hamilton house
public relations agency

Each month Hamilton House Public Relations generates a new activity for its PR clients ( the first two services noted above) – normally in the form of a press release or an article.  This is then submitted for client approval, before being forwarded to the media, and then followed up with phone calls to journalists etc.

This work will often include research into related areas of news in order to turn the client’s work into a news item that will appeal to the media.  In so doing it is quite common to gather interesting information on the client’s area of work (either in terms of competitor’s activity or activity by government or pressure groups, or indeed research which can be used to boost the position of the product) and where this is found, this is forwarded as a report to the client.

Other work might involve undertaking telephone interviews with people using the client’s services or products, and writing these comments into the press releases. 

There may be some extras – but that is entirely up to you.  The most common extras that are charged are sending in a photographer to cover an event, agreeing to pay a magazine to take a story (see below), and running an on-line questionnaire.  No extras are charged without getting your agreement beforehand.

HHM PR offers three services:

• Our guaranteed PR service
• Our standard PR service
• Our marketing only service

1. Guaranteed service: With this service we guarantee to get your company mentioned positively in at least three papers or journals every month.
   
   Getting positive coverage in appropriate media three times each month sounds a tough call – but with the right approach it is possible.
   
   We can guarantee to achieve this every month because we are (probably) the only PR and Marketing Agency that specialises exclusively in reaching teachers. So we know the market, we know the journalists, and we really can deliver. Thus we can give an absolute guarantee that you will get coverage in at least three different magazines, papers, TV stations or radio stations, every single month. (Sometimes, of course, we get you more than three media appearances, but when we do we don’t charge extra. We just let you have that as a bonus).
   
   In the extremely unlikely event that we fail to get you the promised coverage, we don’t charge you a penny for that month’s work.But that’s not all.
   
   As part of our package we also work developing separate longer-term projects with you (call me if you would like to have some examples). We also undertake regular research for our clients into teacher attitudes, buying habits, competitor activity and the like. It is all included in the monthly fee.
   
   
2. Standard service: Of course, sometimes a smaller, more specialised type of campaign is required and we can always tailor our work to meet such needs. For example, some companies do not need the guarantee of significant coverage every month, and obviously that reduces costs. In other cases the research into teacher attitudes and activities is not needed very often, and again that cuts down on our expenditure on your behalf. Where this is so, we can cut our monthly fee dramatically.
   
   
3. Marketing only service: Here our focus is on marketing – analysing response rates, evolving new approaches, comparing email with direct mail, devising new incentives and so on. Obviously here our fee can be lower than might otherwise be the case. There is more information on this service on our velocity website.

If you are interested in working with Hamilton House Agency the best starting point is to call us on 01536 399 000 (9am to 5pm Monday to Friday) so that we can talk through how we may be able to help you.  

We’ll then take a look at your website, at your advertising, and at any PR that you have been getting, and come back to you with a report on what we could do and how we think we could do it.   Obviously there is no charge for this initial consultation.

If you have a press release you have written in the past and would like to discuss how it might have been improved, without any charge or obligation, again please get in touch.   If you have undertaken any sort of PR work in the past, and would like to know how we could do it differently, please do get in touch.

Paying a photographer

While the question of paying a photographer and paying for the preparation of a questionnaire is fairly clear, the issue of paying a magazine to run a story needs a little explanation.  Some educational magazines have no reporters at all, and all their news is taken from press releases.   However they charge companies a fee to run their press releases in the magazine.

The benefit to you of running such items is that you get coverage at far less than the charge normally made for an advert – and you get it as a news item (which generally means you get a higher response rate than if you ran this as an advert).

This does not mean that all magazines act in this way.  The major publications and the newspapers do not charge, and many specialist magazines will take a story without charging.  Also the magazines run by Hamilton House do not charge our PR clients.  You will therefore get some free coverage – and as other articles on this site show you can indeed get quite a lot of free coverage.   We do recommend the taking of some paid for PR pieces because they can represent value for money) but this is an issue entirely for our clients to decide.