PR done wrong is worse than no PR at all. A botched pitch poisons your relationship with a journalist permanently. A crisis mishandled becomes a permanent SEO liability. A poorly prepared spokesperson can undo months of earned coverage in a single interview.
Here are the seven most common PR mistakes we see — and how to fix each one.
Mistake 1 — Treating PR Like Advertising
Advertising is paid. You control the message, the placement, the headline. PR is earned. You don't control what a journalist writes — you can only give them the best possible story to work with.
Brands that treat PR like advertising write press releases full of superlatives ("world-class," "revolutionary," "game-changing"), demand editorial approval on articles, and get frustrated when coverage isn't glowing. Journalists see this coming a mile away and ignore it entirely.
Mistake 2 — Blasting Generic Press Releases to Everyone
The spray-and-pray approach to PR — sending the same release to a list of 500 journalists — does more damage than good. Open rates tank. Your domain gets flagged as spam. Relationships that could have been valuable get poisoned before they start.
One well-targeted pitch to 10 relevant journalists will outperform a mass blast to 500 every single time. Quality over volume is not a cliché — it's the entire game in earned media.
Mistake 3 — Having No Crisis Plan Before You Need One
Every brand will face a PR crisis eventually. A product recall, a viral social media incident, an executive controversy, a data breach — it's not if, it's when. And when it happens, you have approximately 60 minutes to get your initial response right before the narrative runs away from you.
Brands with no crisis plan on file spend those first 60 minutes in a panic, going through legal approval loops and trying to agree on messaging from scratch. Brands with a plan spend those 60 minutes executing it.
Mistake 4 — Ignoring Trade and Vertical Media
Everyone wants Forbes. Meanwhile, the publication actually read by your target buyers — the industry trade with 40,000 highly engaged subscribers — goes unpitched. Trade media often drives higher conversion rates than consumer press, because the audience is exactly the person who buys your product.
A feature in a relevant B2B trade can send more qualified inbound leads in a week than a Forbes mention. Don't neglect it.
Mistake 5 — Sending Unprepared Spokespeople Into Interviews
Media training is not optional. One off-message quote, one poorly handled hostile question, one spokesperson who goes off script — and you've handed a journalist a much better story than the one they came in to write.
Preparation means: knowing the three key messages you will deliver, knowing how to bridge back to those messages from difficult questions, and having practised the three toughest questions you're likely to face until the answers are instinctive.
Mistake 6 — Measuring Vanity Metrics
Impressions and clip counts are easy to generate and nearly impossible to connect to business outcomes. If the only thing you can report to your CEO is "we got 47 mentions this quarter," you're measuring the wrong things.
Better metrics: share of voice in your category, sentiment trends over time, inbound leads attributed to specific coverage, journalist relationship depth (are they proactively coming to you for comment?). These are metrics that tell a real business story.
Mistake 7 — Disappearing Between Campaign Cycles
PR is a relationship business. Journalists who only hear from you when you have something to announce very quickly learn to tune you out. The brands that get consistent, quality coverage are the ones building relationships when they have nothing to sell.
Send journalists relevant data they might not have seen. Offer them a quick expert quote for a story they're working on — even if it's not about you. Congratulate them on a great piece. These micro-interactions compound into the kind of relationship where they come to you first.
None of these mistakes are fatal on their own. But they tend to cluster — brands that make one usually make several. The good news is that each one is entirely fixable with the right approach.
If you want an honest assessment of where your current PR approach stands, talk to our team.