MAVPR’s Public Relations Services explained

An overview of a general campaign with Melissa A Vitale Public Relations

By Melissa A Vitale
 
There are tons of public relations agencies out there and there are also different ways to approach a PR campaign. In lieu of an elevator pitch that leaves out key details of what its like to engage with Melissa A Vitale PR, I wanted to give you a brief overview of what its like to work with us. 
 
General FAQs:
We have a detailed proposal process where we isolate the most newsworthy aspects of the brand, curate a sampling of storylines that would be pitched over the six-month campaign and review all the expectations of the account. 
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MAVPR works with Monthly retainer models. Our minimums vary heavily based on the media landscape and how many hours our experience indicates we’ll need to secure the results that MAVPR has become known for. Minimums vary heavily based on a variety of factors including how photo-friendly the products are, experts & brand founders available to speak to press, how topical the brand is to current conversations and the brand’s goals (if you’re hoping to be on CNBC Broadcast monthly, that varies differently from targeting mostly digital opportunities). Campaigns have a minimum engagement of six months. Clients get a monthly report based on press progress every month which includes a detail Birdseye view of the campaign to date. 

Overall Goal:
Every campaign has unique strategies, but most of the time, our goals across each client is similar: to make the brand the go-to source for whatever industry expertise or experience they offer. For instance, with a female-founded luxury cannabis brand, the goal is that whenever an industry editor or journalist thinks about luxury consumption décor, considers covering female-founded brands, or wants specific insight inclusive of the female consumer experience, they think of me and my client. The same is true with my sex-experts: with a couple’s sex-coach and play-party host, our goal is that whenever an editor or journalist has a question about orgasms, pleasure, or being a better lover, they think about him.
 
To sum it up, our goal is always to make our client the go-to source for their specific area of industry expertise or relevant product recommendations.  
 
Source-of-sources:
“Yeah, Melissa, being a go-to-source sounds like a dream; how do you make it happen?” Luckily, I’ve been doing most of that legwork for years. I’ve already created a reputation for being a source-of-sources among the sex and cannabis industries. I curate my client roster to be complimentary – meaning my clients aren’t competitors of eachother, but I offer a range of experts, brands, founders, and products that fit a broad variety of stories they may be working on. As someone eloquently put it, “I should’ve gone to you before putting in a HARO request.”
 
Multi-Prong:
I’ve heard of PR agencies that only focus on one topic, storyline or pitch at a given time. Media is not linear so our strategy shouldn’t be either. One of our main goals are full feature, glowing reviews of our clients in top tier outlets. But those can take a while. In the meantime, we create relationships with journalists working on existing stories that may be a fit for a brand’s product or expertise (inbound). Along with what comes through our network, we’re also creating outbound storylines not just around the brand story as a whole, but specific topics and ideas that the brand could be seen as a leader in.
 
Most of our campaigns have three-to-four main focuses:

1. Full Features: The mac-daddy of PR, I buy bottles of champagne when my clients have full features published. Because editorial timelines and the ability to greenlight a full feature are often out of my control, we supplement the time between launches and full-features announcements with commentary and roundups.
2. Product placements in roundups: This varies a bit if the brand has products or not, but experts are just as likely to get asked to give their recommendation for a product roundup as a brand is likely to be featured in it.
3. Thought Leadership & Expert Commentary: Once you’ve built a successful brand, you have expertise worth sharing. We place your quotes and thought leadership in turnkey industry stories.
4. Launch announcements: Historically about one per season, these are stand-alone timely announcements and help when we’ve built up relationships with press.  

 
With multi-pronged campaigns, we’re not just seeing coverage during announcements or coverage clusters, we’re seeing placements whenever there are relevant topics being written about. The brand is in stories it should be in.  
 
Taking time to get organized & set us up for success:
Since PR is chess not checkers, its more beneficial to take the time to get yourself set up for success. It helps when clients are organized and ready to launch and can send samples quickly for an intro mailer. We also use the first month to iron out and onboard messaging. This way, when we’re focused on placing roundups, full-features and commentary opportunities in tandem, we’re not missing vital components needed to secure the coverage.

The Results
"So, I get one placement a month?" More than that. Once a public relations campaign has had time to bear fruit, clients with MAVPR typically experience anywhere from two (2) to nine (9) placements in top tier or industry publications per month. Even before a brand has been introduced wide, historically, most brands typically experience at least two placements in the beginning months of PR. 

For brands looking to cement their name in their industry’s history, learn more about becoming a client: https://www.melissaavitale.com/become-a-client.html