In the fast-paced world of digital media, many businesses still treat public relations (PR) as a shortcut to instant visibility — and misunderstand how it actually drives results.
The reality is far more nuanced. Success comes from aligning brand expectations with PR execution.
Scott Bartnick, founder of Otter PR, sees common friction points with clients, from unclear objectives to the “one-and-done” fallacy. Businesses must build partnerships with PR firms that drive measurable results.
The “myth of the viral hit” is one of the biggest mistakes companies make, according to Bartnick. Corporate leaders often assume a business milestone qualifies as a national news story. He emphasized that while an internal win feels monumental to a founder, it often lacks the “pitchable hook” needed to grab a journalist’s attention in a shrinking newsroom.
“I tell them straight up: PR is not a slot machine. It’s a 401(k). I can prove it with data. Our clients consistently see bigger returns in months six through 12 than they do in months one through three,” Bartnick told CRM Buyer.
PR success compounds. It is not an instant-win lottery. A client’s first placement gives that company credibility to land a second one, which builds the journalist’s confidence to feature it in a bigger outlet.
Internal Wins vs Media Hooks
One of the first conversations Otter PR has with clients addresses this directly. Just because a company reached a significant revenue milestone or launched a brand-new product, the accomplishment is only a big deal for the company and its shareholders. The reaction will not be the same for everyone else.
“We’ve found that the stories that really resonate with people are the ones that answer three key questions: why now, why this story, and why you? If your story only matters to your team and your customers, then it’s probably not going to make it into a major publication,” said Bartnick.
More often, it belongs in a LinkedIn post. A real media hook connects your win to something bigger than just your company, like a trend, a data point, or an industry shift, he explained.
Bartnick’s advice is to stop asking, “What did your company accomplish?” Instead, start asking, “What does your achievement mean for the industry?”
“That’s the filter you should be using to determine whether your story is really newsworthy,” he said.
How PR Is Changing in 2026
In the last two years, PR has transitioned from a nice-to-have visibility tool into a necessity for business discovery. While the fundamentals of storytelling remain, the mechanics of PR have shifted to meet the needs of the modern enterprise. The industry has changed in five key ways to meet modern business needs:
1. The shift from search engine optimization (SEO) to generative engine optimization (GEO). Businesses once hired PR firms primarily to secure links that boosted Google rankings. Today, the goal is shifting toward GEO. If high-authority media do not cite a brand, AI assistants like Gemini and Perplexity are far less likely to surface that brand in their answers — limiting visibility at the moment of discovery.
2. No more mass-blasting press releases. Success now relies on hyper-personalized outreach, using AI to analyze a journalist’s specific beat and recent sentiment to craft a perfect-fit pitch. Newsrooms are shrinking, so journalists have no patience for generic pitches.
3. Outcomes trump output. Businesses are moving beyond vanity metrics like impressions toward measurable business impact. Modern PR increasingly tracks how media placements influence the sales funnel, from awareness to close rates and pipeline quality. In a tighter economy, CEOs expect PR to demonstrate a clear connection to revenue, not just visibility.
4. Predictive crisis management. PR has moved from reactive firefighting to narrative intelligence powered by agentic AI monitoring. It can now identify and pre-bunk misinformation or bot-driven attacks before they reach the mainstream cycle.
5. Founder-led brand strategy. Buyers want to trust people, not logos, especially in the age of synthetic content. Bartnick shared that the most successful campaigns are those in which the CEO or subject-matter expert serves as the primary channel, providing the data and internal expertise that an agency needs to win.
Why PR Campaigns Fail
PR campaigns often fail when businesses don’t provide enough data, internal experts, or lead time. Bartnick sees this as one of the biggest silent killers of PR campaigns.
“Journalists want specifics — data, named experts, a story they can fact-check and publish. When a client gives us a vague origin story and no numbers, we’re pitching with one hand tied behind our back,” he said.
Otter PR’s process is to extract everything from the client. Otherwise, the PR team spends three weeks chasing assets instead of pitching journalists. Research shows that proper outlet and journalist research alone takes 15 to 20 hours per campaign.
“If your agency is also spending 10 hours hunting down your own company data, you’ve just lost half the month. The clients who win give us ammunition fast and stay responsive. That’s non-negotiable,” Bartnick insisted.
How PR Impacts the Sales Funnel
The impact of PR often shows up across the sales funnel — but not always where companies expect it. Without the right analytics lens, even experienced teams can miss how media coverage influences buyer behavior.
“PR doesn’t always show up as a direct last click, but it’s all over your funnel if you know where to look,” Bartnick noted.
He outlined several ways to identify PR’s impact:
Start with branded search volume. If more people are Googling your company name after a media hit, that’s PR working.
Then look at your proposal close rate. Otter’s clients often report that close rates improve when “As Featured in Forbes” appears in a pitch deck, because prospects enter the sales process with built-in trust.
Next, track referral traffic from the actual outlet URLs. Every placement should generate clicks. Also, monitor your domain authority over time.
Finally, evaluate inbound lead quality. When PR is working, companies see fewer low-intent inquiries and more prospects who already view them as a trusted authority.
“One of our law firm clients saw a 300% increase in case volume. That didn’t come from one article. It came from the cumulative effect of consistent media presence building trust before anyone ever picked up the phone,” Bartnick noted.
When to Rethink Your PR Strategy
Bartnick offered these red flags to recognize that the current narrative is failing.
If your pitch response rate is below 5% after three months, you are not telling a story journalists care about. If the coverage you’re getting isn’t moving any business metrics — traffic bumps, inbound leads, or improved close rates — you might be in the wrong outlets for your audience.
If the same journalists who used to respond are going silent, your narrative may feel stale and could benefit from a refresh. When a major market shift happens — a competitor move or an industry disruption — and you have not adapted your messaging, you are pitching yesterday’s news.
“At Otter PR, we build strategy reviews into every engagement. We don’t wait for things to break. We track what’s landing, what’s not, and we pivot the narrative quarterly at minimum,” said Bartnick.
The businesses that fail at PR keep running the same playbook into a wall and call it persistence, he warned. PR doesn’t fail because it lacks effort — it fails when it isn’t aligned with how buyers discover and decide.
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