Smoking Gun

Your PR isn’t just being read by humans anymore. It’s being read by machines. That changes things. For years, brands have understood the SEO value of earning coverage and links from respected publications. Now we have another layer. AI search. GEO. Citation rates. Retrieval rates. If someone asks an AI tool who the authority is in your industry, what information is it finding? Which companies are consistently appearing in credible sources? Which experts are being quoted? Which brands are being cited? That’s why earning genuine authority in respected publications still matters. Yes, niche blogs, podcasts and specialist publications can play an important role. But strong editorial coverage can now influence far more than the person who reads the original article. It becomes part of the wider information ecosystem around your brand. PR is increasingly about becoming the source that both people and machines trust. That’s a very different conversation from simply asking: “How many pieces of coverage did we get this month?” Is GEO part of your PR measurement yet?

If you're spending £100k a year on PR and asking, “Where are the sales?”, you might be asking the wrong first question. Not because commercial impact doesn’t matter. It absolutely does. But you first need to understand the job PR was hired to do. If the objective is B2B lead generation or supporting ecommerce sales, I’d expect commercial metrics to be part of the conversation. But PR can also be there to: Build trust. Change perceptions. Increase founder credibility. Reach important stakeholders. Create awareness. Reduce barriers to purchase. Protect reputation. And support everything else marketing and sales are doing. PR rarely operates in isolation. You can get someone onto your website. But what happens when they arrive? You can make someone aware of a product. But is it available where they shop? What are competitors doing? What's the price? What's the sales follow-up? PR can influence the journey without owning every stage of it. The important question is not simply: “Did PR generate sales?” It’s: “What business problem did we want PR to help solve?” Are your PR objectives genuinely connected to the commercial goals of the business?

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