You’ve done the research. You’ve compared what digital PR costs. You’ve had the calls. You’ve signed the contract. Now what?
This is the part nobody talks about. Every agency has a “results” page. Very few explain what happens between signing the contract and seeing your brand in a headline. That gap creates anxiety, and anxious clients make bad decisions: they micromanage, they panic at week two, or they pull the plug before anything has time to work.
I run Presslei, a reactive PR agency in Zurich. I’ve onboarded dozens of brands. The first month follows a predictable rhythm, and understanding that rhythm is the difference between a productive partnership and a frustrating one.
Here’s exactly what happens, week by week.
Before We Start: The Mindset Shift
If you’re coming from paid advertising, you need to recalibrate. Paid ads work like a vending machine: insert money, get clicks. PR works like farming: you prepare soil, plant seeds, tend them, and harvest later.
Your first month is soil preparation. It’s essential work that determines whether month two and three produce results. Skipping it or rushing it is how agencies end up pitching weak angles to wrong journalists and blaming “the media landscape.”
Week 1: Discovery and Brand Audit
The Discovery Call (Day 1-2)
This is the most important meeting of the entire engagement. A good agency will spend 60 to 90 minutes asking questions that might feel uncomfortably basic:
- What does your business actually do, in one sentence?
- Who are your customers and why do they choose you over alternatives?
- What data do you have access to? Customer data, usage patterns, pricing trends, survey results?
- Who in your company can speak to media? How fast can they respond?
- What’s your approval process for quotes and data?
- Have you had any media coverage before? What worked, what didn’t?
- What are your competitors doing in PR?
The discovery call is not a sales pitch. If your agency spends this call talking about themselves instead of asking about you, that’s a red flag.
At Presslei, we record and transcribe every discovery call. The details matter. A throwaway comment about customer behavior often becomes the seed of a campaign that lands coverage in month two.
The Brand Audit (Day 2-5)
While you go back to running your business, the agency gets to work. A proper brand audit covers:
Your digital footprint. Domain authority, existing backlink profile, current search rankings, social presence. This establishes the baseline so results can be measured against something real, not vibes.
Your competitors’ PR activity. Who’s getting coverage in your space? What angles are they using? Which journalists cover them? This is competitive intelligence that shapes your strategy. We use tools like Ahrefs to reverse-engineer competitor backlinks and identify journalists who already cover your industry.
Your story potential. Based on everything from the discovery call, the agency identifies 3 to 5 potential story angles. These might be data studies, expert commentary opportunities, or reactive topics where your brand can add value.
Media landscape mapping. Which publications cover your industry? What’s the quality range (domain authority, readership)? Are there gaps where no one is covering a topic your brand owns?
What You Should Expect from Week 1
By Friday of week one, you should receive a written summary that includes: the key angles identified, the competitive landscape, and a preliminary plan. If you don’t hear anything until week two, ask. Communication cadence gets set in the first week, and silence is a habit that only gets worse.
What You Should NOT Expect
Coverage. Pitches. Media mentions. None of that happens in week one, and if an agency promises otherwise, they’re either sending spam blasts or being dishonest about their process.
Week 2: Angle Development and Media List Building
Angle Development (Day 6-10)
This is where the creative work happens. The agency takes the 3 to 5 raw angles from the audit and develops them into pitchable stories.
For each angle, the work includes:
Data gathering. If the angle requires data (and the best ones do), the agency either analyzes your internal data, sources public datasets, or designs a survey. I’ve written about how to run a data PR campaign on zero budget using free sources like Google Trends and government statistics. Agency campaigns typically go deeper, but the principle is the same: the data is what makes the story credible.
Headline testing. A good angle needs a headline that makes a journalist stop scrolling. The agency drafts 5 to 10 potential headlines for each angle and stress-tests them. Would this get clicked? Is the claim surprising but defensible? Does it connect to a topic journalists are already covering?
Narrative framing. The same data can tell different stories. “Remote workers are 15% more productive” and “Office mandates may be costing companies 15% of output” are the same finding, framed differently. The right frame depends on which journalists you’re targeting.
Media List Building (Day 8-12)
Simultaneously, the agency builds the journalist list for your first campaign. This is not a generic database dump. It’s a curated list of 20 to 40 journalists who:
- Have written about your specific topic in the last 90 days
- Write for publications that match your target domain authority range
- Have a track record of including links in their coverage
- Are reachable via email, LinkedIn, or both
We maintain a database of over 27,000 journalists organized by beat and publication. But the database is a starting point. Every campaign requires custom research to find the right 20 to 40 names.
Your Role in Week 2
This is when the agency needs the most from you. They’ll come back with angle options and ask for your input:
- Which data can you share, and what needs legal review?
- Who in your company can provide expert quotes?
- Do any of these angles conflict with upcoming product plans or partnerships?
- Which angle feels most aligned with your brand?
Respond quickly. The number one thing that delays PR campaigns is slow client feedback. If the agency sends angle options on Tuesday and you respond the following Monday, you’ve just pushed everything back a week.
Week 3: Campaign Preparation and First Pitches
Campaign Finalization (Day 12-16)
By now, the agency has a refined angle, supporting data, and a journalist list. Week three is about assembling the campaign materials:
The pitch email. A short, targeted email (under 100 words) that leads with the most interesting finding and explains why it matters to that specific journalist. If you want to see what effective pitches look like, I’ve shared templates that actually get replies.
Supporting assets. Data tables, charts, expert quotes, methodology notes. These aren’t sent with the pitch (attachments kill response rates) but they need to be ready within minutes of a journalist expressing interest.
Expert briefing. If a journalist wants to interview your CEO or subject matter expert, that person needs to be prepared. The agency should provide talking points, likely questions, and media training tips. Nothing ruins a placement faster than an expert who rambles for 20 minutes when the journalist needed a 30-second soundbite.
First Pitches Go Out (Day 15-19)
This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The agency sends the first batch of pitches. At Presslei, we send in waves: 8 to 10 pitches on day one, then adjust based on early responses before sending the next batch.
Here’s what the timeline typically looks like:
- Day 15: First pitch wave sent (8-10 journalists)
- Day 16-17: First responses trickle in. Some will be immediate interest. Some will be “interesting, can you send more data?” Some will be silence.
- Day 18: Follow-up wave to non-responders with a new hook or additional data point
- Day 19: Second pitch wave to the next batch of journalists
What Responses Look Like
Not all journalist responses are a “yes.” Here’s the realistic breakdown from our experience:
- 30-40% will not respond at all. This is normal. Journalists get hundreds of emails daily.
- 10-15% will respond with interest. “Send me the data” or “Can your expert do a call Thursday?”
- 5-10% will say not right now. “Interesting but doesn’t fit my current lineup. Keep me in mind.”
- The rest will decline or their auto-reply will tell you they’ve moved outlets.
A 10 to 15% positive response rate on targeted pitches is genuinely good. If someone promised you 50%, they’re sending to a very loose definition of “targeted.”
Week 4: Momentum, Reactive Opportunities, and First Results
Managing Live Opportunities (Day 20-25)
If the proactive pitches are working, week four is about converting interest into coverage. This means:
- Sending data within minutes when a journalist asks for it
- Coordinating expert interviews between your team and journalists
- Providing additional context when a journalist is writing their piece and needs one more data point
This is also when reactive PR enters the picture. By week four, the agency understands your brand well enough to spot breaking news opportunities where your expertise fits. A trending story about your industry, a government report related to your data, a competitor scandal that creates a commentary opportunity.
Reactive PR moves fast. When a story breaks, you have 2 to 4 hours to respond. The agency drafts a pitch, sends it to journalists covering the story, and coordinates with your team for quotes. This is where relationships built during weeks one through three pay off.
First Coverage (Day 22-30)
Realistic expectations for end of month one:
- Best case: 2 to 4 placements, including at least one in a mid to high authority publication
- Average case: 1 to 2 placements, with several more “in progress” (journalist has the data, article is being written)
- Slow start case: 0 placements published, but 3 to 5 warm conversations with journalists
All three of these are normal. PR is not a guaranteed timeline. What matters is the pipeline, not just the published pieces. A journalist who says “I’ll use this for a piece I’m writing next month” is a win, even if it doesn’t show up in your month-one report.
I’ve covered timeline expectations in more depth in how long PR takes to show results.
What a Good Agency Delivers by Day 30
By the end of month one, you should have received:
- A brand audit and competitive analysis with specific, actionable findings
- 2-3 developed campaign angles with supporting data and narrative framing
- A curated media list of journalists relevant to your space
- First pitches sent with response tracking
- A progress report showing what was sent, who responded, and what’s in the pipeline
- Reactive monitoring set up for your industry keywords
If your agency hasn’t provided these by day 30, ask for them. If they can’t provide them, you have the wrong agency.
Red Flags in Month One
Having worked on both sides of the agency-client relationship, here are the warning signs:
No communication for a week or more. A good agency sends weekly updates, even when the update is “nothing new yet, here’s what we’re working on.”
Generic pitches. Ask to see a sample pitch. If it reads like a press release that could be sent to any journalist, the outreach isn’t targeted.
No data, no angles. If the agency hasn’t identified a clear story angle by end of week two, they’re stalling.
Promising specific placements. “We’ll get you in Forbes by month two” is a lie. No agency controls what journalists choose to publish. They can influence it through great pitches and strong relationships, but guarantees are fiction.
Avoiding metrics. If the agency doesn’t want to track KPIs that matter like domain authority of placements, link type, and referral traffic, they’re hiding something.
How to Be a Good Client in Month One
The relationship goes both ways. The best clients I’ve worked with share these habits:
Respond within 24 hours. When the agency sends angle options or asks for data, respond fast. Every day of delay is a day the campaign doesn’t move forward.
Designate one decision maker. If every email needs approval from marketing, legal, and the CEO, nothing will ever move fast enough for reactive PR.
Share the uncomfortable data. The most interesting PR stories come from data that makes you slightly nervous to share. “Our customers spend 40% more than the industry average” is more pitchable than “we have great products.”
Trust the process. Don’t ask for coverage stats on day 10. Don’t suggest pitching TechCrunch before you’ve earned any coverage. Let the strategy unfold.
Be honest about your concerns. If something isn’t working or you don’t understand the approach, say so. Good agencies welcome pushback because it makes the work better.
The Compound Effect: Why Month One Matters Most
Month one produces the least visible results and the most important foundational work. The brand audit informs every pitch for the next 12 months. The journalist relationships started in week three will produce coverage in months three, four, and five. The data gathered now becomes the basis for future campaigns.
From our analysis of 5,272 media placements, the brands with the strongest year-two results were the ones that invested most heavily in month-one preparation. They had sharper angles, better data, and deeper journalist relationships because they didn’t rush the setup.
The brands that demanded results in week two? Most of them churned by month four.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should my PR agency be communicating with me in the first month?
At minimum, once per week with a written update. The best agencies communicate 2-3 times per week during onboarding, even if it’s a short Slack message or email. If you go more than 5 business days without hearing from your agency in month one, that’s a problem.
What if I don’t get any coverage in the first month?
Don’t panic. PR timelines are not linear. A journalist who received your pitch in week three might publish their article in week six. What matters is the quality of the pipeline: how many journalists showed interest, how many have your data, and how many conversations are active. If none of those numbers are above zero by day 30, then you should have a serious conversation with your agency.
Can I see the pitches before they go out?
You can and should ask to review the first few pitches. After that, most agencies will shift to sending pitches without pre-approval to maintain speed, especially for reactive opportunities. Agree on approval workflow during onboarding so there are no surprises.
What’s the difference between a retainer agency and a campaign-based agency?
Retainer agencies charge a monthly fee (typically $3,000-10,000) for ongoing work. Campaign-based agencies charge per project. Retainers make sense for brands that need continuous coverage. Campaign-based pricing makes sense for brands testing the waters or with seasonal PR needs. Check our cost breakdown for detailed pricing benchmarks.
Ready to earn editorial coverage that actually builds authority? Presslei delivers 8-14 placements in DR 70+ publications per campaign. No retainer. No risk. Book a free strategy call and let’s see if reactive PR fits your brand.
Salva Jovells is the founder of Presslei, a reactive PR agency based in Zurich. He’s spent 12 years in ecommerce SEO and has analyzed 5,272 media placements to build a data-driven approach to earning press coverage.
About the Author
Salvador Jovells
Founder of Presslei. 12+ years in ecommerce SEO across international markets. After a decade of link buying for Hockerty and Sumissura, I reverse-engineered 5,272 earned media placements and founded a reactive PR agency that builds authority through data-driven stories journalists actually want to publish. Based in Zurich.
