How to Build a Digital PR Offering From Scratch w/ Ellie Hearn

• Digital PR works when it’s “good PR” grounded in SEO fundamentals.
• Traditional and digital PR are rapidly converging into one discipline.
• A sustainable digital PR offering is usually retainer-based and requires steady coverage and links.
• The strongest digital PR programs prioritize link value over link volume.
• Track things like link relevance, new referring domains, and business impact like organic visibility improvements—not raw link counts.
• Hiring and scaling work best when you use freelancers to bridge demand,

These days, I’m hearing more and more from people who know they want to offer digital PR to clients but don’t know how.

Ellie Hearn has been in the digital PR world for years, working with some of the UK’s top agencies, including Digitaloft, iProspect, Aira, and Journey Further. Now she’s with, Re:signal, helping build the offering from the ground up.

In this podcast, we talked all about what you need to know to get started: services to offer, how to hire, what to charge, and challenges along the way.

Ellie sets a fantastic blueprint for anyone interested in this stuff.

How did you end up with Re:signal?

Yeah, so I started at Hilary’s, who I feel like were a bit of a trailblazer in terms of digital PR, which I definitely didn’t know when I first joined.

Initially, I was split between trad PR and digital PR, which I actually think has come in really handy throughout my career.

I had an amazing manager, shout out to Lucy Askew, who taught me everything I knew to start with.

And then I moved down to London during the pandemic, which was kind of a crazy move. Started at Digitaloft, also have an amazing team over there.

Then I went to iProspect, which was pretty amazing, and I worked with some big, big names.

Then I went over to Aira, which was fab in terms of a creative and data standpoint.

And then most recently, I was at Journey Further, where I was for two years, which was a long stint, and it was a very, very good experience.

Absolutely loved the team there. And yeah, recently joined R:esignal with Shannon, who I love, absolutely. And yeah, we’re starting work on building out the Digital PR team, which is very, very exciting.

How do you compare traditional PR to digital PR?

So I guess Trad PR was more around product launches, collection launches, in-person events, and relationship building with journals.

Like I think I even went and did desk drops with cakes to a few journalists, which I feel like is so crazy to say today.

So there were many more tactics.

We were more interested in getting in print rather than kind of building links or getting online brand mentions.

But my role was 50-50 split.

So at the same time as I was doing that, I was doing the digital PR campaigns.

And that was back, kind of in the glory days, when it was stuff like, I think we did a sleep calculator. We did a parent saving calculator. It was a calculator days. ⁓ And it was so fun to work on.

I think looking back, the relevancy may not have been there as much as we thought it was at the time, but we live, and we learn.

Do you feel like traditional PR and digital PR are merging?

Ellie (04:54)
Yeah, definitely. I think more acutely over the past year or so, I feel like traditional and digital PR are coming together and it’s gonna, I think one day in the very near future, it’s gonna be just PR.

We’re not gonna have that distinction.

I think Amy Gibson at Digitaloft does really amazing product PR.

I learned so much from her, and also the ways to get product PR to work from a digital PR point of view as well.

It is challenging with affiliate links and stuff like that, but there’s definitely, I think, with the rise of LLMs and stuff like that, I think we’re seeing all types of brand mentions matter. So I think looking forward that’s going to become a more important tactic in the digital PR toolkit.

What are the core services that go into digital PR if you’re thinking of starting an offering?

So I think at the core, digital PR is just really good PR, essentially.

And I think Google kind of rewards that, and it’s going to reward it more and more.

I think if you’re getting your brand in between conversations that are relevant to their target audience, if you understand their bio personas, if you’re creating genuinely helpful content, and I know that’s a bit of a buzzword, but if it is genuinely helpful content, I think that you can’t really go wrong.

I guess in terms of digital PR, it’s prioritizing those sites that follow link giving.

Although I do think that’s becoming less and less important.

I think having campaigns that can transcend across socials is going to become more and more important as well.

I think brand awareness, as well as just the traditional link-building side of things, is going to become more important as well.

So I think in terms of what your toolkit needs to be, it’s outreach generally, product PR, campaigns, and reactive comments are huge. Any news checking opportunities, I feel like that’s becoming more and more important.

But essentially, that all needs to be underlined by good SEO, so what you really need is a strong organic opportunity analysis to identify which keywords you could be ranking for that you’re not quite hitting those good positions yet.

I think you need to understand where your competitors are getting links, where you’re not getting links, more importantly, where your competitors haven’t got links yet that you can get links and kind of leapfrog them a little bit like that.

So I think having an excellent understanding of the SEO fundamentals and then doing good PR is essentially digital PR in a nutshell.

Have you found yourself working differently now that AI is here?

I think the core principles are pretty similar, as long as you’re creating relevant content, it’s going to rank.

For example, we had a campaign for a client a few weeks ago, and within 24 hours, it was ranking in AI overviews.

So I think, and we hadn’t optimized it at all for AI.

We hadn’t really been massively prioritizing that for this campaign, but it did it anyway.

So I think the core principles are still going to be the same. But having said that, it’s so new. I feel like there’s not really enough data to be able to dig into it.

We did a couple of projects recently, and the data only went back three months.

And we were like, it’s very hard to draw conclusions about things that only have three months’ worth of data.

So it’s a bit of a cop out answer, but I think watch this space.

I hink things may change, but I think if you’re doing good PR, you’re probably not going to get penalized.

I think what Google’s trying to do and what all these other sorts of platforms are going to try to do is stop you from gaming the system.

So like in the days of Black Hat SEO, think anything that you’re doing to try and outsmart the system isn’t going to work.

I think just take it back to basics and just make sure that you’re serving your customers well, and that should hopefully translate.

Is your service offered on a retainer?

So I think a retainer is definitely the way to go.

I think project-based work is a little bit tricky because it can be hard to get things off the ground in a short space of time.

I think to see real impact, you need to be building a steady drumbeat of links over a long period of time.

But I’m not against a pilot project just to prove the concept works and show you can work together.

I think in terms of the tactics you deploy, there are a few different things I think about.

So, is the team you’re working with time-poor?

Because if they are, then maybe a newsroom approach isn’t going to be great, because they’re not going to have time to sign off comments, and we know you need to be quick with it.

I think it depends on the budget they’ve got available.

It depends on how much they need to be doing to close the gap with their competitors.

If they’re doing well and they just need to maintain their position, they probably don’t need to throw everything at it.

They can probably take a bit more of a step back. But I guess it depends on their budget and goals.

But also, I think it very much depends on the niche.

Some, for example, fashion clients can be quite competitive. So I think you do need the hero campaigns.

I think you do need data sets.

You’ve got lots of angles to go out after.

Whereas other accounts, like the one I worked with a really great client a while ago, who had an in-house nutritionist, and she was amazing.

She had so much knowledge, and we were able to build very, very consistent links all the time just with comments.

So I think it totally depends on the client.

So feel like that was another cop-out answer, but I think there were a lot of factors.

What are some other tips based on institutional knowledge?

Yeah, I think the first tip would be whatever sign of time a client gives you, double it because it’s probably gonna take longer than they think.

And I don’t think they’re lying to you because they are trying to make your life more difficult.

I think there are lots of things, especially when you first start working with a client, that come up that the client didn’t even know was gonna be blockers.

So think about allowing more time when you’re building a roadmap for a client, first of all.

If you do have a client with very slow sign-off times, something I’ve found really helpful is sending over a bunch of stuff all at once.

And then they can hopefully go through the process without having to revisit loads and loads of times.

So I think doing that, like doing loads of production upfront, definitely is helpful.

And I also think maybe finding areas that they’re not going to be so nervous about.

I think having a really in-depth onboarding is so important. That’s something that Katherine Watson is an absolute champion of, and she’s amazing at onboarding.

She taught me so much, and it’s all about really, really, really getting to know your client.

Because the more time you spend with them during that onboarding process, the easier your life’s going to be throughout the course of the relationship, because things aren’t going to come up.

Don’t be shy to ask questions.

When I first started with client comms, I felt like I should have known everything about them, and it would look like I didn’t.

Then I’d get into an awkward situation where I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m too scared to ask.

So ask questions, be nosy.

I think if a client doesn’t want to ask a question, they’re just going to say, no, I don’t want to answer that.

So don’t feel shy to ask stuff.

Find out what they’re doing in other places in the business, because you might find out that you might not get something signed off because they’re already doing that somewhere else.

So I think just getting to know them is really going to help a lot.

How do you decide what tactics are best for which type of client?

Yeah, so I think if you do want to go down the expert commentary route and your client is time poor, you can look at Response Source, and you can actually look at really old requests.

So you can see lots of stuff is seasonal.

So, for example, with our nutritionist, we knew that every year people were asking about winter cold.

So if you know that winter cold season is going to come up, you can kind of almost build a year-long content bank, and there are loads of places that distinctly have a really good content calendar that have loads of awareness days.

There are so many of them if you Google it. It can be really good, so you can kind of download a few of those and then just go through for your different clients and build them individual ones.

I think the way I feel about tactics more generally, and I don’t know anything about investing or stock portfolios or anything like that but I think about it as the theory of that so you want maybe some high-risk stuff that might not work, but it might you want some stuff that’s probably gonna work but not be amazing and then you want some stuff that’s a little bit boring but it will definitely bring in links.

So I think there are different tactics that you can deploy.

I think getting to know your client and what they’re gonna be excited about and what you’re gonna be able to get pushed through is probably gonna take a few months, but once you’re in that groove, I think you can find your feet, and you can get into a really nice way of working.

How do you sell digital PR to clients?

So I think the hardest thing about digital PR, apart from getting coverage, is proving the value of digital PR to clients.

So I think there are a few things in terms of client comms.

I think knowing who your client is.

So are you talking to the brand PR team?

Are you talking to the SEO team?

Because they’re going to have very different things they’re interested in, in terms of how to sell it.

I think the days of just selling link numbers are long gone. I think you could get a hundred links that might not do anything if they’re relevant.

And if they’re a bit spammy, and if they’re not good, and if you’ve already got those links.

Whereas I think you could get 10 to 20 links that are amazing and that really move the needle.

So I think working really closely with the SEO team, the organic team, I worked with a guy called Joe Kiley who I also absolutely adore at Journey Further and he was just a whiz at turning the links that we’d get into real business impact.

So I think we get a little bit in our own echo chamber of digital PR, we believe just links, links, links, but really what we care about is whether we’re making them money at the end of the day.

If you can show that your links are positively impacting, for example, a keyword set you really want to target, then you’re obviously making a case that it’s not just the digital PR work.

But I think there is some cause and effect if you’ve been doing a lot of stuff around those keywords and you can show that maybe year on year, month on month, they’re improving, then that’s having real business impact.

And that’s something that they’re going to be able to, that your client’s going to be able to take to their boss and make them look good.

Another tip I have is building a relationship with your client contact, finding out what their objectives are or their team’s objectives and how your work can ladder up to that.

Because at the end of the day, if you make them look good, they’re gonna wanna keep you around for as long as they can.

How do you message link quality vs quantity?

Yeah, so I think the first thing you have to do is understand why they want to build links.

So no one wants to build links just for the of building links.

You want to build links because you want to get a certain category or a certain area of your site seen by more people.

That’s essentially what we’re trying to do.

So understanding that and then maybe doing an audit of their existing links that they’ve got and showing that really these links were built over this period but it didn’t impact your visibility.

Before I joined, Shannon did a really amazing job of setting up a revalue score.

So that looks at a number of different factors that we know impact the quality of a link.

So is it a follow link?

Has your client already got that link?

Is it a fresh referring domain?

Does it have a good DR?

Is it relevant?

All those sorts of things.

I think there are a few more that I’m forgetting.

But those kind of core principles really show whether a link is valuable or not. And I think as long as it’s something where even if you could see someone, maybe someone from your buyer persona is going to be on that site and is going to engage in that content, that’s a win.

That’s a really, really good link to have compared to having a thousand links that no one’s ever gonna see.

How do you set fees?

I’ve always worked places where we would cost up how much a campaign is going to take in terms of production.

And then we can kind of leverage that against the client’s budget and what they want to achieve over time.

And I think a really good KPI to be held against is organic visibility improvements rather than link numbers.

So that’s something I’m always really passionate about.

I do think there are some clients out there that want to see the link numbers, but I don’t think you have to work with every client that approaches you.

I think sometimes for the sake of your team, for the sake of your reputation long term, there are certain clients which, and I’m sure lots of people that are agency side have had RFPs come in and have just gone, this is a walking red flag.

I’ve been, like, I’ve had a few clients like that in my time where you know when you get given the client, it’s gonna be a nightmare, and it is, and the client leaves unhappy, the team’s unhappy, and it’s just not good for anyone. So I think you need to find a client that is going to value the work you’re bringing and has very similar values and morals to what you have.

Do you have those conversations where you have to connect the dots between links and organic traffic?

I don’t know if it’s possible to say 20 links is gonna get you this amount because there are so many other variables, like your site could break, or Google could do an algorithm update that could send everything plummeting.

So I think it’s very difficult, but I think you can benchmark it.

You can look at similar clients of similar size and similar spaces, and you can say, this is the work we have done.

It’s a little bit harder when you’re building an offering, but you can look at examples of competitors and you can, I mean, you can find out pretty much anything on Ahrefs these days and other platforms.

So you can kind of see how many links they’ve got, how they’ve built them over time, and look at link velocity.

So if this competitor has got much better visibility than you, and is building 20 links a month, you probably need to build 20 links a month or 25, and then you’re probably gonna appear higher than them.

But you also need to remember that it’s not just happening in digital PR worlds.

We also need to make sure that our tech SEO is good.

We need to make sure our content’s good as well, because otherwise you’re gonna be just chasing yourself around and around and around trying to like fix one thing.

It’s not really gonna come together.

How long does it take to see results with digital PR?

So in terms of deliverables, I feel like you want to have about a month onboarding, getting to know the brand, coming up with ideas, figuring out ways of working.

Then, month two is probably going to be production, stuff like that.

You might start a newsroom if that’s a viable tactic.

So you might start to see coverage come in around month two.

Month three, ideally, you want to have things really flowing.

You want to have a steady stream of links coming in.

And I think maybe after that point, it’s going to take a little bit of time to see those improvements that you see with good PR coverage.

As you can see, you can get the client excited by getting them in a publication they’re really excited to be in.

You can show the readership, you can show people engaging with it on social media.

So I think it is a bit difficult in the first few months to really show that value because you haven’t embedded yourself yet.

You haven’t got those sorts of improvements that do take a little bit longer.

And that’s what I mean about digital PR not being perfectly suited to project work, because stop-start isn’t a great approach for it.

So you do need to kind of build it consistently over a period of time.

But I think there are lots of other things you can get clients excited about in the meantime.

Hopefully, you’ll have set expectations with that client during the pitch process and the onboarding process that this isn’t going to be an overnight thing.

How do you estimate how long it will take to get coverage for clients?

So it depends, I think in the US the lead time’s longer for stories.

I’ve always found that journalists aren’t in as much of a rush.

For B2B titles there’s usually bit of a longer lead time.

I think it depends on whether the piece is very, very relevant.

If it’s a news-jacking piece about something that’s a breaking news story today, if you haven’t got coverage by that day or the next day, it’s probably not gonna happen because I don’t think people are going back like that.

I think with a campaign, I would get worried if a piece had been outreached for a week in the UK and wasn’t getting links.

That’s why I’d be like, okay, let’s really have a look at this and see what’s going on.

In terms of talking to clients, I think the approach is always, it’s better to start off slow.

Do A-B testing with our headlines.

We send out to a couple of contacts and see which headlines are landing better.

And then we slowly kind of keep doing that process over and over again.

So I think it’s all about setting expectations.

But yeah, it does get a little bit tricky. Keep saying it depends to clients.

That’s a very SEO thing, I think.

When do you know it’s time to start building out your team?

It’s very difficult because you’ve got the pipeline and then you’ve got the team, the existing team’s mental health, like you don’t want to overwhelm them, but you also don’t want to hire someone and then not have the revenue to keep it going.

So I think it’s difficult.

I think you always want to be able to hire ahead of the curve.

I think that’s everyone’s goal.

The reality isn’t always that, isn’t always that.

But I think we’re lucky in the digital PR world because we have an incredible network of freelancers. Like, I mean, just absolutely top tier. And I don’t know if other industries have that or if we realize how lucky we are.

But there are some incredible freelancers out there.

You do need to try and get them booked up because they do get booked up pretty quick.

But I think you can kind of leverage freelancers until you’re feeling really confident that you’ve got things signed and some definite revenue coming in for the next few months.

And ideally, you want to have a slow onboarding for that person that’s joining the team as well.

You don’t want to hire someone and go, right, here’s five accounts, you need to go straight away.

You want to have that, and you want time dedicated to them so they can get the most out of it and their career as well.

And I think just being really open and honest with things.

Like I’m a very honest person, maybe to my own detriment sometimes, but I think really setting expectations with people, because we’re all adults, we all kind of want to do a good job, well hopefully we all want to do a good job and have great careers.

So I think if you’re just honest with people then you get the best out of them.

Are there services in the UK that provide freelancers specifically for digital PR?

I don’t know. That could be a moneymaker.

Maybe this is a business idea.

I’ve always worked directly with freelancers who have typically been people I’ve worked with at agencies who have leaped to go freelance.

So I’ve never needed a service.

But yeah, that could be a moneymaking idea.

How do you determine a good hire?

Me and Shannon have been talking about this and it’s like, it’s, like an ineffable quality.

Like there’s, there’s some people that just have that spark and it’s really hard.

I think it’s being able to spot a headline and anchor a story to the current news agenda.

Being someone confident to say this story isn’t good. Let’s not do this. Let’s pivot. That’s a real big skill.

I think it took me a long time to learn because, especially when you’re a junior, it feels like you have to just say yes to everything.

But I think saying no is actually a very key skill.

But I think someone that’s just hungry for it, someone that wants to do it because they want to get good coverage, not just to like, not just a tick box exercise, like someone that’s really genuinely engaged and someone that has like critical thinking skills and that is thinking about bigger picture because I think someone that’s just like I need to get five links and that’s it, job done, isn’t gonna really benefit the client long term.

You need people to think about how I can really help this business, and whether that means spotting an opportunity in a response source that maybe doesn’t fit within your remit but might help the client.

And going for that, I think those just little extra touches kind of set people apart.

How do you incentivize a freelancer?

So I think instead of thinking about it as incentivizing someone, I think it’s about giving someone the tools to succeed.

So if you have a freelancer coming in for just a few days, have everything ready for them.

Have everything set up, address any questions they might have, and think it through beforehand.

It kind of goes back to this onboarding thing.

Even if you’re just onboarding a freelancer, give them everything they possibly need so they can hit the ground running.

I think being really honest and clear about our expectations is important.

If you say to them, “The client’s not happy, we really need to get coverage on these places specifically,” they know what they’re working towards.

I think just saying to someone, can you outreach this? And not giving them any parameters is not really gonna help anyone because then they don’t know what they’re aiming for.

I don’t love cultures where you have this is your link target, you have to hit this or else.

I don’t think that’s helpful either.

But I think there’s a happy middle ground and I think saying this is the ballpark what we’re looking for, this is the standard and here’s everything you need to get the job done.

And then just unblocking anything they might need is kind of how I would go about it.

And I’ve never really had to have a difficult conversation with a freelancer, so I think I’ve been very privileged, and the freelancers I’ve worked with have always got me loads of great coverage.

What are some things that you want people to know that we didn’t talk about?

I think one of the things is about…how it can be kind of scary, and it feels not that you’re alone, but it’s hard to know what you can say and how honest you can be about things.

And I’ve seen a couple of really great things from people on LinkedIn recently about them kind of oversharing about things.

And I think just leveraging your network and kind of telling people the struggles you’re having and getting insight on things.

I think everyone kind of goes through the same things in the digital PR world.

We have very similar challenges.

I think, I guess, yeah, just around on a personal level, it’s kind of tricky to navigate.

It’s exciting, and it’s fantastic, but it feels like a lot of pressure, and there’s a lot of unknowns, which is kind of a weird headspace to be in.

So yeah, I think the things I’ve seen on LinkedIn recently, like I think I saw a freelancer sharing his day rate, and I thought, “Wow, that’s really honest.”

I don’t know if I’d be so brave as to share that but it’s nice because then other people kind of know where to benchmark themselves.

So I think we do have quite a great community in the SEO digital PR world where people are very open and honest, and it’s really lovely.

I think that would maybe have been a question like how do you deal with it, personally, and yeah, that’s my answer as well.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

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Website: https://www.buzzstream.com