You’ve just identified a major gap in the market, fine tuned your product or service and progressed it through the R&D stages. You’ve just secured your funding and now you feel more ready than ever before for the world to chant your name. You believe your next move should be to find a dynamic, effective PR agency to generate awareness and credibility. But are you really in the right place to delve into doing media interviews? Here are some key considerations to take into account before you approach any public relations agency.
- Are you clear on who you are? Do you know your own story and how to tell it? This may seem like the most basic of questions. But this is something any reputable agency will ask potential clients. PR is about telling a story and building a convincing, beguiling narrative about you and the amazing, transformative things you can do for your customers. So, knowing the story inside out is absolutely essential. Frequently, PR agencies need to strip back all the marketing talk to get to the bare bones of what it is that you do. This slows down the whole process of getting the campaign off the ground, costing you time and money. Ask yourself, what is the clearest, simplest explanation of what you do and decide on how quickly you can deliver it. Let us put the bells and whistles on it, after all, that’s what you’re paying us for.
- Do you know who your target market is? We find new, existing and potential clients who often want to target everyone and appear in top tier publications such as Bloomberg, CNN and CNBC straightaway. While we get the aspirational aspect of this, it is not the most effective way to get your message out there. Top tier publications are only interested in talking about success stories and the next big thing. Taking the time to really think about who your customers are means we can target publications that are going to be most advantageous to your campaign. The goal here is to get you written and talked about, not by all the people, but by influential people, the ones who are actually going to visit your site and engage with your services. That is how we help increase traffic to your site, which leads to success. Once this is happening and you become the success story you aspire to be, more top-tier media will follow.
- What does Success look like to you? Think about it. What are your goals and are they realistic? This is an element that needs to be well thought out before you engage with a PR consultancy. We take our cues from you, if you say something is important then that’s what we’ll go with. But resources are finite. It’s therefore very important to be realistic in who you want to target. Being in a top tier publication, while nice, is not necessarily going to be as beneficial as being in a relevant trade publication. Remember what success looks like for you, plan accordingly and be realistic.
- Are you in the right place to team up with a PR consultancy? This is about mindset more than anything. Any successful PR campaign requires that you be prepared to engage with us, to ensure a fruitful partnership. That means making time to talk to us and send required materials in advance of events or releases. You also have to be prepared to listen to our advice. For our part, we’ll make the time to talk with you, address your needs and concerns and champion you the best we can.
Whilst this advice may seem obvious or, in some cases, like a lot of hard work, we have found that the more clients think about these questions before engaging in a campaign the smoother it goes. This means that they get better quality coverage sooner, resulting in hitting and even exceeding their goals, thus attaining ‘success’ that bit quicker. For more tips on when and how to prepare for the launch of your campaign, you can read this post by Founder of ClearStory James McCann by clicking here.
