How do pr companies work

A company that enhances its reputation through a range of unique PR practices makes it likely that new potential customers will find their way right to its door. Customers and clients will have more options to connect with the company through its business stories and press releases.

PR agencies make that possible by helping organizations to craft the right messages to resonate with their target customers in impactful ways. In the end, that means bigger profits. The online world allows people to say whatever they want about a business, true or not, with the business being able to do very little about it.

A large number of businesses get a bad reputation without doing anything to deserve it, while other businesses are not within easy online reach of their intended markets. Both circumstances are hardly ideal. The most effective way to fix that is through PR campaigns.

Reputation management is one of the main services that public relations firms offer. Tactics might include email newsletters, messaging on website copy or blog content, social media management, responding to reviews, and engaging with followers. For instance, Taco Bell uses social media to build its reputation. In the example below, Taco Bell responds to a customer on Twitter with an authentic, engaging tweet making the brand relatable and boosting its reputation.

Image Source. Your company will most likely face at least one crisis during your tenure. That's why you might have a PR firm come up with a crisis communication plan so you're prepared when the time comes. For example, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leading breast cancer charity, faced the consequences of lacking a crisis communication plan in They stopped funding Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screenings after 7 years of funding.

When the announcement was made by Planned Parenthood, the story went viral on social media with attacks coming from all sides. Komen waited a while to respond, put up a video failing to take responsibility, and then reversed the decision. According to PRSA , there are many lessons to learn from Komen's mistakes, including "Don't position yourself as a victim.

It won't work. One way to build your reputation and get your name out there is through the media. PR firms can handle the relationship between the media and your company. Tactics include writing pitches to journalists and influencers to attain mentions in industry news and get more media coverage. For example, if you own a sustainable beauty company, a PR firm might pitch you to the Organic Bunny blog for an interview about sustainable beauty products.

Social media is a large factor in reputation management and one of the main ways to communicate with your audience, so maintaining your social media accounts can become a public relations tactic. Since you own your social media accounts they're an easy way to build your brand. Plus, your social media strategy might involve engaging with influencers in your niche. In the example below, Poo-Pourri uses its own social media account to boost its reputation and spread the word about an earned media opportunity.

Also, note how the founder is active in the community, attains media coverage, and builds her company's brand. Speech writing is a useful public relations tactic that you might use if your company holds press conferences and events or your employees speak at industry events.

Any speeches given on behalf of your company should represent your brand as a whole. If anyone in your company has to give a speech, you might consider hiring a PR agency to handle the strategic messaging. In the example below, Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, and other members of his team, give several speeches about new products and updates during Apple's annual innovation event.

Apple may or may not have worked with a public relations firm, but this is a great example of an event where you might talk to a PR firm about the strategic and brand messaging. Your company might have to write a press release to announce new products, launches, campaigns, or movements.

This tactic goes hand-in-hand with media relations. For example, if you work at a shoe company and want to start a movement on Twitter to walkmore, a PR firm can write a press release to announce the campaign and hopefully attain media coverage.

Event planning can be a marketing and public relations tactic to promote your brand, product, or service. If your company puts on an event for the purpose of boosting your brand reputation, you might consider working with a PR agency.

A PR agency can help communicate with your stakeholders and publics, attain media coverage, and plan your event. Do you want to ensure your company is active in your niche's community, including trade shows and events? A PR agency can help with that. Public relations firms use outreach as a tactic to boost brand reputation and increase brand awareness. For example, if you work at a fish store, your public relations firm might reach out to the Global Pet Expo to attain a booth at the event.

Then, they might promote your involvement through social media, a press release, and media interviews. The most important element to communicating and building relationships with your publics is to understand them.

That's why a PR firm would likely use market research as a tactic. They might use surveys, feedback forms, or focus groups to learn about your target audience. For example, if you own a protein company, a PR firm might send out surveys to see who buys your protein, what kind of flavors they want, and what they value in a protein company. Many companies and brands in the public eye undergo media training.

Media training is a tactic public relations firms use in order to produce consistent, strategic messaging for the brands they work with. If your company or brand will have several employees speaking in public, everyone should be on the same page in regards to messaging. If there is only one person who will be the face of your brand, it's important to anticipate common reporter questions and have canned answers prepared.

In the example below, the Kardashians attend media training to practice answers to the most controversial questions reporters ask them. As a brand, the Kardashians have a lot of moving parts, and the family had never discussed or practiced the messaging they'd use when talking to the media. Writing internal copy is a public relations tactic PR agencies use to communicate with employees. Do not take the meeting if the firm does not have expertise in your industry or market AND they don't adequately show interest or passion for what you do.

If you do take a call or meeting, ask the toughest questions you can think of. Prepare ahead of time if needed with your own due diligence on the firm and bring burning questions from your company.

What are the biggest challenges you're facing? What snafus might arise in the future? How would they navigate these situations? The best questions are the ones that are incredibly specific to your venture. Make it impossible for them to issue a blanket statement. When working with a company that did blood draws in healthtech, I often would pose FDA and other industry-related questions because a lot of firms had no grasp on the complexity of the industry. Take in a case study showing where you are in the life of your business.

Ask them: How would you have us launch in a new market? What 5 questions would you answer ahead of launch? How would you define the success of the launch? Listen to how they support their positions and to the tone they use in their responses.

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is impact in the eye of the invoice payer. While press mentions and TV spots matter, below are other ways I recommend evaluating your PR firm's success. Measure inbound traffic and sales from broadcast press. In one engagement, a local PR firm got one of our clients great local press including morning news segments, evening news shows and local cable guest spots. While web traffic spiked during this time, orders stayed flat. If you were to bucket the good, the bad and the ugly about this engagement, it would look like this:.

Good: We got attention from the right audience which built over time and portrayed the CEO in a positive light. Bad: We invested a lot of time, especially from the CEO, without an immediate pay-off. Ugly: We saw no increase in sales. The Verdict: We asked the firm to cut back on local TV spots in favor of getting coverage by local bloggers. This ended up having higher conversion rates at a discounted price.

Monitor mentions from your customers about press. One of the best aspects of consulting for Lift. They then added their own enthusiasm to the mix and evangelized for the app.

Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships. People and companies who want to be part of your story will find you. You'll need to do the legwork to justify the cost of working with them.

While there are more and more tools that can help you measure the impact and conversions driven by PR, they are often prohibitively expensive and time consuming for a lean startup team.

That said, you don't have to use fancy apps of analytics to tell if a strategy is working. Basic, inexpensive tools can show you correlation and causation between PR wins and wins for your company. But you still need to have the time and people to run these assessments. Before you agree to work with a firm, make sure you have enough resources in place to measure the outcome of the relationship — review these results every three months to stay on track.

You will still need to be the best source of content. Your PR firm can't make anything happen if you don't give them anything, so you have to invest in doing that work appropriately. This requires stark prioritization and telling the stories you know will make the biggest difference with your most important audience.

As an example, when I worked at Wildfire , I spent nearly six months preparing a data-driven research report about the social media marketplace using internal data and executive surveys. Because the report was so chock-full of relevant information, it garnered about three months of press and positioned Wildfire as a leader in the nascent field of social media marketing.

Our PR firm was instrumental in setting up press meetings and interviews and keeping the momentum going, but we still had to be thinking about and creating content all the time. There will always be downtime. Just as success at a startup ebbs and flows, so does the PR machine. You want the firm you're working with to keep things humming — if that mirrors where your business is.

Sometimes you'll be cranking away on product and have nothing new to announce or launch or say, and that's fine. But this doesn't mean you should let your PR firm take a complete break, especially if they're on retainer. You want to use this time as an opportunity to have close discussions with them about what has been working, what should change for the next big press push, and how you can maintain steady visibility with your core audiences.

Investment does not equal return. After working with a great PR firm for several months at WellnessFX , we unfortunately had to let them go. They were energetic, had great contacts and knew our space. But we needed a more grassroots strategy that required a smaller retainer from a firm. We parted ways amicably by being honest about where we were and what we needed — and highlighting the areas where we thought they really shined.

When it comes to critical launches and timely press, your firm better be there for you. I once hired a freelancer to help with a launch of a new company during a conference. Not ok.

Another classic bait-and-switch is that your initial meeting will be with a VP or senior account manager, but the firm will actually make someone very junior the point person on your account. I would demand a full refund in this case. What's shocking is how common these situations turn out to be, so keep your eyes open.

The firm you choose to work with should understand that your founding team is your most powerful asset. The best stories and first impressions are made by charismatic founders who are backed by the right PR firepower.

Some even state that they 'may' wish to work in PR,' says Trevor. Therefore, it's important to target your application to the company that you're applying to, have a clear idea about why you want to work in PR in the first place and be ready to demonstrate your passion. Showcasing your personality is another crucial part of any application, says Sarah Schofield of specialist creative comms agency Tangerine.

Learn how to write a CV and what makes an effective cover letter. A business's online reputation is of paramount importance but while being internet savvy is essential for any PR role, this shouldn't come at the expense of traditional PR skills. Your social profiles Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Trevor notes that networking is a viable way to get the attention of PR agencies that you're interested in working for.

Find out more about social media and job hunting. If your degree is in a different subject or you just want to improve your knowledge then doing a Masters is a good idea.

Aimed at those already in the profession, as well as at graduates with good communication skills and degrees in other subjects preferably a or above. Course leader Gareth Thompson explains, 'A postgraduate course in PR explores reputation and communication in depth, allowing us to link theory with practice. The aim is to give practitioners of the future the confidence to tackle the increasingly complex organisational and communication challenges that they will confront in the workplace.