PR.Digital

Signing a digital PR contract on a promise isn't enough — find out what a competent agency should commit to in writing, week by week, across the first 90 days of an engagement.

Show Notes

Hiring a digital PR agency is easy. Knowing whether it's actually delivering is harder. This episode of PR.Digital cuts through the vague language of "coverage" and "awareness" to lay out the concrete deliverables — by week and by month — that a serious agency should be willing to put in writing before the contract is signed. The full breakdown is drawn from this detailed look at first-90-days agency deliverables, and the episode translates it into a practical framework any client or marketer can use to hold an agency accountable.

Here's what the episode covers across each phase of the engagement:

  • Month one is infrastructure, not coverage. By day ten, a capable agency should have produced a target publication list, an approved messaging framework with three to five proprietary angles, a media asset library, and a populated outreach CRM with named journalists — not a bought list.
  • Pitching must start by day fourteen. The average digital PR campaign takes 38 days to earn its first link, and that clock doesn't start until pitches go out. Volume expectations are also set here: 60–120 personalised pitches per month across two angles is realistic; a promise of 500 is a red flag.
  • Month two is where real programs separate from poor ones. Expect two to five placements weighted toward trade and mid-tier national outlets, alongside weekly pitch reports, a live coverage tracker with domain ratings, an angle post-mortem after the first three placements, and a new asset already in production.
  • AI visibility is now a measurable deliverable. With 82% of journalists using AI tools in their work (per Muck Rack's 2026 data), placements need to be indexed cleanly and cite proprietary research to surface in generative engine answers — a benchmark any forward-looking agency should be tracking. This is part of why digital PR has become the new SEO for brands serious about long-term search presence.
  • Month three means rankings movement, not just link counts. By week twelve, a two-person pod should be trending toward 20–30 earned links per month. The month-three report must tie back to the KPIs set at kickoff — if the renewal conversation is a sales deck rather than a data review, that's the answer on whether to renew.
  • Red flags have a signature. Onboarding that drags past three weeks without pitches, reports led by impressions or AVE metrics, coverage trackers filled with press-release syndications, and an inability to produce the actual pitch email that landed a placement are all signs the work wasn't done. For brands evaluating what a full-service engagement looks like before committing, PR.Digital's earned-coverage services outline what a structured program actually includes.

For more on vetting an agency before you sign anything, listen to 17 Questions That Expose a Digital PR Agency Before You Sign — a companion episode that stress-tests agency claims with the questions most clients never think to ask.

PR.digital

What is PR.Digital?

Digital PR at scale — the reporting, relationships and repeatable process behind coverage that keeps paying off long after the news cycle moves on. Story angles that survive an editor, data studies worth running, newsjacking without the cringe, and how PR and search reinforce each other.

Every episode takes one working problem — a study that got no pickup, a spokesperson nobody quotes, a campaign that won links but no customers — and reasons through what to change. Written for PR and content teams measured on outcomes, not clip counts. Five or six minutes, one idea, properly explored.

Topics include story angles that survive an editor, data studies worth running, newsjacking without the cringe, spokesperson positioning, journalist relationships, crisis basics, and how earned coverage compounds with search.

Produced by PR.Digital, digital PR built for scale. Full details, services and further reading at https://pr.digital