How To Hire The Right PR Agency

Hiring is never easy – that is, if you want the best.

So, assuming you want to drive real impact – let’s talk about how to hire the right public relations and marketing agency for your brand.

1. Invest in value

Every intelligent agency will first and foremost, assess whether your budget matches their minimum monthly retainer. To maximise success, you must ensure that your firm is ready to invest in PR – results aren’t cheap but informed spending can deliver high levels of influence.
Investing in value will consequence in long-term gain. Understanding an agency’s level of expertise is critical, whether it’s branding, content marketing, media relations, event management, speaker opportunities or award submissions – do not accept inadequacy. Your chosen PR agency must be proactive, not reactive. Curzon PR pride ourselves on our ability to communicate with our clients throughout the full campaign to show our results-focused, can-do approach.

2. RFP or not to RFP

If it’s your first time or not, RFP or ‘request for proposal’ is a super sensible way to logically control variables when assessing a PR agency’s expertise against your objectives. The process follows the same path – understanding your own goals, creating a brief around these goals, sending the brief to agencies who then prepare a proposal ahead of pitching to you.
This makes it easier to understand which agencies are aligned to your needs. Another smart tip is to be highly specific when it comes to writing your RFP. The more detailed you are, the more focused your agencies will be when providing solutions for your communications problems. Always be specific and ask yourself questions like: what you want to achieve? How will you measure your success? How does your potential PR agency measure success? Quality will be clear by comparison.

3. Chemistry

Like every great relationship, chemistry is key. You must see your hired PR professionals as a core extension of your team rather than simply an external agency. The components of good chemistry mean good rapport and this mutual understanding is critical to satisfaction when it comes to client-agency relationships. As tempting as it may be to fall head-over-heels by an agency who look great – being realistic and mindful of the principles behind their passion is what will work in the long-term. Who will be the direct team working on the account? Can the company provide strong case studies in your sector for projects similar to yours? What are their agency values?

Final thoughts…

Bill Gates once said – “if I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” Ultimately, hiring the right PR agency is a balance between your needs and a PR agency’s ability to deliver. It doesn’t always have to be trial and error if you know exactly what you are looking for.

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]