A PR professional trying to compete with thousands of companies for coverage needs to master every trick in the book. “Lead time” provides one of these competitive edges.

What is lead time?
 
Lead time is one of the most often-used buzzwords in the PR business. PR veterans know in an instant what their colleagues are referring to when this phrase is brought up. But to PR newbies, it’s anyone’s guess.
 
Webster’s dictionary defines it this way:
 
Lead time (lçd´tim´) n.  The time between the decision to begin a project and its completion. (Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary)
 
In PR vernacular, lead time means this: the amount of time a publication builds into its schedule for writing and completion of editorial content. Knowledge of each publication’s lead time is crucial to a successful PR program, and it varies by each publication.
 
Why is lead time important?
 
Every magazine, newspaper, online webzine, TV program or radio segment operates under a strict set of production deadlines to deliver its final product. Gathering editorial content is just one of many tasks these media outlets need to finish before deadline day, and it is conceivably the most important, since the content is the product.
 
PR professionals play an important role in helping the media shape, gather, write and in some cases manage approval of the editorial content. However, unless you’re working within the established deadlines of a particular medium, your role is looked at as more of a nuisance than a help. In other words, if you understand and leverage lead times, you get better media coverage.

Understand disclosure requirements

Working lead time into your PR program requires a thorough understanding of your specific company’s disclosure requirements. These requirements are different depending upon several factors, including: the size of your company, whether or not your company is private or public, your company’s stage of growth and the comfort level of your management team. 
 
For example, if you work for a publicly held company, in some cases, you simply won’t have the opportunity to pre-brief a reporter about a piece of news, either for timing or legal reasons. 

Most companies today (especially publicly-held companies) are under constant pressure to keep news flowing from the company while conforming to ever-changing rules and regulations (i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley; Patriot Act; SEC guidelines; etc.). This means executives won’t be as open to the idea of building in lead time for media pre-briefings.
 
This can be frustrating for a PR professional trying to use lead time to improve coverage, but it can work. Always check with your legal and/or investor relations’ teams to get on the same page before finalizing your media outreach strategy.
 
How to do it 

To be most helpful, PR pros need to be in touch with journalists and editors with ideas and suggestions well within the lead time guidelines. This means you are in touch with the reporter just as they are starting to think about a topic, gather content for an assignment or research a particular subject. This is a critical element in securing media coverage.
 
“You have to honor lead times as long as they’re out there,” says Tommy Peterson, Technology Editor at Computerworld, a weekly IT trade publication. “Why would you want to irritate an editor by not doing so?”
 
The following “Lead Time Guide” identifies how far ahead publications with certain frequencies work. Lead times can change within media categories by individual publication or even specific columns, so it’s best to check with each media outlet directly. 
 

Give it a trial run

Now that you understand the basics of lead time, how can you convince an impatient, reluctant or skeptical executive of its benefits? 

The best way is to prove it. If yours is a public company, pick a news item that is interesting, but not material (for example, a customer/ROI implementation). Talk with your executives about your lead time strategy. Perhaps for this “experiment” you pitch this news as an exclusive to an important weekly. Get the executives’ buy-in. Negotiate participation with the customer. Pitch the story to one targeted reporter most interested in this type of news and sell it. Arrange the interview between the reporter, customer and your company spokesperson. Conduct the inverview. When the story comes out, assess the quality with your executive. If he/she is pleased - and the customer is pleased - this might be the beginning of more "lead time" stimulated coverage.

In Make time for lead time - Part 2, we will explore how lead time works for news releases, editorial calendar opportunities and big bang announcements.