as intense, providing an opportunity for introspection.

With less day-to-day activity, this is a chance to invest time in internal planning and the kind of strategic thinking that supports the long-term growth of your business.

In this blog we’ll consider how companies in the B2B tech sector can use the summer lull to revise their PR strategies for greater impact. It is certainly true that the summer months provide the breathing space, because it is a time of lighter news cycles, smaller audiences and reduced activity among journalists.

Are there any signs your campaign is getting stale?

Any campaign can become stale because of outdated messaging and lack of media engagement. Content may be going over well-trodden ground that induces media fatigue and has lost relevance for audiences.

This is where there is a need for hard work – stepping outside your comfort zone to assess whether messaging reflects what makes the company unique and helps it stand out from the competition. Teams can help by coming together to brainstorm new story angles, look at existing themes, questioning how they have moved on and where you can be ahead of the curve – beating your competitors to the punch.

Take a fresh look at the media landscape

The review should also examine any changes in the media landscape that inevitably occur over the course of a PR campaign. Are the publications you target still read by the audiences you want to reach? Have publications shifted their focus to other areas? Are there any new journalists or publications that need to be added to your media list?

Taking the time to review your current media list is an extremely worthwhile task, after all if it’s coverage you’re aiming to achieve you need to ensure your contacts and understanding of what they’re looking for is kept continuously up to date.

It’s also a great opportunity to look at the type of content publications want – do you need to look at the imagery you have to support your outreach, or are key publications after video soundbites?

To maximise media relevance, it is important too, to review your PR calendar to ensure you attend or contribute to the right events, and are ready to respond to any significant announcements or trends in industry thinking that emerge.

Are the KPIs right?

To get the most success from PR, it should be aligned from the very outset with your business’ strategic goals. However, these can of course evolve over time.

The summer is a good halfway point through the year to look at whether those business objectives set out at the start of a campaign still apply, for instance, are you still going after that particular target market or are you still focusing on a certain solution etc.?

Getting the answers to those questions will help to ensure that your PR activity still matches up. And if those objectives have changed, then it’s only logical the approach to PR should follow suit.

This aligns to that fact that for PR to deliver it must be measurable, so you should never hesitate about revising KPIs to ensure Performance PR maintains maximum effectiveness.

For instance, if driving website traffic is becoming a priority, it might be time to shift focus to activity and measurement that reflects that, looking at a digital PR approach to combine SEO and PR best practices.

So those summer days when the living is theoretically easy present a great opportunity to run the rule over a PR strategy. The result should be more sharply-focused content, stronger media relationships and much greater impact in the second half of the business year.

If you want to audit your current PR activity and understand how Performance PR can work for you, please get in touch now to find out more.

In this blog, we discuss:

  • Why AI tools are changing how B2B tech brands are discovered online
  • How PR activity influences the sources that shape AI-generated brand summaries
  • Why consistent, structured content is becoming more important for visibility, accuracy, and trust

 

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity about a brand, and you’ll likely get a concise, confident answer, complete with summaries, comparisons and source references. But here’s a couple of questions more B2B tech businesses need to be asking:

Where is that information coming from?

How much control do I have over AI’s responses?

AI tools are now key players in how tech brands are discovered online. Brand visibility is no longer just about publishing great content on your website or being featured in well-known industry publications. Businesses also need to ensure their content is being picked up in an increasingly digital, algorithm-driven space.

In many cases, buyers engage with AI-surfaced brand summaries long before they reach your website or speak to a sales representative. If your PR strategy isn’t influencing how AI algorithms present your brand, it’s missing a growing part of the visibility equation.

What’s feeding AI and why it matters

Behind every AI-generated answer is a set of data points. For brand-related queries, most of those points come from PR-influenced sources: press releases, thought leadership articles in reputable media outlets, owned research reports, social media posts and structured content on company websites.

The things you say and where you say them determine how AI platforms represent your business. It matters more than ever that brands show up accurately, consistently and in the right context.

B2B buyers are increasingly using AI tools to shortcut research, validate vendors and compare solutions. AI-generated responses are often a buyer’s first impression of your brand.

So, if your business isn’t being mentioned, or worse – if it’s being misrepresented – you can lose visibility and control at a crucial stage of the decision-making process. And because AI pulls from existing online sources, these gaps can quickly worsen and become harder to fix.

What AI visibility looks like in practice

AI platforms weigh certain content types and sources more heavily than others. These include:

  • Media coverage: Trusted media outlets carry weight in how your brand is positioned. Trade media and vertical-specific publications are particularly influential in B2B tech because they signal authority and relevance to both human readers and algorithms.
  • Owned content: Well-written, clearly structured website content is more likely to be included in AI responses, especially when it’s tied to specific use cases, customer outcomes or sector-specific language. This kind of content helps AI models build an accurate, contextual picture of what your business does and who it’s for.
  • Social media: Commentary and engagement on platforms like Reddit, X or YouTube often inform how AI tools describe your brand. Sometimes more than formal messaging does. That means employee posts, user feedback and influencer mentions can all contribute to shaping AI-generated narratives.
  • Data structure: AI tools prioritise clean, consistent content. Website elements like metadata, tagging, SEO keywords and formatting help models correctly identify and categorise information. Even small technical and content changes can influence whether your brand is seen as a leading voice or left out altogether.

Why B2B tech brands can’t afford to ignore this

How your brand is summarised, compared and ranked by AI tools affects perception and buyer behaviour. Unlike B2C, B2B tech decisions are rarely made on impulse and are often high-stakes, high-value and high-consideration, involving multiple stakeholders.

Buyers have always relied on third-party validation and thought leadership content to inform their thinking. What’s changed is where that validation comes from, as it’s increasingly filtered through the lens of AI.

When a prospect uses a tool like ChatGPT to research suppliers, validate claims or compare features, they’re relying on whatever data the model can access and stitch together. That includes media coverage, website content, analyst commentary, social posts and industry conversations, all of which sit squarely within the remit of PR.

If your PR efforts aren’t feeding those inputs, or if the messaging across them is inconsistent, you’re not just missing visibility. You’re missing influence, accuracy and relevance at a point where they matter most. You’re also leaving your brand open to misinterpretation.

The value of investing in PR in the AI era

This is where the role of PR becomes more critical, not less. A strong content strategy ensures your brand is present in the sources AI models use to generate responses. But more than that, it helps shape how your brand is understood and interpreted by both people and machines.

An experienced PR agency can help B2B tech brands take control of how they appear in AI-generated content by securing authoritative media coverage in the right national and trade titles, reinforcing the credibility signals that AI tools prioritise.

By drawing on the expertise of skilled content writers, a PR agency can also create structured, searchable content that clearly communicates your key messages and use cases, making it easier for AI systems to interpret and surface the right information.

Just as importantly, a strong PR partner is there to ensure consistency across earned, owned and shared channels, helping brands avoid fragmented or conflicting narratives. And as AI tools evolve, PR specialists can monitor how a brand is being presented and adapt messaging strategies to maintain visibility and relevance over time.

As AI-generated research becomes a standard part of how decisions are made, PR becomes essential for brand visibility, differentiation and trust. If your PR strategy isn’t supporting how your brand appears across AI tools, get in touch with us. And learn how Visibility+, our digital PR service, can help you get seen where it matters most.

In this blog, Hannah Buckley, Head of Content and Service Development, explains:

  • What digital PR is and how it differs from traditional PR
  • The fundamentals of digital PR strategy
  • How digital PR helps B2B tech businesses become discoverable, including in AI-generated search results

 

What is digital PR?

Digital PR has become a core part of how B2B tech brands build visibility and credibility online. But what exactly is it, and how does it differ from traditional PR?

In short, digital PR is the practice of gaining online coverage, backlinks and engagement through content, media relations and digital-first outreach strategies. It combines the goals of traditional PR, including building brand reputation, trust and awareness, with the tactics of SEO and digital marketing like keyword research, search intent and earned media that doubles as authoritative backlinks.

The result is campaigns that not only increase brand awareness but also improve search performance and drive relevant traffic to your website. Along the way, digital PR naturally builds up the entities search engines associate with your brand: domain authority, earned media and topical relevance in your sector.

Ultimately, digital PR is an essential part of creating sustainable online growth while ensuring your expertise is visible where your audience is actively searching.

What does digital PR involve?

An effective digital PR strategy combines content marketing, media relations and SEO tactics to maximise online visibility. As with traditional PR, the focus of digital PR is on quality, relevance and outcomes rather than volume alone.

Typical activities include:

  • Creating thought leadership content that appeals to your desired target audience
  • Developing blogs and website content to target high-value keywords
  • Pitching stories and insights to online media outlets and journalists
  • Securing media coverage with backlinks on high-authority websites
  • Engaging with relevant online communities and industry influencers. In a B2B context, this means analysts, journalists and association leaders, not consumer social media personalities
  • Amplifying earned media through digital channels, including social media and email campaigns

Digital PR vs traditional PR

At this point, you may be wondering how digital PR differs from traditional PR. While traditional PR spans print, broadcast and online media, digital PR is entirely geared towards online platforms.

The tactics behind traditional and digital PR are similar and must include strong storytelling, relevant outreach and a clear understanding of your target audience.

At Whiteoaks, we see digital PR as part of an integrated PR programme, not competing with it. What differs is intent, methodology and measurement.

  • Primary goal: Traditional PR centres on improving brand awareness and strengthening brand reputation. Digital PR focuses on improving search visibility and referral traffic.
  • Channels: Traditional PR works across print, television, radio and online media. Digital PR works across online publications, backlinks and digital channels like blogs, email and social media.
  • Approach: Traditional PR is underpinned by compelling storytelling and strong media relationships. Digital PR is built on keyword research and gap analysis.
  • How it’s measured: Traditional PR is often measured by coverage volume, sentiment and publications’ reach. Digital PR is measured by backlink quality, increases in search engine rankings and web traffic.

Why is digital PR important for B2B technology companies?

B2B buyers often begin their purchasing journey through search engines, and, increasingly, through AI-powered search experiences. Research from Forrester has found that B2B buyers complete a majority of their research independently before ever speaking to a salesperson, and that share has grown as self-serve and AI-assisted research have become the norm.

For B2B tech brands, digital PR plays a key role in building trust and authority in that self-directed research phase. At the heart of it is ensuring that when your audience searches for solutions, your brand is both discoverable and credible.

While integrated PR programmes do a lot of the groundwork in building reputation and credibility, digital PR is what makes that reputation discoverable.

By creating keyword-optimised content and earning domain-authority-boosting backlinks, digital PR strategies improve online visibility and direct potential customers to your site, connecting your expertise with the people actively looking for it.

How digital PR supports SEO

Digital PR strengthens SEO in a few concrete ways, including earning high-quality backlinks, increasing domain authority, generating referral traffic and creating content aligned with what your audience is actually searching for.

Backlinks remain one of the clearest, most researched ranking signals.

Backlinko and Ahrefs’ analysis of 11.8 million Google search results found that the number one organic search result carries an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than pages in positions two to ten, and that a site’s overall link authority (domain rating) correlates strongly with higher rankings.

The same study also found that around 95% of pages have zero backlinks at all, which is exactly why the rare, high-authority ones earned through digital PR carry so much weight. Most content never earns a single link, so the pieces that do, stand out disproportionately.

Investing in digital PR is also increasingly the most effective way to earn those links.

Editorial.Link’s 2025 survey of 518 SEO professionals found digital PR was rated the most effective link-building tactic by 48.6% of respondents. That’s exactly where a strong digital PR programme earns its keep: newsworthy, research-led content that journalists and publications want to cover, and link to, on its own merits.

Digital PR and AI search visibility

As AI-powered search engines increasingly summarise content from authoritative sources, digital PR plays an important role in building the credibility and topical authority needed for AI visibility.

Behind every AI-generated answer sits a set of inputs the model is drawing on, and for B2B brands, those are usually exactly what a good digital PR programme already produces: press releases, thought leadership articles, owned research and clearly structured content.

That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not really a new discipline either. GEO and AEO get talked about as if they’re a separate skill B2B brands now need to bolt on. In practice, they reward the same fundamentals PR has always been built on: credible third-party coverage, consistent messaging and content that spells out what a business does and who it’s for.

The brands showing up well in AI-generated answers tend to be the ones already doing this properly, not the ones chasing a new set of tactics.

The stakes are higher than they were even a year ago, simply because so much research now happens inside an AI conversation rather than on a search results page.

If your brand isn’t part of what those tools have learned to draw on, or worse, if what’s out there about you is insufficient or inconsistent, you’re not just missing a ranking opportunity. You’re missing a say in how you get described to a buyer who may never visit your site at all.

We’ve written about this shift in more depth in the blog titled Why your next PR strategy needs to account for AI-generated brand visibility, which looks at exactly what AI platforms weigh most heavily and what that means for how B2B tech brands should be investing their PR effort.

Why choose Whiteoaks for digital PR

When combined with our Performance PR approach, digital PR extends your reach, reinforces your messaging and delivers measurable results across platforms, making it an effective, integrated B2B PR programme.

Whiteoaks combines digital PR, Performance PR and SEO-aware content to deliver measurable business outcomes. Our deliberately different approach, backed by 30+ years of B2B tech PR experience and a fixed fee for fixed outcomes with a money-back guaranteed model, helps technology companies increase online visibility, improve search performance, build authority and generate meaningful commercial results. You can see the approach in action across our client case studies.

Want to start seeing improvements in rankings and referral traffic to your website? Get in touch to find out how our digital PR services can help or explore how it fits alongside Performance PR for a fully integrated approach.

 

FAQs

What is digital PR?

Digital PR is the practice of improving online visibility through content marketing, media outreach, backlinks and digital-first PR strategies that support both brand awareness and SEO.

How does digital PR improve SEO?

Digital PR improves SEO by earning authoritative backlinks, increasing domain authority, generating referral traffic and creating content aligned with search intent, helping websites rank higher and appear more often in relevant search results.

What is the difference between digital PR and traditional PR?

Traditional PR focuses primarily on brand awareness through media coverage across print, broadcast and online. Digital PR aims to improve online discoverability, search rankings and website performance using SEO-focused strategies and backlink acquisition.

Why is digital PR important for B2B businesses?

Digital PR helps B2B businesses build trust, increase online visibility, generate qualified website traffic and establish authority within competitive markets where buyers do most of their research online before ever contacting a vendor.

Can digital PR improve AI search visibility?

Yes. High-quality content, authoritative backlinks and trusted media coverage help build the expertise and credibility that AI-powered search engines use when selecting reliable sources for AI-generated answers and overviews.

In this blog, Whiteoaks’ CEO, Hayley Goff, discusses:

  • What Performance PR is and how it differs from traditional PR
  • How Performance PR is measured
  • Why accountability matters more than ever for B2B tech brands investing in PR

What is Performance PR?

Performance PR is a results-driven approach to public relations that connects PR activity to clear business objectives and measurable outcomes. At Whiteoaks, accountability is built into our Performance PR model. We offer ‘fixed fees for fixed outcomes’ with agreed targets backed by a formal service level agreement and money-back guarantee.

But to understand more about the Performance PR approach, it helps to consider a familiar situation.

You’re a successful tech brand eager to attract new clients and establish industry credibility.

You decide to invest in PR, and enlist a top-tier agency on a monthly retainer, which promises coverage in leading industry publications. The campaign has some success, but it’s not what you’d hoped for, especially considering your investment.

There’s a distinct lack of tangible results, the phones have remained eerily quiet and the promised influx of engagement and referrals fails to materialise. Frustrated, you abandon the PR element of your marketing and communications campaign.

All you have to show are several large holes in your budget, and a boss piling on the pressure for results.

This is a frequent scenario we hear from marketing and senior leadership teams within technology businesses, who come to us deflated and disappointed with their incumbent PR agency.

After poor performance, insufficient results and a lack of accountability, the high cost is the final nail in the coffin. Expensive retainers, missed targets and a lack of transparency, which leaves brands with zero recourse, is a model that has given PR a bad name.

But there is an alternative – Performance PR – and it’s something we have preached and practised at Whiteoaks for over 30 years. This approach offers peace of mind for the client and accountability for us. 

How does Performance PR differ from traditional PR?

The main difference between Performance PR and traditional PR is how the agency relationship is structured and how campaign success is defined.

Under a traditional retainer model, a client will often pay for an agreed amount of agency time or activity each month. That might include media outreach, content development, press releases and reporting.

Success can then become focused on what the agency produced, such as the number of journalists contacted or pieces of coverage secured.

These outputs can be valuable, but they do not necessarily explain whether the campaign reached the right people, communicated the right messages or supported the client’s wider objectives.

Performance PR starts with the result the business needs.

The Performance PR agency and their client agree the objective, activity, deliverables and targets at the outset. Reporting is then based on progress against those commitments rather than a record of how agency time was spent.

Media coverage still matters, but it is considered in context. A piece of coverage is more valuable when it appears in a publication trusted by the target audience, includes the messages the brand needs to communicate and encourages further engagement.

This creates a clearer connection between the PR activity and what the business is trying to achieve.

Why Performance PR matters to B2B tech brands

Marketing leaders are under growing pressure to prove that their budgets are being used effectively.

According to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, 39% of CMOs planned to reduce agency budgets, with eliminating unproductive agency relationships among the main actions being taken.

In that environment, a monthly PR report listing completed activity is unlikely to be enough. Marketing teams need to explain who the campaign reached and how it contributed to the business objective.

Performance PR creates that connection by agreeing relevant targets before campaign delivery begins.

Setting those targets requires a proper understanding of the business, its audience, priorities and  timelines. The measures should reflect what the campaign is genuinely expected to influence, rather than applying the same set of metrics to every client.

Our approach to target setting for Performance PR explains how we turn these considerations into meaningful campaign KPIs.

This focus is also consistent with the AMEC Barcelona Principles, which state that measuring communications outcomes should be preferred to measuring outputs alone.

The purpose is not to claim PR was solely responsible for every lead or sale. It is to provide credible evidence of the role communications played in supporting the organisation’s goals.

How the Performance PR model improves the agency relationship

In practice, the Performance PR model gives clients greater clarity from the start. The campaign objectives, activity, targets and costs are agreed upfront, so both sides understand what success looks like and how progress will be assessed.

This creates:

Greater accountability: The agency is held accountable for delivering the agreed targets. At Whiteoaks, that commitment is written into a formal service level agreement and backed by a money-back guarantee.

Clearer costs: Fixed fees for fixed outcomes give clients clarity about their investment from the beginning. There are no vague promises about how a bank of retainer hours might be used.

More meaningful reporting: Campaign reporting is connected to the business and PR objectives. This helps teams explain the value of PR to senior leaders and demonstrate progress using relevant evidence.

Better campaign decisions: Regular measurement helps identify which messages, channels and activities are having the strongest impact. That insight can be used to improve the campaign rather than waiting until the end to discover what worked.

Stronger alignment with the business: Performance PR begins with the actual needs of the organisation. Campaigns are designed to build reputation, change perceptions, strengthen authority or support growth rather than generate coverage for its own sake.

What are the benefits of Performance PR?

The results will depend on what the campaign is designed to achieve, but Performance PR can help brands:

Increase brand awareness: Consistent, well-targeted coverage across the channels your audience actually pays attention to keeps your brand front of mind as they start researching a solution.

Attract more relevant leads: Campaigns designed around your actual buyers, rather than broad reach alone, tend to attract enquiries from people who are a genuine fit rather than a high volume of the wrong audience.

Strengthen credibility: Positioning your business and its experts as trusted voices, through media coverage, thought leadership and third-party endorsement, builds a kind of credibility that advertising alone cannot buy.

Demonstrate clear return on investment: Because targets are agreed upfront and tracked throughout, you can show, in commercial terms, what your PR investment has actually delivered.

How Performance PR is measured

Measurement against business objectives and absolute accountability sit at the heart of Performance PR.

There is no single set of KPIs that applies to every campaign. Every client’s goals are different, so a programme designed to raise awareness should not be measured in exactly the same way as one focused on executive visibility, thought leadership or audience engagement.

The KPIs should always reflect the purpose of the Performance PR campaign.

For awareness-led activity, they could include coverage in priority publications, audience reach, key message penetration, share of voice against competitors or visibility around key industry topics.

For a campaign focused on building credibility, they might include quality of thought leadership opportunities, executive commentary in relevant media, engagement with expert content, invitations to contribute to industry discussions or changes in how the brand is represented.

Where the objective is to encourage an audience to take action, the campaign might track website referrals, content downloads, event registrations, social engagement, enquiries or other meaningful responses

Coverage volume can form part of the Performance PR measurement framework, but it should not be viewed in isolation. A high number of articles in publications that do not reach the target audience may have less value than one detailed feature in a title that buyers know and trust. Effective measurement considers the quality, relevance and impact of the result.

These KPIs are tracked across the different channels of an integrated campaign, from media relations to content and social media to creative work, all pulling in the same direction toward the agreed targets.

Why choose Whiteoaks for Performance PR

Performance PR isn’t just another marketing tactic at Whiteoaks. It’s ingrained in our approach, because it embodies our values and behaviours as a B2B tech PR agency.

Our values – quality, teamwork, integrity and commerciality – underpin our performance-led approach. In our employee-owned business, every member of staff is personally invested, so your results are our success too. That alignment translates into better outcomes for clients.

Performance PR allows us to be one hundred per cent accountable to our clients, and to continually improve and evolve our services.

Over our 30-year heritage, that’s helped us become a trusted partner to many. You can see the approach in action across our client work.

Want greater clarity and accountability from your PR investment? Talk to our team about a Performance PR campaign built around your business objectives.

 

FAQ

What is Performance PR?

Performance PR is a results-driven approach to public relations that connects PR activity to clear business objectives and measurable outcomes. At Whiteoaks, accountability is built into our Performance PR model. We offer ‘fixed fees for fixed outcomes’ with agreed targets backed by a formal service level agreement and money-back guarantee.

How is Performance PR measured?

Performance PR is measured using metrics including media coverage quality, website traffic, organic search performance, lead generation, conversions and engagement.

How is Performance PR different from traditional PR?

Traditional PR relationships are typically based on a monthly retainer and a set amount of agency activity. Performance PR instead focuses on agreed campaign outcomes, with defined targets linked to business goals and agency accountability for delivering them.

Why is measuring PR performance important?

Measuring the performance of PR campaigns enables B2B businesses to understand campaign effectiveness, optimise future strategies and demonstrate return on investment.