PR is more important than most people think

Many companies that are in the market for PR are copying competitors or going by some of the media comment on the importance of managing PR.

Very few do any form of research about PR agencies and more importantly, about the precise PR needs of their company.

If a potential client does not know what kind of PR they are looking for and what they need from a PR agency, they have no hope of measuring or quantifying whether that agency is delivering or not.

Some people would argue that the agency is there to come up with those answers because they are the experts. This is a circuitous argument, as companies need to know before going into the market whether they need PR and what exactly PR can do for them.

Practitioners in the industry can advise and suggest or even pitch for business, but clients that don't know why they are there are a dangerous proposition.

In allaying client concerns and convincing them of credentials, the following three questions are useful when cementing an existing client relationship or building a new one.

1. Can we reach their target market?

The question seems obvious, but this can be difficult, especially when dealing with clients that don't know their own markets. Getting this first question wrong can mean choosing the wrong media and wasting the message, however good that may be.

2. Do we understand how their brand should be portrayed in the media?

This also seems obvious and simple. yet mistakes can be costly as top management are often more concerned with this aspect than the marketing department.

3. Is what we are pitching measurable?

Another question that looks deceptively simple. There are many methods of quantifying media presence and communications but there are often subtle differences between industries and even companies in the same industry.

Promising and delivering something the client cannot quantify and therefore equate with the financial outlay, is a quick route to client dissatisfaction.

The answer to this last question lies in experience of the industry and this is an argument in favour of specialising with only clients from that industry.

These are questions that don't go away once a contract is signed. They recur every time a release is written or a launch is planned and even something as simple as designing client business cards.

This is not the definitive manual on PR but the questions are ones that keep cropping up and the agencies that succeed with clients get them right, whereas those that have problems end up getting one or more wrong.

There is no absolute blueprint for managing PR. If there were, the clients would do it themselves in spare time and there would be no challenge.