How To Effectively Manage Your Pr Agency: Companies Need To Be Responsive To Get Best Results

You've looked at your sales, your marketing, your budget and your revenues

, and you decided it's time to make an investment in public relations. You interview several PR firms, take bids and make your choice. Now, you have an "agency of record" and you're ready to reap the benefits of placements in print, online media, radio and TV.

Only, not so fast. A company's responsibility to their PR firm and the campaign they run together does not end with cutting the check.

Hiring an agency is an important step, but once you start signing the checks, you have to know how to manage your efforts with that agency in order to maximize the return on that investment. Your responsibility is not absolved by the fact that you are paying an agency. Your organization has to work seamlessly with them in order for them to do the job you hired them to do, and it's not always an easy equation. Sometimes you'll need to dedicate some time and effort to help the agency do its job, and other times you'll need to get out of their way. It's a finesse play, but there are some ways you can be more effective:

1. Be responsive - Agencies will initially need some guidance on your company's goals and objectives. They'll need to understand how you make money, the profile of your typical customer and where they come from. Moreover, from time to time, they'll need you on the phone right now. In dealing with the modern press in the endless 24/7 cable TV/Internet news cycle, good PR reps routinely encounter journalists on deadline. So if your PR rep calls at 7 p.m. on a Friday night, it's not likely they are interested in where you are going for happy hour. It's more likely that they have a journalist on deadline who wants to talk to you this very minute. And if it's not you, it will be someone else who gets that ink the following day. So if your agency asks you questions about your company, answer them fully and promptly. If they call you, pick up the call. I guarantee you they are not calling to chitchat.

2. Don't quibble - Hiring a PR agency is just like hiring an accountant or an attorney or any other kind of business consultant. You're hiring expertise their as a means to get results. Having said that, I have been hired by some clients over the years who would challenge every strategic choice, fine-tooth comb every document and make copious revisions and invariably kill the campaign with their micromanagement. The truth is, PR is a profession, and if you hire an agency, you need to recognize that part of what you're paying for is expertise. Most companies would never quibble with their accounting firm, and they'd never argue legal opinions with their attorneys, so why do they find it so easy to dispute the expertise of their PR firm? It's just counterproductive and it ends up wasting valuable time and money.

3. Market your PR results -- Getting placements in the media is not the last part of the journey. Once you get that newspaper hit or TV interview that you've been coveting, you've got to let people know that you've gotten them. Every company that does PR should have a section on their corporate Web site that features all the media hits they've received. The best way to do this is to make Acrobat (PDF) files of all print or online hits, and attempt to get recordings of all radio and TV segments so that you can convert them into playable media files for your Web site. Don't just use a link to the Web site of the media outlet that covered you, because in many cases, the links don't stay up for long, and you wind up with a Web page that has a collection of dead links. Once they are on your site, send out some emails to your current clients, potential clients and others in your email databases to let them see that the press deems you important and influential enough to cover. Market your PR hits, and help give those media hits a longer life with which to benefit your company.

It's a good business choice to do PR as an integral part of your marketing. But don't turn that good choice into a bad one by only doing the job halfway. Hire your firm, manage them, respond to them and give them the freedom to do the job you hired them to do. When you're done, you should have some great clips to show for it, and to use continually to drive your leads and business.

by: Marsha Friedman

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