Digital PR for the trade press that actually covers your category
MJBizDaily, iGB, CoinDesk, SBC News and the regional and specialist titles alongside them. These publications will not sell you a placement and a mainstream desk will not substitute for them. We pitch stories into them, and we tell you before you pay what a realistic result looks like.
What we do not do: national newsdesk relationships. We do not have them and we do not sell them.
…according to research published this week, the figure has risen for the fourth year running.
Digital PR is the part of link building where nothing changes hands
You produce something worth reporting, a journalist covers it because it makes their job easier, and the link arrives attached to the coverage. No fee, no negotiation, no placement to approve.
That is the appeal and it is also the whole risk. An editor can decline. A news cycle can swallow your story. The same asset that lands forty pickups in March can land three in April because something bigger broke that week. Anyone selling you certainty here is selling placements with a better name on the invoice.
What you get in exchange is coverage on titles that have never sold a link and never will, and a profile a competitor cannot outspend you into.
Before any number on this page, here is what one counts as
The entire category is denominated in a unit nobody defines. Ours is defined here, it is in the contract, and your report is built to it.
One unique root domain.
Editorially placed by a journalist or editor.
Live at day 30, checked and shown in your report.
A syndicated copy of the same article on a different domain.
An aggregator or scraper.
A second article on a domain we already counted.
A press-release wire republication.
Syndications, listed with their parent placement.
Unlinked brand mentions.
Nofollowed links.
All three carry real value and none of them inflates the headline number.
If a vendor gives you a pickup number without telling you which of these it includes, the number means nothing. Ask them the same question you can check us on.
Four campaign types, ordered by how reliably they land
Index and ranking studies
Rank the fifty states, or the licensed operators, or the product categories, by a public metric nobody has sorted before. No panel. No fielding cost, it reproduces every year, and it is the format regional and trade press run most often.
Reactive expert commentary
Something breaks in your category and your spokesperson is quoted the same day. Cheapest and most reliable of the four. It also depends more than any other on you replying in hours instead of days.
Public-data studies
Regulator filings, FOI responses, scraped public datasets, or your own transactional data anonymised. Real research, with no commissioned panel behind it. If you want nationally representative polling, we subcontract the fielding and say so on the quote.
Contributed columns
A named person with a position worth arguing, placed in trade press and opinion sections. Being accurate about it. This is closer to guest posting than to earned media, so we price it and report it that way.
Funding rounds, product launches and company milestones, unless there is genuine news underneath them. Most are not, they get zero pickup, and pitching them anyway is how agencies quietly turn digital PR into press-release distribution. We will tell you before you pay whether your milestone is news.
Brief to coverage in four to six weeks
Two weeks building something worth pitching, up to four pitching it. Reactive commentary skips the first half and runs in days.
Angle
Three or four story ideas tested against what your target titles have actually published this year, and the ones already done get killed before anyone writes anything.
Asset
The research, the methodology behind it, and a page on your own domain a journalist can link to. The asset lives with you, so the coverage keeps pointing somewhere useful.
Media list
Named journalists who cover this beat, checked against their bylines from the last three months. Not a database export, and the list comes to you before anyone is contacted.
Pitch
Individually written and sent in waves, so we can change the angle when the first wave tells us it is not landing. Every send is logged.
Report
Every placement with its URL, DR, link attribute and syndications. Unlinked mentions listed separately. The pitch log attached, so you can see what was sent and what came back.
Three things, and a campaign fails without any one
This is not boilerplate. Each one has killed a campaign for somebody, and two of the three sit entirely on your side of the line.
A spokesperson with a real title
Someone quotable, named, with a role a journalist recognises. No spokesperson, no reactive tier. It is the campaign type we are best at and it does not function without a human attached to it.
Approval inside 24 hours on reactive
A story breaks Tuesday morning and is dead by Thursday. Four days of sign-off means paying for a campaign that could not have run, and we would sooner say that now than invoice for it later.
Data you are willing to publish
Anonymised transactional data or internal benchmarks. Nothing at all is a valid answer. Without it we build from public sources, which is slower and narrows the angles available to us considerably.
If any of those three is unrealistic where you work, say so on the call. We will tell you honestly whether this is worth buying, and quite often the answer is that it is not.
Priced by the work. The guarantee sits on the parts we control
Nobody can honestly promise you an editor's decision. So we do not. Here is what goes in writing instead, and it is the part that costs us money whenever a campaign misses its number.
[N] angles developed and [N] named-journalist pitches sent, logged
Both of the above, monthly
Angles developed and pitches sent, with the send log attached to your report so you can read every journalist we approached and what came back.
A free re-pitch. Same asset, new angle, no fee, if pickups land under the number we agreed at scoping.
A stated share of the fee back if the campaign returns fewer than the agreed number of pickups, counted by the rule above and shown in the report.
That an editor will run it. Nobody can. A vendor who does is either buying placements and calling them coverage, or planning to make up the shortfall with links they bought somewhere else.
Below $4,000 a campaign this does not work. We will tell you to buy link insertions instead, because a cheap data study is a blog post with a chart on it and nobody covers those.
When digital PR is the wrong purchase
We sell both, which means we are the only people on this search result who can answer this without a stake in the answer. Most clients run both.
We make more money selling you the other thing
Digital PR is our highest-variance and lowest-margin service. Insertions and guest posts are more profitable for us and more predictable for you. So when we recommend digital PR, it is because your commercial pages are already covered and what you actually need is authority a marketplace cannot supply.
If your category pages are still thin, buy the placements first. We will say that on the call, and we say it often.
The report, redacted
Zero of ten competitor pages show one. This is a real report with the client removed.
The pitch log, showing every journalist contacted and what came back
Angles developed, including the ones we killed and why
Twelve-month persistence check on placements from previous campaigns
Cannabis, iGaming and crypto, plus the part nobody warns you about
These categories have real trade press that covers them seriously, and it is where the coverage worth having lives. A mainstream consumer desk is not a substitute for MJBizDaily or iGB, and a generalist PR firm has no relationships on those beats at all.
The warning is this. In regulated categories, adversarial framing is the default editorial posture. A survey about gambling behaviour or cannabis consumption can generate the coverage you asked for and damage you at the same time, because the angle that makes it newsworthy is often the angle you would not have chosen. We will tell you when we think a study is likely to be written against you, and sometimes that means not running it.
A PR firm structurally will not say that to you. We would rather lose the campaign than land the wrong one.
Digital PR questions, answered
What is digital PR?
Earning coverage on news sites and industry publications by giving a journalist something worth writing about. Original data, a genuine expert view, research nobody else has run, or a launch with something under it. The link arrives with the coverage. It is not bought.
How is digital PR different from link building?
Link building starts with a page you need links to and finds a placement for it. Digital PR starts with a story and earns coverage that happens to link. Digital PR reaches titles that will never sell a placement. It also gives up anchor control and predictability, which the comparison above sets out honestly.
What counts as a pickup?
One unique root domain, editorially placed, live at day 30. Syndicated copies, aggregators, second articles on a domain we already counted, and wire republications do not count. Unlinked mentions and nofollows are reported separately. The full rule is above and it is in the contract.
Do you guarantee coverage?
No. An editor's decision is not ours to sell, and a vendor guaranteeing a link count is either buying placements or planning to top up the shortfall with bought ones. We guarantee the work: angles developed, pitches sent with the log attached, a free re-pitch on a new angle if we land under the agreed number, and a stated share of the fee back if the campaign underdelivers.
How many pickups will we get?
It depends on the angle and the news cycle, and any specific number you are quoted before the work starts is a sales figure and not a forecast. We agree a realistic range at scoping based on your category and the format, we tell you when we think it is at the low end, and we report every placement against the counting rule above.
Will the coverage include a followed link?
Not always. Some titles nofollow every outbound link and some credit brands without linking at all. Those placements still carry referral traffic and brand value, and we count them separately so the link number stays a link number.
Do you have national newspaper relationships?
No. We work in trade, vertical, regional and specialist press, and in journalist-request platforms. If your campaign only succeeds with a national masthead, we are the wrong agency and we will say so on the first call.
Do you run digital PR in cannabis, iGaming and crypto?
Yes, and it is where we are hardest to replace. Those categories have serious trade press that a generalist firm has no relationships on. Note the honest caveat in the restricted-categories section above, because adversarial framing is the default posture on those beats.
How long does a campaign take?
Four to six weeks from brief to first coverage on a data-led campaign. Around two weeks on research and the asset, then two to four weeks pitching. Reactive commentary moves in days.
What do you need from us?
A quotable spokesperson with a real title, approval inside 24 hours on reactive work, and any data you are willing to publish. The campaigns that stall are the ones waiting on sign-off while the news cycle moves on.
Who owns the dataset and the asset afterwards?
You do. The research, the dataset, the visualisations and the on-site asset are yours, and they stay on your domain. The media list stays with us, because it is built from our own relationships and ongoing work.
What happens to earned links over time?
Some die. News URLs get archived, template changes strip outbound links, and articles get depublished. We check placements from previous campaigns at twelve months and report what is still live. We cannot replace an earned link the way we replace a placement, which is one of the real differences between the two services.
What if our budget is small?
Then buy link insertions instead and come back to this later. Below our stated minimum a data study is a blog post with a chart on it, and it does not get covered.
Tell us what data you sit on
Your category, your spokesperson, plus anything you are able to publish. We will come back with three angles, the titles most likely to run them, and an honest read on whether this is the right spend at all.
Three angles tested against what your target titles published this year
The named journalists who cover that beat
A realistic pickup range, with the counting rule attached
A straight answer on whether you should buy insertions instead