Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash
By Amanda Drum
PR readiness can be tricky to measure when you’re someone with an incredible talent or project, or a business with an amazing product. You might have news to share–but does that mean you’re “PR ready”? To prepare to collaborate with a PR agency, brands may wish to consider multiple factors before running their first ‘PR agency’ Google search. Having a company story to tell or exciting news may inspire you to want to shout it from the rooftops, and that’s a great potential starting point. However this is one square on a longer checklist as you determine if your company is PR ready.
- Are you different from everyone else?
This should be the first question you answer for yourself as a person or business, even before your future publicist asks. If you know your value in ephemeral terms, but need help putting your thoughts to paper, a PR agency can help solidify your individual or brand proposition.
Being “different” could mean the obvious, like a different business offering altogether, a different audience target, or a different origin story. But it could also mean: a different work culture, a different experience pool among your leadership team, or challenging the status quo in some way. Ask yourself why target clients should–and shouldn’t–pick you over your competition, and you’ll have your answer. This may be something that will take time to answer in a meaningful way, so give yourself time to hash it out with your marketing team and/or stakeholders. Once you hire a PR rep, they can help refine your company’s ‘point of difference(s)’, and this will form the foundation for your PR narrative.
- Why should people care about your product/service?
Sometimes the answer to this question is self-evident; in others, especially for niche or inside-baseball industries, brands have to explain their value in layman’s terms. PR agencies can help translate messaging to the media and viewing audiences, but your brand needs to understand its value proposition to successfully begin a PR campaign. If you understand why you’re important to your clients, publicists should have success informing reporters about why you’re relevant in your industry news cycle.
- Do you value PR?
You don’t have to be a PR expert ahead of time–that’s our job, after all–but we recommend coming into the relationship with some knowledge of how you want PR to help you reach your marketing goals. Your goals might be: to build your SEO; to promote your company to potential new clients; to put your product in front of a target audience, or to measurably boost brand awareness. Forging a relationship with a PR agency can help you reach a variety of goals, you just need to know what they are.
A basic knowledge of the different kinds of PR also goes a long way. The acronym we used is PESO: paid, earned, shared, and owned media. Paid media refers to sponsored articles, ad buys on news websites or promoted social media posts. Earned media is what most people think of when they hear ‘PR’, and entails convincing a journalist to cover your story organically. Shared media refers to social media posts and similar. Owned media, as the name suggests, is content you pay for and thus control, like a blog or LinkedIn post.
Each comes with its own rules and achievable results. Wanting the complete control of paid media, for example, isn’t the a realistic expectation for earned media. However, earned media tends to garner more traction, is more “trusted” and shareable, and will go further in connecting clients to their target audience. Once you see first-hand how strategic PR can align with and fulfill your business goals, its value speaks for itself.
- Do you have the time for PR?
You’re hiring a PR agency to get expert results, but that doesn’t mean you’re completely off the hook. If they secure an interview opportunity, someone on your team has to clear their calendar for the discussion. Or if you land a speaking gig, you have to budget and plan for travel, accommodation, and time away from your desk to attend. If your agency penned an op-ed on your behalf to meet a reporter’s deadline, it could prove difficult to review 500-1000 words while juggling a leadership role. Executives may run against a similar issue if they’re picked to be a judge for an awards circuit, give a keynote, or a host of other plum PR opportunities. PR pros want to succeed and, of course, they want you to be thrilled with their results. To build a lasting and business-changing relationship, do the footwork needed to ensure you’re positioned for success as you launch your PR journey.
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