Top Public Relations Companies
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Top Value Propositions and Differentiating Factors of the Best Public Relations Companies
Public relations is an essential component of a well-rounded brand marketing strategy. Not only does good PR make it more likely that potential clients or customers will hear about and notice your brand, it also contributes significantly to the success of marketing efforts in other channels.
Many brands choose to partner with a PR agency rather than manage publicity in house. PR agencies have a level of communications experience and a breadth of knowledge on staff that can rarely be matched by an in-house team. Partnering with the right PR firm can do wonders for brand recognition and goodwill, but partnering with an unsuitable agency is bound to result in lost opportunities and a frustrating relationship.
How do you set your company up for a successful, fruitful relationship with your PR agency? Make sure you enter into an engagement with a company you trust to deliver what they promise. Understanding the key differentiators of top public relations companies is the first step to identifying those that will be reliable, effective partners.
- Top public relations companies know the value of relationships
- Leading public relations companies are industry experts
- The best public relations companies are storytellers
- Respected public relations companies earn accolades
- Smart public relations companies can handle a crisis
- Great public relations companies take an integrated approach
- Service offerings of top public relations companies
- How the best public relations companies market themselves
- Takeaways:
Top public relations companies know the value of relationships
More than anything, public relations is a relationship business. Top public relations companies know that in order to keep clients happy, they have to maintain healthy relationships with them. That means exceeding expectations in terms of media coverage and staying committed to regular communication. Public relations companies must also maintain solid relationships with media outlets and reporters. Cultivating these connections is what the business of PR is all about.
When searching for a new PR company, try to get a sense of their connections. Does it seem like they’ll have access to contacts at the outlets that matter most for your business? The team’s relationships will, in large part, dictate your success.
Leading public relations companies are industry experts
Onboarding a new PR agency is time-consuming in the best of circumstances, but onboarding one that isn’t familiar with your business can be flat out painful. The best public relations company for your brand is usually one that has experience working with clients in your sector or industry. For one thing, they’ll already have a whole roster of relevant contacts established. They’ll also be intimately acquainted with the best messaging approaches and the core challenges for a brand in your vertical. You won’t have to spend as much time in discovery, because the agency will be ready to hit the ground running. Look for an PR partner that is willing to be specific about which industries they have experience working in, rather than one that pitches itself as too much of a generalist.
The best public relations companies are storytellers
Brand storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool. It’s what enables consumers to connect with brands on an emotional level. It transcends product benefits or value to instill something more meaningful -- personal connection. The best public relations companies understand the value of storytelling and are skilled at spinning tales on behalf of their clients. PR professionals know that the better they are at telling a story about your brand’s origins or mission, the greater the chance they’ll be able to gain mentions and publicity. Look for great storytelling when you’re interviewing PR agencies. If they know what they’re doing it will be evident in their case studies and the pitch they approach you with.
Respected public relations companies earn accolades
Being recognized in the industry is a good indication that the PR agency is question has earned a solid reputation for itself. Though winning awards and accolades is by no means the only differentiating factor that matters, it is one that should instill confidence in the firm’s expertise, authority, and track record. Top public relations agencies are proud to share their achievements with prospective clients, and often call out their award-winning campaigns on their websites.
Smart public relations companies can handle a crisis
Most of the time, the role of your public relations agency will be to promote your brand and do proactive reputation management. However, crises do happen and if your brand is in the unfortunate position of being in the news for the wrong reasons, you need a PR agency that can perform just as well under stressful conditions as they do when things are going well. Top public relations companies are capable of handling a crisis, even if that wasn’t what they were initially hired to do. In every agency interview be sure to get a sense for how the agency has handled crisis communication for previous clients, and what their process is for dealing with negative publicity. Hopefully crisis management will never be necessary, but you want to be prepared if it is.
Great public relations companies take an integrated approach
In the digital age much of every PR campaign takes place online. Where the old-school approach was focused on in-person events, printed press releases, and pitches done over the phone or over lunch, focus has now shifted to digital outlets like social media channels and social influencers, bloggers, websites, even podcasts. The best public relations companies are the ones who are capable of handling both the old school and the new. These agencies position themselves based on their ability to take an integrated approach to managing client publicity. Nothing happens in a silo because teams are in constant communication, covering all bases from offline to digital.
Service offerings of top public relations companies
Public relations companies often work closing with internal client marketing teams to ensure that the strategies on both sides are working in tandem to support the same goals. Still, some work that comes under the purview of PR agencies has crossover to marketing, particularly when it comes to the social space.
In general, the types of services you can expect to be on offer from top public relations companies include:
● Media relations - Cultivating and maintaining contacts at target media outlet. Pitching story ideas and sources to these contacts in order to achieve press mentions and coverage.
● Event marketing - Designing and hosting special events to delight consumers and media targets and attain event coverage in desirable outlets.
● Social media marketing - Engaging with a community of fans and advocates through active social media participation and community management.
● Influencer marketing - Partnering with social media influencers in order to introduce brands to new and engaged audiences. Service usually includes influencer sourcing, content development, and relationship management.
● Crisis management and communications - Minimizing damage to a brand’s reputation in the fallout of a crisis or scandal, and working to restore brand goodwill in the long term.
How the best public relations companies market themselves
In order to gain the attention of top quality prospective clients, PR agencies have to do a little bit of marketing and publicity on their own behalf. It must be said that a major part of attracting new business in the PR field happens by cultivating a impeccable reputation that increases word of mouth referrals between businesses. The use of testimonials and case studies on PR agency websites helps further demonstrate their ability to get results and keep clients happy.
Thought leadership is another key aspect of any PR agency marketing strategy. Demonstrating expertise through content marketing and, of course, press mentions and new stories, is a way for agencies to build credibility and attract new business.
You can also expect PR agencies to maintain an active presence on social media. Particularly if social media marketing is among the services the agency offers, prospective clients will expect the agency to be experts in executing in the channel on their own behalf.
PR agencies may also run targeted paid search and display campaigns (PPC) in order to attract visitors from relevant search queries. They also likely invest in search engine optimization to enhance their organic rankings for the same relevant terms.
Takeaways:
With so many PR agencies in business, it takes a lot of skill and experience to stand out. Top public relations agencies seek to differentiate themselves from the competition by emphasizing a set of key strengths.
Key differentiating factors, and the questions you should be asking to get to the bottom of each one include:
● Relationship experts - How does the agency maintain good working relationships with their clients? What contacts do they have access to in the media?
● Industry experience - Does the agency have experience working with clients in your industry? Do they have an understanding of the challenges you face as well as the best approach to publicity for a brand in your space?
● Storytelling ability - Can the agency tell an evocative and memorable story about your brand? Will they be able to convincingly pitch stories on your behalf?
● Accolades - Has the agency won awards and honors that recognize their expertise in the industry? Are they respected by their peers, and do they contribute meaningfully to conversations about topics related to their field?
● Calm in a crisis - Will the agency be just as effective in times of crisis as they are in times when everything is going well? What is their approach to handling bad press and negative attention?
● Integrated approach - Does the agency cover all the PR bases, including both digital and offline channels? Will they be able to work effectively with other marketing teams?
Top Qualities of the Best Public Relations Companies
Goal-Oriented Approach
It’s important to enter into a relationship with any agency partner with a set of strategic goals in place. Top public relations companies will be committed to understanding your business’s objectives and using them as the basis for their approach to managing your brand’s publicity. Look for an agency that will create a PR strategy that is tailored specifically to meeting your goals and be sure that measurement against these goals is feasible. Entering a partnership with an agency that isn’t goal-oriented may result in wasted time and money spent chasing publicity that doesn’t move the needle for your business.
Relevant Experience
With any agency there’s always an onboarding phase which allows the team to get to know your business and go through a discovery process. You should expect this with any partner you choose to work with, but finding one with experience that’s relevant to your brand or industry can help reduce the amount of time it takes them to get up to speed. The top public relations companies for your brand will most likely be the ones who have worked with similar clients in the past. If they have, the learning curve will be significantly reduced, and you can feel more secure that they have the right connections already in place.
Track Record
The only way to know for sure if a PR agency can do what they promise is by looking to see if they’ve been successful in the past. A proven track record is a key attribute of all top public relations agencies. They should be happy to discuss the results they’ve gotten for other clients and to be specific and concrete about their process for attaining those results. Don’t be shy about asking for references either. Speaking to another client of the agency is a good way to gain meaningful insight into how the agency works.
Partnership
An agency partnership is more than a business deal, it’s a relationship, and hopefully one that will last for years to come. Turning over agencies frequently can be bad for business, causing disruption to projects and all the attendant headaches of onboarding a new team. Top public relations companies value partnership, and as a client you should too. Look for an agency populated by people you actually like and can see yourself working with long into the future. You’ll be trusting them with your brand image, so being able to get along and work well together couldn’t be more important.
Transparency and Reporting
A major part of any good relationship is transparent communication. Some people have been burned by previous agency relationships where objectives and campaign progress or results were unclear. But top public relations companies are above all that. They’ll be upfront about what results you can expect from their efforts, and transparent in reporting what’s been achieved. Look for a PR agency that sets regular check-in meetings and makes reporting to you, the client, a key deliverable of their service.
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