Helping Sterling Communications improve PR campaigns through flexibility and better media data
Fullintel is like an extension of our team – it really frees up our time, even when we’re training new staff. Instead of having to ask them to research a new client, I already have a high-quality newsletter made up of targeted, relevant coverage that I can show them..
The Client
Sterling Communications, Silicon Valley’s tech PR agency, specializes in media relations and content marketing for B2B, healthtech, cleantech, edtech, and more. Founded in 1989, Sterling has spent decades employing public relations, digital marketing, and communication strategies to build bold technology brands for several world-class companies such as Medallia, BT Group, and Juniper Networks.
Sterling Communications, a Silicon Valley-based tech PR agency, uses Fullintel’s flexible client arrangements and powerful human curation to preserve staff hours for more value-added tasks (like running winning PR campaigns).
Because Sterling draws on a bank of hours each month (instead of paying by keyword), they’re easily able to add or remove clients and keywords without paying extra fees. And Fullintel’s full suite of media monitoring, briefings, and reporting have helped Sterling improve its media pitching and client service through better, more agile media research and targeting.
The Challenge
Account Supervisor Pal Hollywood has worked at several PR agencies in her career, and says media monitoring and daily or weekly news briefings are always a big requirement — helping clients stay on top of coverage and scale quickly at the start of a client relationship. But her past experience with monitoring providers left her skeptical:
Fully automated monitoring created information overload
Hollywood's previous agencies relied on fully automated media monitoring, which buried the team in a flood of information they then had to pick through for relevant content.
"Fully automated monitoring services aren't worth the trouble," explains Hollywood, who has been with Sterling for nearly three years. "You're fed a ton of information and you have to pick through it all for relevant content. Most of these automated services are never really that helpful."
"I didn't realize that Fullintel is different. But I do now."
Staff time lost to manual filtering
Most of the automated services weren't genuinely helpful, staff spent hours combing through irrelevant results instead of doing higher-value PR work.
Limited bandwidth as a boutique agency
As a smaller agency, Sterling didn't have the bandwidth to dedicate staff hours to media monitoring and briefings on top of its core PR services.
Need to scale quickly at client onboarding
New client relationships demanded fast research and monitoring setup, which automated tools and rigid pricing models made difficult to support.
Sudden client pivots into new verticals
When a client changed its PR focus overnight, Sterling needed to quickly build new media lists, keywords, and analyst expertise in an entirely new business vertical.
The Solution
Hollywood's opinion of media monitoring changed within a few days of using Fullintel's full suite of human-curated monitoring, daily news briefings, and reporting services.
"Fullintel's analysts deliver usable, finished products that I can use right away, rather than me having to pick through some randomly pulled together list of coverage where half of it is stock information," she explains. "It helps us become more targeted and knowledgeable in highly specific technical areas through media intelligence."
Fullintel is now a regular part of Sterling's client onboarding checklist, used to monitor client, competitor, and industry news on a weekly basis, plus ad hoc support for annual and campaign reporting when budgets and hours run thin.
- Fully automated monitoring, information overload
- Staff hours lost picking through irrelevant hits
- Pay-per-keyword pricing, costly to scale
- Slow to adjust clients/keywords mid-contract
- Human-curated monitoring, ready-to-use output
- Finished products staff can use immediately
- Flexible banked-hours pricing model
- Client/keyword changes via a quick email
Human-curated media monitoring suite delivering finished, usable products instead of raw, unfiltered coverage lists.
Flexible banked-hours pricing in place of pay-per-keyword billing, letting Sterling add or remove clients and keywords without extra fees.
Fullintel built into Sterling's client onboarding checklist, so monitoring starts as soon as a new client relationship begins.
Weekly monitoring of client, competitor, and industry news, supplemented by ad hoc project support for annual and campaign reporting.
Client and keyword adjustments handled directly by a dedicated Fullintel analyst via email — no added cost or delay.
The Deliverables
Fullintel supplies Sterling with a steady cadence of human-curated monitoring and reporting, plus the flexibility to step in for one-off client needs — grouped below into standing coverage and on-demand support.
Standing coverage
- Daily news briefings, human-curated
- Weekly media monitoring reports
- Weekly tracking of client, competitor & industry news
- Targeted coverage newsletters for staff onboarding
On-demand support
- Strategic media analysis
- Campaign and annual reporting
- Rapid media-list and keyword research for new verticals
- Direct access to a dedicated analyst for fast changes
Fullintel is also Sterling's fallback for ad hoc, one-off projects — such as annual or campaign reporting once a client's own budget and hours are exhausted.
The Result
Beyond always-available, helpful customer service, Hollywood says Fullintel helps Sterling and its clients in several major areas. As a smaller boutique agency, Sterling doesn't have the bandwidth for staff to spend hours on media monitoring and briefings, so farming that work out to media intelligence experts frees the team to focus on its core offering: PR services.
Fullintel's media intelligence also helps Sterling save research time and deliver better-targeted, more informed media pitches. "This information helps us and our clients discover new outlets or reporters we should be talking to," Hollywood says.
It has streamlined staff training as well, new hires can be handed Fullintel's news briefings to quickly learn about a client. "Because these briefings are so accurate," she says, "I don't need to worry that they're looking at irrelevant or wrong information. They can then use these briefings to learn about our client, their competitors and industry, their keywords, and who covers them and their relevant topics most often."
The banked-hours approach also proved its worth when one of Sterling's technology clients changed its PR focus overnight, requiring the agency to become experts in a completely new business vertical almost immediately. "We needed to research a new media list, new keywords, and find new analysts in a new market very quickly," Hollywood explains.
To be able to reach out to Fullintel and get them to make these changes quickly was incredibly helpful, and helped us respond to our client faster than we could have otherwise.Pal Hollywood, Account Supervisor, Sterling Communications
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