​​For me, the biggest thing that has changed is the growing importance of being reactive. I truly believe there is still a place for campaigns, but timing is key. Press office, or always-on, has stolen a march on being the primary driving force behind coverage because it is agile and reacts to what is already in the news, therefore guaranteeing interest from media.

We've embraced a much more agile approach, moving away from being rigid in our client recommendations. This shift has made us more reactive, allowing us to find success in tactics like expert commentary-led pieces and forward features/thought leadership, where our clients can offer exclusive contributions to publications.

Unlike in previous years where we had chargeable time for media requests, we shifted to offer these for free for retainer clients this year. Back in 2023 we could almost guarantee 20 requests per month for clients, but others are now using AI (relevant or not) that swarm journalists and make it a much lower ROI tactic for everyone. It still remains a powerful tool and digital PR asset, but it’s become more of a closed shop depending on networks (i.e. seeing the request on LinkedIn or a closed Facebook group) rather than request platforms like HARO (RIP) and Qwoted.

Competition around national days and seasonal events is the highest I have ever seen it, making it important to really think about outreach timing, original ideas and new angles on safer campaign ideas.”

In 2024, success hinges on the quality of the story—authenticity is key, NOT just EXCLUSIVITY. Major outlets like CNBC now prioritize their OWN research, attracting massive traction and limiting earned media opportunities for the rest of us. We’re no longer competing just with other businesses but with media giants themselves. Understanding this dense market, at DesignRush, we don’t just push any story. We focus on stories we can own, often leveraging internal data for authentic insights.

This year I’ve advised a few clients against hero campaigns, unless there is a relevancy and opportunity which is clear cut for them. It has definitely become much harder to land viral campaigns than it was a few years ago. Putting more time, resource and money into hero campaigns can also mean more risk versus less reward, so you have to be confident in executing this and have several back-up angles planned should your campaign not take off as planned. 

Returning from mat leave in September was a real shock to the system - hero campaigns seemed to have died out and ✨relevance✨ was now the big buzz word. Our current plans are SO different to how I left the strategy in 2023. We're now working to make our campaigns more efficient - flexing our journo relations for feedback, policing time spent on creating assets, focussing on impactful content we know will resonate amongst students, and also targeting more high-value non-media titles relevant to our target audience (ie ac.uk sites and student media platforms).

While the current en vogue debate might be that we’re experiencing the death of the hero campaign, I disagree. I think what we’re experiencing is the death of the unoptimised hero campaign. Journalists are more in tune than ever at spotting relevancy when it comes to SEO and Google’s guidelines, so the hero campaign format of the past just isn’t cutting it anymore. While there’s undoubtedly been an increase in demand for those quick-fire tips or expert commentary pieces, I believe the hero campaign format is here to stay in 2025. It remains a necessity to an all-round DPR strategy - especially for those looking to make direct, tangible improvements to site SEO. 

We’re seeing more clients look for both brand awareness and organic performance impact from their investment in Digital PR. Therefore, leaning on hero campaigns that can be amplified through other channels such as social and influencer has been an approach we’ve been taking to deliver on both. 

Overall, we've embraced a much more agile approach, moving away from being rigid in our client recommendations. While it's still essential to stick to certain deliverables to support key objectives and broader goals, we've found that achieving those goals often requires deviating from the original plan. 

Digital PR strategies are always changing and evolving. It is important to keep reviewing what you are doing and what's working. The biggest challenge facing Digital PRs is the job cuts in journalism, this has forced us to work harder for the coverage we achieve. 

In 2024 we spent a lot more time focusing on the outreach side of Digital PR - new, more relevant angles, more targeted approaches to journalists and building pitches that were more personalised and relevant - making the most of the data that we had and driving relevancy across every angle.

Despite the digital nature of our sector, in-person media relations have never been so important. In my space of financial PR, I have to educate journalists about digital PR so they understand what I'm trying to achieve. It's still a nascent space in finance so as digital PR professionals, we need to be a helping hand for journalists as much as possible to help guide them across this fast-changing landscape. 

With #journorequests for example, which now seem to be shifting over from X to Bluesky, we often offer journalists background data for their articles if we don’t have a case study to supply. It may not be spot on what they asked for, but it is what they need. Plus it saves them research time. That approach has proved incredibly successful for our clients this year and so it’s one we’ll take into 2025 with us. 

In 2024, our Digital PR strategy shifted to prioritise quality and strategic impact over sheer quantity of backlinks. While we still utilise all campaign formats, we’ve placed a stronger emphasis on ensuring links drive value by pointing to the most relevant areas of our clients' websites. It's not just about earning links; it's about how those links contribute to the client's broader organic performance.

In 2024, we saw the SERPs evolve, with greater emphasis on brand strength and mentions as a driver of organic visibility. This has influenced our approach to digital PR, with a sharper focus on boosting overall brand presence and authority. 

At the same time, EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trust) remains a cornerstone of our strategy, particularly for industries like finance and health where trust is paramount. We've really focused on establishing credibility and expertise for these brands, a focus that has defined much of our work in 2024 and will continue into 2025.

More than ever, we are relying on deep links - which means pivoting to more reactive PR with no landing page. It's much easier to secure a brand anchor deep link to a commercial page this way. While it can be trickier to secure coverage, the coverage secured is growing the presence of revenue driving pages faster, which is always our northstar.

Proactive PR continues to win for us across our broad client base with the emphasis of this activity leaning in towards reputation management and generating ‘always on’ trust signals in the SERPs. As part of this, we’ve been reporting on Digital PR activity using a mix of ‘traditional PR’ KPIs - alongside link metrics, relevance and organic performance - as we take a more hybrid approach between the two.

We’ve always adopted a 'quality over quantity' ethos, focusing on what truly makes sense for each client, but feels like we've really reinforced this to our clients this year too. This has sometimes meant scaling back on bigger campaigns as we've recognised that success can often be achieved through more traditional PR strategies too (I know there’s a lot of discussion about digital PR vs. traditional PR and how the lines are blurring - I completely agree!)