We think PR firms charge way too much, with very little accountability and transparency. It's also difficult to figure out which PR firms are good, and which suck.
We are building a marketplace that will help you get PR help quickly, reliably and cheaply.
Interested? What do you think?
Want to join our beta? prmarketplace@gmail.com
If I can say "I want to see positive coverage of my product in NYT, WSJ, SF Chronicle etc and am willing to pay $500 for each positive piece", then that’s it!
I'd pay $500 for each full review in a tier 1 publication (and half that for a simple mention), $300 for tier 2, and $200 for tier 3, and $100 for blogs etc.
I'd define each tier by the number of impressions or circulation etc. I'd also like to say which demographics I want to focus on etc.
You're an explosion waiting to happen, and will truly disrupt PR firms (I think you’ll be a hit even if you’re mildly idiotic ;)! A caveat, a PR person can ruin a product’s or a business’ reputation by being shortsighted and annoying the press too much (shortsighted PR people don’t care about the long term relationship between the client and the press, they just want one piece in the press, grab the $500 and move on, so you will have to put safety mechanisms in place, also mechanisms against 2 or more people pitching the same product to the same guy at the same time (the press will hate this and blacklist the product due to the companies over-aggressive PR tactics), then fighting over who got the coverage). These are all easily addressable, if you can’t figure them out then I can help you figure this out (free, I don't mind helping its fun).
Anyway, big need, big market, do it already! :-)
Do you intend to go purely for the text of the release itself? As in, "here is my service/product/awesome-thing please write a press release for me to have distributed" or do you want to make that format for an entire end-to-end service?
On the pure copy basis I could see it easily becoming a good venue as it quite frankly is a complete and utter mess overall. For the entire release-to-distribution, while I would certainly use it a lot, I'm not sure how you would go about it. I'm certainly interested in seeing what you have in mind :)
While writing the text for your release is not our focus, we're open to adding it as an option.
What do you mean by measuring track record? Track record of the PR professional?
The way it works is that PR professionals submit proposals and then you select only one of them to work on your behalf. No one will reach out to journalists without your consent.
What makes you say the game theory is all wrong?
That seems better than what I was envisioning. It still seems like a transitional technology, but I can see it possibly working.
The thing is, you need to shows proof of the performance and the established relationships to the "press" of the PR people on your platform. I think it can be quite tricky.
as for your "Pay Per Performance" it will be hard to verify I think...
Deliverables will be coverage or mentions of your startup in media such as larger blogs, smaller blogs, national newspapers, local newspapers, magazines and niche publications.
Our value proposition:
(1) Spend 10-20% of what PR firms charge (2) Pay ONLY IF they deliver the type of coverage you want and agreed to
However, PayOnlyIf does make it much more interesting. It aligns incentives.