PR is NOT a lead generation tool
Let’s get one thing straight: PR is not a lead generation tool.
At least not in the same way that paid search or automated email campaigns are. You can’t drop a press release into the world and expect your sales team’s inbox to light up overnight.
But that doesn’t mean PR isn’t working. In fact, if you’re in PR or comms at a B2B tech, martech or enterprise IT brand, your PR programme might already be doing more for your pipeline than you think.
PR isn’t here to close. It’s here to convince
There’s an ongoing pressure in marketing teams—especially in B2B tech—to prove that everything leads to a lead. If it can’t be tracked in HubSpot or attributed in Salesforce, it must not be worth doing, right?
Wrong.
PR’s job isn’t to close deals. It’s to help your prospects believe that you're worth talking to in the first place.
From high-impact media coverage to credible thought leadership and shareable research stories, PR creates the kind of market presence that makes everything else in your marketing strategy work harder—from search rankings and content performance to sales enablement and demand generation.
If you’re still obsessed with last click, you're missing the big picture
That “demo request” your team just celebrated? It probably didn’t come out of nowhere. It might have been the final action in a series of trust-building touchpoints—your CMO being quoted in TechCrunch, your report featured in MarTech Today, your CTO’s byline in an industry newsletter.
These aren’t vanity moments. They’re credibility moments. And they matter—especially in long, high-consideration buying cycles where multiple stakeholders need to feel confident in a decision.
PR helps your brand show up early and often, long before anyone is ready to fill in a form.
What PR actually does for your funnel
If you’re thinking PR doesn’t drive results, you’re looking in the wrong places. Here’s where PR is making a commercial difference for smart B2B tech brands in 2025:
Boosting SEO through high-quality backlinks that increase domain authority and search visibility
Fueling brand search—a sign people have heard of you before they hit your site
Creating content assets—from expert commentary to campaign stories that feed your full funnel
Shortening sales cycles, by warming up cold leads with familiarity and trust
Empowering your sales team—because a “featured in WIRED” badge builds instant credibility
PR doesn’t live in a silo. It sits across brand, marketing, sales and reputation. And when those elements are working together, you get faster, smarter, more confident buyer journeys.
Measurable, meaningful, and more than just mentions
Sure, you can track clicks from coverage and monitor backlinks. But PR’s value goes well beyond raw traffic. For B2B brands that want to scale, it’s about influence and momentum.
Here’s what progressive comms and marketing teams are measuring in 2025:
Share of voice versus competitors
Growth in branded search and direct traffic
Tiered media coverage, not just quantity
Thought leadership saturation across your key sectors
PR-influenced pipeline, using assisted conversion modelling
Movement in deal velocity, brand consideration and reputation tracking
If your comms strategy is aligned with your business goals—and your PR team is pushing out the right stories to the right people—you will see impact across the funnel.
Final thought: don’t undersell PR
If you’re still asking your PR team or agency to report purely on leads, you're missing the point—and missing the opportunity.
PR might not fill out your CRM forms for you. But it’s often the reason someone trusts you enough to do it themselves.
So no, PR isn’t a lead gen tool. But it is a vital part of the machinery that moves people from unaware to interested—and from interested to in-market. In today’s noisy, competitive B2B tech world, that makes it absolutely essential.
Want to see how PR can make your brand more trusted, more visible, and more commercially effective?
