Public Relations
As an entrepreneur/small business owner, public relations should play an integral, strategic role in your company’s marketing effort. Your products/services and corporate name should be in the main stream-and have top of mind awareness among all your key audiences. A concerted public relations and publicity effort can achieve this.
The easiest way to garner widespread media attention is to make news. Which is only one part of public relations. Ask any company marketing other products/services about the even bigger challenge of not making news.
News comes in many forms. Unique products. Celebrity endorsements. Special events. The key is the ability to identify a product or event with the potential for a good news story. You need a great storyteller with marketing savvy and a keen knowledge of how the media works to deliver the news to the most powerful media outlets. This is not an easy task. In fact, many companies flounder from agency to agency. Often, it’s not them agency’s fault because for every bad agency there’s often a bad client. It’s also best to determine what your real needs are. There’s nothing worse than investing a lot of money at an agency, whatever amount that is, where you’re thought of as a small (read: unimportant) client. If you want personalized service but don’t have a big budget, don’t hire a large agency. You’ll get lost. And if you need an international presence or require specialized services, you won’t be happy with a one or two person shop.
Get to know the people who are going to work on your business. Too often, I hear about clients who met an account team and actually hired an agency based on the personality mix, only to find out after the contract is signed the “new business” team goes away, and an account team of virtual strangers or low level account executives has been put in place to run the day-to-day. Make sure you ask who will be running your business because liking the people you work with and trusting their ability to get the job done is very important.
The smart way to approach hiring an agency is to include public relations in your marketing plan. Set realistic objectives and goals, and be sure you understand what public relations can and cannot do. Then, make the agency
and yourself accountable.
Unrealistic client expectations may be the number one factor in client/agency failure. (Bad writing, missed deadlines and excessive spending are a few others.) If you have your, heart set on being in a certain magazine, but don’t have a great story, no publicist in the world at any agency can place you there. ) Make sure the agency understands the task at hand. Share your business objectives with them and let them put, together a proposed program based on those goals.
A good proposal will give you a sense of the agency’s grasp of the situation, their creative approach and their relevant experience with other clients. The winning proposal can also act as a work plan.
That said, it’s also important to be a good client. This goes beyond paying the bills on time (though they love when their clients do). It’s your job to play an active role in sharing information and direction and help your agency be effective on the job.
If you are going to make a commitment to public relations, make sure you help your agency be successful. Don’t let them work in a vacuum and make sure they have access to you and other executives. Be available for interviews. Return phone calls promptly. Respond to faxes/email. Public relations is often a business of seconds. Opportunities appear and disappears quickly, and when they come you have to be ready to make the most of them. Or your competition will get the break.
