How to Write a Powerful PR Quote for Your Client's Next Article Feature

Feb 12, 2024

Having a client featured as an expert source is one of the most effective ways to get them in the media. Experts can offer a PR quote or anecdote about a specific topic to show off their industry expertise or entrepreneurial experience.

Sometimes, your client won’t be available for comment when you need a PR quote. It happens! In these cases, you’ll have to step in and write the quote yourself (or help finesse or repurpose something a client has written). This can be super intimidating, but don’t stress!

Remember, you’ve got niche expertise, too — and you can put it to use and write stellar quotes for your clients’ features.

When Do You Need a PR Quote from Your Client?

Journalists will request a PR quote from your client during their normal writing process. The request might be in response to a pitch or entirely unrelated. No matter the niche, quotes from industry experts enhance articles by making them more authoritative and credible.

Expert quotes are a win-win for you and your media contact! The journalist gets a trustworthy article that provides value to their readers, and, in exchange, you’ll position your clients as industry experts and build their credibility in their niche.

Usually, media contacts only quote clients who are experts or thought leaders in their niche. For product-based clients, journalists will likely feature their founders as experts. These features can emphasize the founder’s niche expertise or focus on the journey they took to establish their company.

If your client works with experts in their field while developing their products, those experts could offer quotes in place of the founder. This strategy has worked amazingly for my clients before!

How to Write a Stellar PR Quote for Your Expert Client

There's an art to crafting the perfect PR quote for your client. By keeping a few brief rules in mind, you can start cranking out captivating quotes that engage readers and show off your client's expertise.

#1: Let Your Quotes Tell a Story

Sure, you won’t have access to your media contact’s full article when they request a PR quote, but you still need to make sure your quote flows in their story!

Don’t spit out a bunch of facts and statistics surrounding your client — those are likely either irrelevant to the story or already in the article. Focus on emotions over facts. Targeted details and emotional depth help move a story along and engage readers. Your quote could be used to prove a point, provide a counterargument, or deliver a call to action.

Your client only gets a sentence or two to make an impact, so the quote must be as powerful as possible. Consider how your client can provide meaningful, valuable information that enhances the final article. Ask yourself questions like:

Why are they being asked for a quote?
What are they uniquely qualified to contribute?
Why should people care about this specific topic?

#2: Leave Out the Jargon

If you’re stepping in to write a PR quote for a client, it can be tempting to throw in a ton of specialized industry terminology or other superfluous utterances to prove an expert wrote it…

But a bunch of jargon will ruin your quote! Not everyone knows the technical industry lingo that you do.

Remember, this quote needs to fit into an article that anyone can read — from niche experts and your client’s audience to people who randomly clicked on an interesting headline.

Quotes full of technical jargon require further explanation, which takes up space in your media contact’s article. If your quote and its explanation use too many words, it might be easier for a journalist to scrap it and reach out to a different expert. They’re working with a word limit, after all!

Keep things short, simple, and to the point. Your quote should convey your client’s expertise and, most importantly, provide value to your media contact and their readers.

#3: Don’t Use ChatGPT to Write a PR Quote

I know it’s easy to turn to ChatGPT, Bard, or another program to write a client quote, especially when you’re in a pinch, but journalists can always tell when you’ve used AI for your quotes!

AI quotes are robotic, detached, and void of real emotion. A computer wrote them, not a real person. Your media contact chose you for your client’s experience — they don’t want a vague, generic quote in response!

Always write PR quotes yourself or have your client come up with something, even if you’re responding to a last-minute request. Use your creativity and be as authentic as possible. When your media contact adds the quote to their final article, the reader should feel that an actual person said it.

ChatGPT is good for a lot of things, but any content you create for an article should be totally original and based on your client’s specific expertise. If you’re not sure where to start with ChatGPT, Bard, and other text-based AI programs, grab our Powerhouse Prompts for an in-depth training video and cheat sheets!

#4: Give Yourself (and Your Expert) Some Time

In the best-case scenario, your media contact will give you a few days to pull the best quote possible for them. But that is not always the case — sometimes it’ll only be a few hours of notice! Either way, you need to schedule some focus time to deliver on the request.

If you’re writing the PR quote in place of your client’s expert, try using these tips:

Set aside dedicated time to write a solid quote for your media contact
Research the topic thoroughly to ensure accuracy
Run the quote by your team members to make sure it reads well
Step into your expert’s shoes and write the way they would
Leave yourself time for revisions and edits — if you have time, use it!

If you’re getting a PR quote from your client or an expert on their team, reach out ASAP to give yourself as much time as possible. You may need to revise their quote before you send it. Like, if they send you a quote full of industry jargon, you could either rewrite it yourself or hop on a quick call to get a better, simpler quote from them. Or, if they send you a paragraph, you may want to cut it down to a sentence or two.

Consider creating a “database” of quotes from your client that you can pull from and edit whenever needed. It’s best to start compiling your quotes document during the onboarding process, but this is also effective for your long-standing clients. I love hosting mock interviews with my clients 1-on-1 over Zoom, recording the call, and pulling possible quotes from the transcript.

#5: Always Check for Accuracy!

You wouldn’t send out a pitch littered with errors, would you?

Always, always, always check your facts and proofread your quote before responding to your media contact. Journalists are pressed for time as it is — make their jobs easier and do the final checks yourself so nothing falls through the cracks. Being accurate and reliable are major parts of being a trustworthy media partner!

When writing a PR quote for your client, make sure to attribute everything correctly. Ensure you correctly spell out your client’s name, titles, certifications, and awards. Double (and then triple) check all dates for accuracy (like Allure 2023 Best of Beauty Award Winner or Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize).

A compelling PR quote is a fantastic way to show off your client’s expertise and motivate readers. With a little bit of thought and creativity, you can use your own niche knowledge to step up and write dazzling quotes for your clients!