How to Be a Good Public Relations Client

What Good PR Clients Do

Since public relations isn’t done “to” a company—it’s done “with” the management team or owners—there’s an essentially different nature to how this kind of professional service is successfully delivered. It’s much more akin to legal or medical services with the “defendants” or “patients” (read: management team members) having to be deeply and consistently involved in an ongoing process.

As the now-famous slogan coined by tech PR guru Regis McKenna goes, “PR is a process, not an event.”

Without recognition of that, PR generally goes nowhere—and the agency will not work with that client for long.

Two Business Cards, One Team

PR is most productive when the agency and client people work as a team. The ideal is a blurred distinction between the two organizations. The goals are nearly the same, only the paychecks and business cards are different. Efficient teamwork and friendships develop, with the clients relying on agencies for a full range of strategic as well as tactical communications values. The agency is free to ask all questions, including the hard or perhaps embarrassing ones, and offer help wherever and whenever needed while remembering its charter to client service.

Exactly when things can go really right or very wrong is typically at the outset. The client/agency relationship should be based on a high degree of trust and openness. You see this plea or expectation on agencies’ Web sites all the time: “We have strong relationships with our clients.” PR services need to be delivered like any other professional service, as typically required by lawyers or accountants. Public relations can truly add value to a business or organization only if the agency people have an intimate understanding of what’s going on, warts and all.

An arms-length relationship, when the agency is seen as a “vendor” (like office supplies or a delivery service!), isn’t going to yield effective long-term results because the agency won’t have been let into what strategically bears on the business. Without such insider knowledge, PR plans will likely be off the mark, short-term and not deliver desired results that matter.

Getting What You Pay for

To gain a better understanding of this perspective, consider that hiring an agency to just execute some tactics like a string of press releases would be like going to the doctor to have a band-aid applied. You can do it, and pay for it, but it certainly isn’t the best use of your money or the doctor’s talents.

You’ve got to tell the experts where it hurts and let them diagnose whether or how applying public relations practices may relieve the pain. So, if you want real agency value, share your business or marketing plans and explain your objectives. Mention what may or may not have worked in the PR area previously. Then let the pros prescribe ideas and strategies that address your business problems.

Valuable agency people want to understand the core challenges and bring their experience, imagination, and creativity to finding a solution. Remember, you’re investing in expertise to help with business problems that you can’t or don’t want to solve by yourself. So find an agency that will lead you toward desired goals and an effective market position. Let them become a strategic asset.

Just hiring some extra hands to perform work that you decide is valuable and which you yourself direct isn’t cost-effective. If that’s going to be the case, hire a junior employee.

Conversely, for the agency people reading this, if your client isn’t taking your advice or, worse, is dictating strategies and tactics, plan on replacing the account as soon as possible. You’re just an order-taker. You’ll be replaced very soon.

Invest the Time

If a client hands a completed document to its agency and expects the agency to use it as is, little is gained in client-derived value from the agency. Agencies offer far more value than mere errand runner for company messages. The often staggering aggregate communications expertise offered by PR agencies is totally wasted. Worse still, the mutual learning created by working together cooperatively in the creation of new information is also lost.

Agencies need and want to learn ever more about their clients’ business. You didn’t learn everything you know about your market and your company instantly. Dealing with the learning curve is worth the time. That’s why agencies ask for strong relationships.

Client and agency people get to know and work together most effectively in collaborative creation of communications strategies and tactics. The two-way explanation, give-and-take of such work helps people in both environments understand each other’s value and creates the best ways to expand client company or product awareness. It’s a simple case of two (different kinds of) heads are better than one. More importantly, for the client, it’s a case of getting all that you’re paying for.

Case in Point

Even with something as basic as press-release development, for example, being placed in the position of merely reacting to client-generated copy leaves the agency without access to other information that might lead it to make suggestions that increase newsworthiness and marketing effectiveness. But if they don’t get to ask the basic marketing or business communications questions up front, that value can’t be provided.

The Q&A around “so what?”—or news significance—is among the key things that agency pros are trained for. Without it, a big limitation is created. When agency personnel are removed from the origination of copywriting projects, clients lose. The agency team doesn’t learn about what’s not in the press release. And, often, what isn’t stated in the final press release copy, and why, is as important for the agency to know as what is.

The dialog preceding writing assignments may be more valuable to marketing than the finished written product—particularly so in business-news publicity.

Client-developed releases are often dismally off the mark and fail to answer the most basic questions that business reporters need answered. That’s often because of the inherent inside-out perspective common to those working within an organization. It takes an exceptional writer working inside a company to maintain the opposite “outside-in” perspective while pedaling the company’s key messages in a news or feature story.

Moreover, if you’ve hired a good PR agency, in the process you will have hired excellent writers. That’s a core public relations competency. So give them the opportunity to practice their art and let them write! The results will be better.

Clients should continuously get more from their agency as time passes. As the relationship and the agency team’s client knowledge grows, so should the service quality level.

Source – Ford Kanzler, Marketing Profs

How a Good Public Relations Plan Can Help You to Reach Targeted Customers

In today’s 24/7 connected world, it’s more important than ever to publicize your company’s products and services through a variety of ways to differentiate your company from the competition.

While you can certainly generate publicity for your company by yourself – like going to networking events or keeping in touch with your existing business/personal contacts – a strategic public relations plan can more effectively disseminate your company’s messages to a targeted group of individuals and corporations who would likely purchase your products and services.

I’m certainly not advocating stopping business development efforts that have been successful  in the past. Instead, I’m speaking from my own experience that a strategic public relations plan can help your business to reach levels it’s never known before because of the economics of scale provided by public relations. Through the implementation of a strategic public relations plan, you can reach more people in one day than you’d ever be able to reach by with yourself.

What makes a good public relations plan?

It’s much more than just trying to get your business mentioned on Oprah, an article in the New York Times or even getting 1,000 followers on Facebook. A good public relations plan looks at your business and your customers (who they are, where they live, how they get their news) and targets opportunities that will result in higher qualified leads for your business.

For example, if you’re a company that sells financial services to millionaires, there’s a good chance that your customers are notwatching Oprah in the afternoon when the stock market is open. As a result, an effective PR plan would determine how your business can reach your targeted customer base; perhaps you could hold an intimate event where you can network with doctors, lawyers and corporate executives.)

Depending on your business, a strategic public relations plan may include things like: a media relations strategy that communicates information  on your business to local, state and industry media; ways you can promote your business through social media outlets; the development of a new website that can be cross-promoted by search engines and social media sites; the creation of a marketing/advertising campaign, development of promotional events; and speaking opportunities at corporate and non-profit events to generate credibility for your business.

Simply put, a good PR plan is not one size fits all. A strong plan is developed by putting a lot of thought into how you can reach customers where they live, work and visit and then targeting those places with salient messages that will resonate with your customers and get them to visit your website, call your company and ultimately buy your product or service.

Source – Tony Bianchini, Open Door Media

How to Make a Situation Analysis (SWAT) For Your BRAND

Before making any marketing strategy, whether advertising or public relations, you need to learn how to make situation analysis. Your analysis will become the very foundation of the strategies and tactics you will implement. This will show you exactly what problems you need to address and what situations you need to take advantage on.

The process of making a situation analysis includes the following:

Product and Position

Determine where your business is now and how you positioned it in the market. To do this, you must divide your business into your core products (the primary products you provide in the market) and the support products (those that enhance your core products). Other aspects you may want to look at include brand identity, pricing, distribution, and store location, among others.

Doing these should help you understand the objectives you need to achieve in and maintain for your business , as well as measure its performance.

Competition

Compile a list of your competitors and break them down according to level. Your primary competitors must consist of businesses that you feel share the same goals, strategies, and resources of your company, while secondary competitors are those that indirectly affect your sales. Also come up with businesses that may pose as a potential threat to your company in the future.

Once you’ve compiled your competitor list, come up with the advantages and disadvantages for each by figuring out where they are in the market, how the market perceives them, and how they compare to your business.

Market Related

Define your target market according to primary and secondary levels. Your market can be categorized according to their purchasing trends, power, and behavior. You also have to consider how your products and services measure up to their expectations and satisfy consumer needs. Furthermore, figure out how your market perceives not only your product in terms of what it has to offer, but also your business as a brand in relation to your competitors.

Environmental and Natural Factors

This is composed of two aspects – external and internal.

External could be natural phenomenon, economic situation, politics, culture and diversities that will or might affect your performance in the market.

Internal refers to company politics, your work force, production rate, manufacturing processes, business partnerships, tie-ups, administration and management expertise.

SWOT Analysis

After listing down the following and answering the specified questions, the next step is to cross examine each point and analyze how they are interrelated. By carefully studying each point and raw data, you will be able to derive the S-W-O-T of your business – this stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

• Strengths – These are the positive attributes, material and conceptual, internal to your brand. Such features are within your capacity to control. You could break this down into product/service, organization and administration, assets and valuable materials, and other features that may give you a competitive advantage in the market.

• Weaknesses – These are factors within your control that diminish your ability to gain or maintain a competitive advantage in the market. You can also categorize these into tangible and intangible. Under tangible, these could be poor packaging, inferior location, limited resources etc. Intangible weaknesses could be lack of expertise, lack of access to special skills and trainings, inferiors ambiance created by your store etc. These are all internal factors that render your business at a disadvantage in comparison to your competitor.

• Opportunities – These are external factors that may give you an edge in the market – these can also be current situations that you may find yourself attracted to take advantage on. Opportunities show the potential you can realize by the execution of your marketing strategies. Examples of these are economic situation advantageous for your business, lifestyle and trend change, positive perception of the market with regard to your brand and a more.

• Threats – These are external factors that are outside your realm of control that may negatively affect your business – threats are the reasons why contingency plans are usually developed. These can be situations such as decline of economic value of your stocks, inevitable price increase from suppliers, governmental regulations, a change in consumer behavior that reduces profit, etc.

Implications

After listing down and cross-examining all of these elements and factors, just before you made your SWOT analysis, you can now proceed to determine the implications of your analysis. Having defined your internal strengths and weaknesses and figuring out external opportunities and threats, how are you going to take advantage of your strengths to overshadow or improve on your weaknesses and wield it to seize opportunities in order to deflect threats in the case that they do materialize?

Here is an example of a SWOT Analysis of the print industry in the US. If you plan on starting a business on printing services, here’s a SWOT made ready for you. All you need to do is to fill in the necessary information.

Source – PrintRunner