Hiring a public relations agency is a great way to help your business gain media coverage, increase its brand awareness and achieve its PR goals.
A PR agency can create a targeted PR strategy to help you communicate the right message to the right audience at the right time.
When working with a PR agency it’s important to communicate effectively with each other and build a strong partnership to achieve your goals and gain the best results.
Here are some top tips to help you work to maximum effect with your PR agency.
Before starting with a PR agency, you should:
Have a goal
Think about what your goal for conducting PR activities will be. This may be to build your brand awareness with your target audience, increase your profile in your industry or increase your sales. By having a clear goal, it will help your PR agency to target their strategy and achieve the best results for you.
Know your target audience
It’s important to understand who your target audience is and communicate this to your agency. The agency can then develop a PR strategy to help you reach the right people with your messages. If you don’t know who your target audience is, it’s worthwhile conducting some research to find out more information about them.
Have a spokesperson in mind
Think about who the best spokesperson will be for your business. This could be your CEO, someone from the senior management team or someone else in the business.
Your spokesperson needs to know the business intimately, understand the media, be able to communicate effectively and handle difficult questions. By having an available spokesperson your PR agency can pitch them out to the media to gain media opportunities.
Working with a PR agency
Be available
One of the key aspects of working effectively with a PR agency is to be available. If your PR agency can’t contact you then you could miss out on media opportunities. It’s also important to make time for these opportunities.
These could include interviews, providing written content like articles or quotes or just supplying additional information. Often there will be a deadline for the publication your agency will need to meet. If you can’t provide the PR agency with what they need before the deadline then you will miss out on the media opportunity.
Communication is key
Regularly communicating with your PR agency is important to stay up to date on the activities they are conducting for you. It’s a good idea to meet with the PR agency at least once a month to discuss their progress and any ideas you have for the future.
If you are going to be away or your spokesperson is unavailable for a while it’s important to tell your PR agency so they don’t organise any media opportunities in this period. You also need to inform the PR agency of newsworthy information or events in your business – for example, if you win an award, if the CEO is resigning, if you are launching a new product or if you gained a new client. By keeping your PR agency informed they can look for more media opportunities for you.
Respect the media
Your PR agency has developed relationships with key journalists and media publications to help gain media opportunities for your business. When conducting a media interview, it’s important to respect the journalist and the media to help maintain the PR agency’s relationship with them.
It will also help you to build a relationship with the journalist and they may consider interviewing you again in future.
By following some of these simple tips you can create a strong partnership with your PR agency. Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss how to produce the best results for your business via a targeted PR strategy.
