If a PR consultant promises earned media placements, scrutinize them carefully. Anyone making that guarantee is selling a fantasy.

Media pitching success rates sit under 5%. A journalist might love your story and still skip it because the editor pivots to something else. They might be interested in your founder yet miss your timeline because breaking news takes priority. Your timing might be perfect, but the publication restructures its editorial calendar overnight.

These things happen constantly in media relations, and they are completely outside your control or mine. Earned media is absolutely strategic — just not guaranteed.

What a good PR consultant can promise is a process built on strategy and finesse. That means identifying the right journalists by beat, publication, and editorial voice. Building real relationships before you have news to pitch. Figuring out what is genuinely newsworthy inside your company rather than treating every product update as a story. Targeting strategically instead of blasting generic distribution lists. And coaching your leadership team to speak like founders, not press releases.

Those things, I can stand behind. The placement itself — whether a journalist decides to write, whether an editor decides to publish — I cannot control, and neither can anyone else.

So when you are evaluating a PR consultant, ask them one question: can you guarantee placements? If they say yes, you have your answer.