You'll save thousands of pounds and get oodles of great media coverage.

Your faith in humanity won't be lost, either.

Because that's what happens when you hire financial pr firms.

Financial PR agency tip: case studies, innit

Case studies are a royal pain in the arse.

Simple as.

Journalists hate speaking to them as much as PRs hate finding them and companies like you hate calling them.

But they can be key to getting chunky bits of fantastic media coverage.

The case study, make no mistake about it, is king.

Do the hard yards

Let's say you're a stockbroker and you want to get into the money section of a national newspaper.

You've done some research showing that short strategies have outperformed considerably over the past year.

Probably not far off the truth that, either.

So you send this interesting research over to a personal finance journalist and the first thing they'll say to you is this:

"Have you got a case study that we can use to back it all up?"

Case studies humanise

The reason for this is that adding a case study to a story makes it less abstract, more real, i.e. more relevant to the newspaper's readers.

In a nutshell, it makes the article more accessible, more human.

It also reaffirms what you're saying.

And above all, it gives the journalist a story on a plate. You've given them data, background information and Dave from Leicester who saw his pension pot double in size as a result of selling the market short.

OK, that's probably a bit extreme but the message is this:

The best thing you can possibly do when approaching personal finance journalists on the national newspapers is to have a case study close to hand.

It can be the difference between a story running, and a story being spiked.