20 Best PR Tools to Try in 2023 (for Marketers & PR Managers)

Have you ever wondered how some of your peers get their company mentioned in the stories of big-name journalists and well-known media outlets?

Well, your luck there will depend on your knowledge and expertise in public relations. But you can take it up a notch by using a professional PR tool too, and our guide today will cover some of the best ones for you to choose from.

What’s a PR Tool?

A PR tool is any SaaS service or standalone software that enables digital marketing and PR teams to revamp and speed up their public relations efforts.

Public relations, in this context, refers to the management of your brand’s reputation and the relationships you build and nourish with various journalists, influencers, and media personalities.

There are also different approaches to public relations: performance PR (you get featured on top-tier publications), community relations, media relations, online and social media communications, etc.

Although you can manage your public relations efforts without any specialized tools (which most brands do, with 59% of them storing contacts in spreadsheets), using a PR tool will make your life much easier. Below are some  benefits you can get with such a tool.

Benefit #1: Better impact

By using a PR tool, you will be able to increase the effectiveness of your PR campaigns thanks to the following capabilities:

• They let you find media personalities most relevant to your brand and products. You can filter the list of journalists based on their niche, language, geography, and more. 
• You can personalize your pitches and press release emails to drastically increase their open rates (by 29%, according to Experian).
• Some tools also let you do competitor research to find out which outlets they are collaborating with and compare their PR efforts with yours.

Benefit #2: Saving time

PR tools will automate some of the most mundane and time-consuming tasks associated with public relations campaigns, such as:

• Having to manually find the media contact information of the journalist and media outlets that you want to reach out to.
• Manually composing emails (for pitches and press releases) using traditional tools like Gmail, Grammarly, or graphic design tools like Canva for each contact.
• Keeping an eye on all the new publications of tens or even hundreds of websites to find mentions about you or having to set up Google alerts.

Benefit #3: Data-driven campaigns

Many PR tools come with advanced analytics suites that can help you significantly increase the outcome of your efforts by:

• Monitoring the performance of your media relations campaigns.
• Identifying the ones that do not meet your expectations.
• Optimizing these campaigns by analyzing them, finding their flaws, and fixing them.
• Relaunching the campaigns and checking if your changes improved their performance. 

Now that we know how valuable PR tools are to your brand, let’s move on and understand what these tools are about and how they work. In particular, let’s go over some of the key components of modern PR tools and understand their function in the workflow of a PR expert or a digital marketing specialist.

In this regard, public relations tools consist of the following:

Pitching automation: Every collaboration with a journalist, blogger, or media outlet starts with a well-written pitch for a piece or a press release. Pitching is not an easy task, as sometimes you need to reach out to dozens or even hundreds of journalists at the same time.

PR tools can make your life easy by automating your pitching efforts and press release distribution. It means that you can compose a single pitch or news release template and the tools will bulk send it to everyone in your list within minutes. Moreover, you get to personalize your email title and body by inserting the following data into it:

• The name of the recipient
• Their country, state, and city
• The name of their publication
• Their website name and address, and more.

Contact and relationship management: Digital PR is about building lasting and trustful relationships with media personalities. Your team will be constantly in touch with your partner journalists and make long chains of communications consisting of pitches, negotiations, administrative arrangements (e.g., date of publication or an interview schedule), and more.

By using a PR tool, you can significantly improve the quality of relationship management, as these tools:

• Allow you to track the status of your communication with each journalist (e.g., pitch sent, in negotiations, an article published, etc.).
• Can store the history of previous negotiations and publications with each journalist and let you quickly access all your previous correspondence with them.
• Let you easily add and modify the contact information of your partner journalists.

Press release builder: Modern press releases are nothing like their classical format (the ones that looked like old-school internal office memoranda) and include compelling typography and visual elements such as video or images.

You can build such press releases, too, by using the built-in builders that come with many PR tools. These builders have a drag-and-drop interface with great ease of use that lets you create a press release with stunning design without any hassles. The process is especially easy if you pick one of their pre-built templates and use it for content creation.

Automated mention alerts: Apart from actively collaborating with journalists to get your brand covered in their articles, you might also monitor the internet for organic mentions of your brand (when the outlet talked about you without your intervention).

For this, you can set up automated alerts with your brand names in a PR tool, which will notify you whenever somebody talks about your brand on the internet.

To sum up, PR tools are highly valuable for your brand, as they can save your PR and marketing teams’ time and increase the effectiveness of their work.

Now let’s begin with our first PR tool.

Tool #1: HARO

HARO is an online platform connecting journalists with subject matter experts in different fields.

The acronym HARO stands for “Help A Reporter Out,” as it allows journalists to submit questions of all kinds and request relevant subject matter experts to provide their commentary. These journalists will then add that commentary to their articles and credit the expert providing it.

Pricing

HARO has three paid plans, along with a free one.

Here’s what you get with each subscription:

• Free plan gets you an email digest of reporter questions.
• Standard plan adds one keyword alert and one profile for $19/month.
• Advanced plan has three keyword alerts and three profiles for $49/month.
• Premium plan includes unlimited alerts and profiles for $149/month.

What we like most about it: HARO is a great tool for two use cases. First, you can boost your PR with journalists mentioning your brand. Second, it can be a link-building tactic, as journalists will credit you and place your website’s link in their article.

Tool #2: Prezly

Prezly is a SaaS tool for running lightweight public relations campaigns.

The tool comes equipped with a simple contact management suite for saving and reusing your contacts, an online newsroom feature letting you build newsletters, and a pitch builder for sending out offers to journalists and outlets.

Pricing

Prezly is available at three pricing levels.

These plans are:

• Starter plan with unlimited stories and 2,000 contacts for 40€/user/month.
• Core plan with a custom domain and 10,000 contacts for 80€/user/month.
• Premium plan with white label websites and 20,000 contacts for 120€/user/month.

What we like most about it: Prezly is very lightweight and easy to use. It is a great fit if you are a small business that needs to run basic PR campaigns.

Tool #3: Cision

Cision offers a range of professional-tier tools and services for handling PR campaigns.

Cision (which is, by the way, the parent company of HARO) is tailored for large-scale use cases and comes with advanced features such as a proprietary research engine, social media influencer match-making, and a large network of media outlets that you can reach out to.

Pricing

Cision does not have predefined pricing plans. You need to request a demo and negotiate your custom package with their team.

What we like most about it: Cision is an advanced tool. Therefore, it could be the definite choice for relatively large PR agencies and companies with dedicated PR teams.

Tool #4: CoverageBook

CoverageBook is an automated tool for building news coverage reports. 

It uses a proprietary algorithm to scan popular social media websites and news outlets to find coverage data of your brand and stories, such as their reach, engagement, generated backlinks, and more. You can then use this data to create compelling reports with its visual builder tool.

Pricing

You have a choice of 4 plans for CoverageBook.

These pricing options are:

• Bronze plan for $99/month, giving you unlimited books, clients, and brands.
• Bronze Plus plan for $149/month that adds 10 users and 300 clips per month.
• Silver plan for $149/month with priority support and 1,000 clips per month.
• Gold plan for $499/month with dedicated training sessions.

What we like most about it: CoverageBook automates a very tedious job for you. If you are a brand that gets lots of buzz and media coverage, then this tool is right for you.

Tool #5: Muck Rack

Muck Rack is an online platform that connects PR professionals with journalists and manages PR campaigns.

Although this SaaS service includes all the regular features of PR tools, such as pitch building, reporting, and news monitoring, its main focus is on the matchmaking of brands and media personalities. Its media database allows matching journalists based on niche, location, outlet, and content they covered recently.

Pricing

Muck Rack’s prices are custom, and you need to contact their sales team for your quote. 

What we like most about it: Muck Rack can find relevant journalists from a wide variety of niches. Thus, you can choose this tool if you are operating in a narrow niche and cannot find suitable media outlets for it.

Tool #6: BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing and analytics tool for digital marketers and PR teams.

Its main focus is on analyzing the content on the internet to help you find trending topics worth covering in your next story. BuzzSumo can also identify the content format that performs the best and give you a list of keywords that can attract the most organic traffic.

Pricing

You can subscribe to one of the four pricing plans available for BuzzSumo.

Here are the plans in question:

• Free plan with a cap of 10 searches per month.
• Pro plan costing $99/month with unlimited searches and 5 alerts.
• Plus plan costing $179/month, which adds a brief generator and 10 alerts.
• Large plan costing $299/month, getting you 2 years of data and 30 alerts.

What we like most about it: BuzzSumo has advanced monitoring and alerting that PR teams can find helpful, especially when they want to monitor social media for brand mentions.

Tool #7: Anewstip

Anewstip is a pitching automation tool for reaching out to media outlets on a scale.

It comes with a builder that can create personalized pitch message templates and an AI-based matchmaker that will analyze the content and topic in your pitch and recommend journalists that will be the most likely to respond to you and take on the story.

Pricing

You can get Anewstip at four pricing levels, including a free one. 

Here is what they are about:

• Free plan can get you a 100-contact media list without automatic pitching.
• Standard plan for $200/month that adds 1,000 pitches per month.
• Professional plan for $400/month with a limit of 5,000 pitches per month.
• Partners plan with custom pricing and unlimited pitches.

What we like most about it: Anewstip’s AI algorithm will save you a lot of time choosing the right journalists to pitch. It is great for teams that are relatively new to PR and do not know how to choose the right media outlets to reach out to.

Tool #8: Prowly

Prowly is an all-in-one SaaS startup that includes all the tools that a PR specialist needs in their workflow.

It has a full package of features, including a pitch builder, press release builder, PR CRM for journalist contacts, and media monitoring. There is also the newsroom that can let you build your real-time news media digests or podcasts and post them on your website.

Pricing

Prowly’s pricing policy is fairly simple, with only two plans available.

The Essential plan will cost you $293/month for 3,000 emails per month, while the Professional subscription has a limit of 15,000 emails per month for $363/month.

What we like most about it: Prowly has a complete package of features for all PR tasks and can serve as a replacement for multiple tools  in your PR workflow.

Tool #9: Respona

Respona is a link-building tool with automated prospecting, outreach, and follow-up capabilities.

The main use case for this software is building new backlinks by submitting guest posts on reputable websites with your link in the article or bio. But there is another feature that PR teams might find useful – the press inquiry filter that can find journalists’ requests online and add them to a pitching list.

Pricing

There are only two subscription options with Respona.

There is the Starter plan with a $99/month price tag that includes 5,000 email credits and the Unlimited plan with custom pricing and unlimited email credits.

What we like most about it: The press inquiry filter paired with the automated pitching can significantly reduce the time your PR team spends on journalist outreach.

Tool #10: BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an outreach tool that your teams can use for link-building and public relations campaigns.

This tool gets you full coverage of your outreach workflow. You can create your list with the contact finder, write the template with the email builder, track relationships with its built-in CRM, and track your performance with its reporting and analytics suite covering all essential metrics.

Pricing

BuzzStream’s stack is available in four plans.

Here’s what you can expect from each subscription:

• Starter plan includes a 1,000-contact limit for $24/month.
• Growth plan gets you 25,000 contacts for $124/month.
• Professional plan has a limit of 100,000 contacts for $299/month.
• Custom plan can go over 300,000 contacts for $999/month.

What we like most about it: BuzzStream’s ability to automate your outreach for both link building and PR makes it a good choice for teams that do both SEO (search engine optimization) and PR at the same time.

Tool #11: JustReachOut

JustReachOut is a service for increasing organic traffic by getting media mentions on large outlets.

The company not only provides you with a toolset for monitoring and reporting on your PR campaigns but also offers managed PR services when its professionals take on the task of building your campaigns for you and handling your PR outreach.

By building relationships with large media outlets, the team at JustReachOut can help increase the organic traffic flow to your website, better rankings on keywords your target audience uses, and boost brand awareness.

Pricing

You have an option between three plans for this tool.

These plans include:

• Starter Outreach for $79/month with 250 email sends and basic pitch help.
• Advanced Outreach for $149/month with 500 email sends and team management.
• Ultimate Outreach for $299/month with 1,000 email sends and advanced pitch help.

What we like most about it: With the ability to manage your campaigns for you, JustReachOut is the go-to tool for teams without dedicated resources for handling PR tasks.

Tool #12: PitchPress

PitchPress, unlike the rest of the brands mentioned here, is not a tool but a company that provides PR services.

Although they can handle public relations activities of any niche, their primary area of focus is fashion and apparel.

Their service includes reaching out to reputable outlets in the fashion sphere and building lasting relationships between you and the outlet in order to boost your brand awareness and get referral traffic from the backlinks placed on the media outlet websites.

Pricing

Like any other digital marketing agency, where real people provide services, PitchPress does not have any public pricing information. They prepare custom quotes for each customer that reaches out to them via email or their website chat.

What we like most about it: As an outsourced PR service, PitchPress would be a good fit for any company that does not want to recruit and build its own in-house PR team.

Tool #13: NinjaOutreach

NinjaOutreach is a PR outreach tool that specializes in social media influencers.

PR teams can use this tool to search for, filter out, and contact social media influencers from multiple platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and more.

Apart from contacting influencers, you can also use Ninjaoutreach to manage your collaboration with them. This tool also comes with a built-in CRM with communication history, collaboration status, and milestone setting.

Pricing

NinjaOutreach does not provide public pricing information either. You will need to request a demo and negotiate your custom plan with their sales team.

What we like most about it: It is an influencer marketing tool, so keep its name in mind if your PR strategy revolves around social media personalities.

Tool #14: SourceBottle

SourceBottle is a platform for connecting journalists with subject matter experts.

SourceBottle works in the same way as the first tool in our list – HARO. When journalists are looking for expert opinions for the articles or stories they write, they will post a request on this platform. Next, people with knowledge in that specific area will provide their opinions and answer the questions of these journalists.

Pricing

SourceBottle does not have any prices posted publicly, but alternative sources note that its paid subscriptions range between $5.95 to $95/month for the ability to request giveaways.

What we like most about it: The use cases for this tool are similar to those of HARO. You can get mentions in reputable media outlets and do link building.

Tool #15: Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring tool helping PR teams keep tabs on the conversations around their brand on social media.

The tool lets you set up automated alerts on your brand mentions and get information about the social media posts talking about you. It also provides general statistics for the mentions, such as their number, their overall positivity or negativity, and more.

Pricing

Mentionlytics is available in four pricing levels.

These plans are:

• Basic plan for $49/month with a monitoring limit of 10,000 monthly mentions.
• Essential plan for $99/month with 30,000 monthly mentions.
• Advanced plan for $199/month with 60,000 monthly mentions and reports.
• Pro plan for $299/month with 100,000 monthly mentions and API access.

What we like most about it: The monitoring engine at Mentionlytics is impressive, and you should use this tool if you want to do an in-depth analysis of your brand’s reputation on social media.

Tool #16: PR.co

PR.co is a public relations SaaS tool that lets you handle your PR campaigns and build newsrooms.

Apart from getting you a newsroom website builder with templates, the PR.co stack also includes the ability to host online press conferences right from your newsroom website. There is also the ability to control the audience that consumes your news by restricting its access to certain countries and geographies.

Pricing

The newsroom in question is available for €492/month.

The package includes custom branding of the website, a media-rich editor, and in-app chat and team collaboration features.

What we like most about it: With such a developed newsroom capability, PR.co is the best fit for a large PR team that wants  to create and manage its own newsroom.

Tool #17: BusinessWire

BusinessWire is a service for handling public relations, investor relations, and legal compliance with publicity materials.

It comes with a set of tools for managing your PR campaigns, and an option for the company to manage your PR activities on your behalf. The company collaborates with media outlets in over 160 countries and supports media coverage in around 20 languages.

Pricing

BusinessWire is an enterprise solution that sets prices based on the specific needs of their customer. You will need to contact their sales team and request a quote.

What we like most about it: With all of its international and multilingual coverage, BusinessWire is a tool for large enterprise companies that need to handle their PR activities in multiple countries at the same time.

Tool #18: Brand24

Brand24 is a tool for monitoring the mentions of your brand both on social websites and media outlets.

This monitoring tool can aggregate the data on your mentions into reports and export it in CSV or XLS formats for your data analytics teams to process further.

Apart from gathering mentioned data, this tool can also do sentiment analytics and understand the overall emotional footprint users and journalists have left on the internet about your brand.

Pricing

To access Brand24, you will need to subscribe to one of the four available plans.

These options are:

• Individual plan for $39/month with a limit of 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions per month.
• Team plan costing $99/month with 7 keywords and 5,000 mentions per month.
• Pro plan for $149/month, including 12 keywords and 25,000 mentions per month.
• Enterprise plan for $249/month, getting you 25 keywords and 100,000 mentions per month.

What we like most about it: As it can monitor both social media and news outlets, it works best for cases when you collaborate with both influencers and journalists.

Tool #19: CARMA

CARMA is a monitoring and reporting service for public relations teams to keep track of their brand mentions.

Besides monitoring the activities and content about your brand on social media and news outlets, CARMA also keeps track of all the content on print media and will give you data on the mentions from it too.

This service also comes with an advanced AI-based reporting engine that can aggregate and provide valuable insights from all the data on mentions.

Pricing

CARMA has two plans – Standard and Professional, but there is no public data on their prices and the only way to get it is by contacting their support.

What we like most about it: This tool stands out with its ability to monitor print media, so go for it if you are working on traditional marketing channels as well.

Tool #20: Meltwater

Meltwater is a social media marketing tool that PR teams can use to manage influencer marketing campaigns.

As an SMM tool, Meltwater can manage the publishing and scheduling processes for multiple social media channels (e.g., LinkedIn posts or Tweets), do social media management, and track and optimize engagement of the content posted on these platforms.

It also comes with PR software such as online monitoring, including a dedicated sales intelligence suite, newsletter publishing, and press distribution, as well as an analytics and reporting suite for both SMM and PR needs.

Pricing

You will need to contact the Meltwater team to get information on their prices and available plans.

What we like most about it: Meltwater can handle both SMM and PR use cases, thus, you can consider it if you need to manage both.

Now Over to You

Public relations are an invaluable aspect of your business and something that you should pay proper attention to.

With the help of the tools mentioned here, you will be able to significantly improve the quality of your PR work while saving time.

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