Why Use an Agency to do Your Public Relations?

The other day I met with a senior marketing manager from a company with many diverse products. The company had never used an outside agency before. The manager asked me why they should use a consultant instead of hiring an employee to do their communications and public relations (PR).

There are many reasons. We’ll devote full attention to your company’s opportunities and needs with impartial and confidential handling of your information.

When you hire us, you aren’t just employing one person, you’re hiring a whole department—one that produces tangible, dollars-and-cents results. We work as a team staffed by experts in many areas of the communications field. Our professionals know and have relationships with key media people. We know how to get specific news placement. We know how to get direct reporter-interest response.

The media depend on contacts that they trust to bring them a real news story. They trust us. We are skilled at communicating each client’s unique strengths in an interesting, innovative way. We know how to find the reporters, pick the right publication and target the right audience online and off.

PR is more than press releases. Effective PR is choosing the correct placement of your news. It’s getting your name out into the marketplace, getting that exact placement in a specific newspaper or trade publication. It’s knowing how to get customers’ and all your stakeholders’ attention when and where they want it.

Using sound communications strategies, we can increase the support and awareness of your company. Our full-time business is communicating ideas and messages to the public, and garnering support for your products and/or services.

What Does Public Relations do for Your Marketing?

Public relations (PR) helps reinforce your marketing. It makes your advertising work better. It can’t guarantee 100-percent control over content, display, position and frequency, as does advertising. But what it lacks in frequency, PR can make up for in reach. PR can deliver the product/service message through a variety of media that could never be included in the most lavish advertising plan.

Sound PR is an integral part of maintaining a successful business. Competition for customers is keen. Having a successful business depends on properly building a solid foundation through effective media, customer and employee relations.

Successful media relations – nurtured over time through relationships with media contacts – can help establish an ongoing, positive awareness of your company and the products and/or services it provides. It can inform and excite customers and employees.

Third-party endorsement by the media sells integrity, quality and extraordinary service like no advertisement can. PR has the power to persuade the public.

Waiting to be discovered can take quite a toll on your company. It can mean lost revenue. Your company competes with thousands of others. The main difference is whether your PR program is established by default, or as a result of careful planning.

Well-organized programs and your commitment to a communications plan does make a difference. The payoff can be tremendous.