“Ughh, I spend so much money on my PR agency and I get nothing”
It’s a common refrain. And to be fair, not all PR agencies are equal. Sometimes agencies overpromise and underdeliver. It is more focused on other clients, out of its depth, there’s a lot of turnover and poor training, or it is simply not much chop.
But some problems arise when an agency and client don’t establish a solid working relationship. This isn’t to point fingers – it can happen easily enough. Perhaps a client is so busy that they don’t have time to manage the agency. Or maybe they don’t quite know how agencies work and are burning through budgets without realising it.
Whatever the situation, it’s a lose-lose one. In a climate where there’s scrutiny on every dollar a company invests, a client who can’t justify its PR investment up the chain is going to raise eyebrows and even questions. And the agency knows that the lifespan of an account shrinks dramatically when it can’t show its value.
So, if you want to get the best out of your agency, make sure you’re giving them the tools it needs to succeed.
Define Your Objectives
If you let your agency team know what you want to achieve, it’ll work with you to develop a communications strategy, map out and set measurable goals and decide key performance indicators (KPIs). Of course, goals may evolve with your overall business strategy, and it might have to adapt its recommendations accordingly, but laying all this out minimises the chances that it’ll wander down a blind alley.
Let the Agency into Your Wider Business
If your agency can align with other areas of your business, particularly sales and marketing, it ensures your communications voice is consistent with the brand. There’s no point developing a campaign leaning on your brand’s luxury image if any media coverage is surrounded by ads promoting heavy discounts. Your sales (and presales) team are also talking directly to your customers – if your agency can hear from them, it can tailor communications to resonate with your audience.
Trust Its Expertise
If your agency is good, it has extensive knowledge of the media landscape, industry trends, and experience with other clients and uses these to make recommendations it think has the best chance of success. It’s also working regularly with the media, so can help you navigate the dos and don’ts of dealing with journalists. You don’t have to agree every time, but it’s worth considering its advice – it’s borne out of (sometimes bitter) experience.
Remember, You’re the Expert on Your Brand
Your agency only has as much internal insight as you give it. Share all relevant details about your business, including your goals, challenges, brand guidelines, and other internal documents. Provide comprehensive briefs on what you’re looking for. Heck, if the CEO thinks that PR is a waste of time, share that as well. An agency may have an idea how to better showcase it, and your, value. The better the inputs, the better the outputs.
Be Responsive and Available
While an agency’s work for you is the most important thing in its day, it understands it’s just one of many tasks you are managing. However, PR is not a set-and-forget process. Timely feedback and availability make for better PR campaigns and more media opportunities. If you’re constantly cancelling meetings and not responding to emails, work will quickly grind to a halt. And if you’re not available for whatever reason, let your agency know so it can plan around that.
Let the Agency Know How You Like to Work
Your agency should establish an account management routine that works for you. Some clients prefer calls to discuss work, others like emails or shared WIP documents. It wants to fit in with your existing ways of working so it can get what it needs for success.
Streamline Where You Can
Back and forth can eat your budget without much result -we charge hourly rates. Simply put, if you can give the agency all the information it needs in one go, or get feedback from all stakeholders before making changes, it can get more bang for your buck.
If You Don’t Like Something, Say Something
Agency don’t always get everything right on the first try. It can take time to learn your brand’s voice and the topics it is comfortable discussing. Constructive feedback will help refine the process.
Measure and Adjust
Your agency should regularly review the results of it work and recommend adjustments to ensure you’re on track to meet your goals. Things change fast, and if a tactic stops working, it’s better to try a different approach than keep pushing and getting nowhere.
Don’t fall into the reporting trap
Given all the talk about tracking and measuring, this may sound contradictory. However, excessive reporting is to your budget like Pac-Man is to a pellet, especially if you have a small budget. Yes, your agency needs to showcase that it is delivering on the strategy, but despite all tools that now streamline reporting, it can be time-consuming and therefore budget eating. Think about what you need from your reporting. It may be that all you need is a simple spreadsheet or email wrap it, rather than a beautifully designed slide deck. If you need to do multiple reports to different stakeholder, is there a way that information can be inputted from one report to another with minimal reworking? That way your agency can spend less time working on the reports and more time working on things that report-worthy.
The success of your PR strategy lives and dies on the strength of your relationship with the agency. Clear expectations, open communication and working as a true extension of your team makes for a successful ongoing partnership – and efficient use of your budget.
Unhappy with your current agency? Contact us to discuss ways we can work together to get you an unfair share of attention.
