Kristen Ruby CEO of Ruby Media Group

Making the Most out of The PR Client Agency Relationship

August 7, 2015 by

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
PR client agency relationship

Navigating Agency-Client Relationships: Chemistry, Compatibility, and Accountability

Ruby Media Group Founder Kris Ruby shares how to master successful agency-client relationships and dominate the ever-evolving PR landscape.

Successful agency-client relationships are built on a foundation of chemistry, compatibility, and accountability. Ruby highlights the importance of evaluating these factors to maximize creativity and ensure a fruitful agency partnership. By emphasizing the need for adhering to ethical practices in the industry, Kris offers valuable insights on fostering mutually beneficial relationships between PR agencies and brands.

Looking to make the most out of your new relationship with a Westchester PR agency or NYC Public Relations Agency? Be able to clearly articulate the answers to these questions to your new PR agency before you kick off the new relationship.

  • What is PR nirvana to you? What does success look like to you?
  • How do you see your company growing? What’s the end goal?
  • For some people, it’s a simple 5% increase in customers…for others it’s a feature story in the New York Times or a trade journal. It’s important to know the difference. (You can’t achieve an end goal if you don’t know what it is)
  • What makes you unique?
  • What specifically do you want to be publicized for?
  • Who are you ideally trying to reach?

To set up your relationship with your public relations agency for maximum success, you want to make sure you give them as much data as possible to help them propose the best solutions.

  • What tools and platforms are you currently using in your marketing efforts?
  • What are your goals? Leads, customers, or revenue?
  • What is the lifetime value (LTV) of each customer?
  • Do you have customer personas? Who is your ideal client?
  • What percentage of your customers is generated through online methods?
  • Content audit- what content do you currently have?
  • Who on your marketing team will be creating content?
  • Who are the influencers and experts in your industry that we need to be familiar with?

You also want to define clear expectations for weekly management:

  • Weekly call time?
  • Who needs to be on weekly or monthly project status meetings?
  • Who is approving work?

Be Prepared for a Change in Scope

If your publicist or management consultant is worth their salt, they may completely change the scope of the engagement after hearing your answers to the PR/Marketing onboarding questions. Many business owners think they need PR to fix their business issues, but what they don’t realize is that they need to actually fix the business issues first to generate any worthwhile exposure long term. “Just get me positive press” may stop the bleeding short term, but it is not a long-term solution.

The only thing that needs to change is everything.

Surprise! You have a business problem. Not a marketing problem.

The below is a standard response from a client:

“We agree with everything you identified. There are certainly issues with conveying a consistent brand identity. The best thing for us to do is review this and discuss this….most definitely we need to increase our attention to those elements because we haven’t really done much with it. I don’t have anything to add other than we need to review it.”

Typically, the client will come back and say they have discussed it internally and what they really need you for is press. Think hard before taking on an engagement where you know you are being led to fail. You are the professional. You need to drive the client engagement. If you know there is an inherent business issue, and you start pitching media to review something that is half-baked, you will only hurt yourself, your media relationships and your reputation.

In an initial deep dive discovery meeting with a client, here is an example of one of their answers for a SWOT analysis audit.

“Weaknesses would be team, policy and procedure, consistency in food quality, proper training, staff enthusiasm and knowledge. Absence of good marketing, branding, and PR.  Customers are unhappy with consistency and very upset with staff being completely unaware of dietary components of food items, like what is gluten free or not. Staff isn’t friendly.”

You cannot have successful marketing results if you have deep rooted organizational issues

In order to be of maximum service to your client and guide them in the right direction, you need to address the organizational issues before you can tackle the PR ones. PR should come LAST, not FIRST, when building a business.

It is my strong belief that the best PR strategists are half management consultants and half practitioners. You can only generate press when there are newsworthy items. The rest of the time you should be focused on the business challenges and how you can solve them. If the client inherently disagrees with this approach, think long and hard before committing to anything, and definitely make sure the revised scope is clearly laid out in writing.

Agency Updates must tie PR strategy to business value

This isn’t mission critical

Too often, PR firms fail because they propose creative solutions to problems that clients do not have. You must learn how to prioritize strategic recommendations to outcomes. Before proposing an idea, you need to know if what you are proposing is mission critical. Where does the idea fit into the organizations priorities? If your priorities do not fit in with the companies priorities, you could be seen as a distraction, instead of an asset.

Remember why you were hired. What is the problem you’re trying to solve and why is it important to the business? Don’t just tell someone what you did. Tell them why it matters and how this helps them transform their business.  

How do the tactics tie to the overall business strategy? For example, you may want to say “we pitched five media outlets.” Put yourself in the client’s shoes. They may think, “Okay- so what?” Why does this matter? What tangible outcome will this result in for the client?  

Highlight the wins. Even if you didn’t secure a placement today, pitching your client could lead to a placement tomorrow. Clients need to know where the time is going and how that contributes to their long-term success. Spell this out. Don’t assume they know. 

Proactively address risk management and metrics. If your public relations pitch to close ratio is 1/10 pitches, create a tangible solution for changing a strategy that will yield better results. Letting the client know how you spent your time is not enough. If your time is not resulting in wins, propose changing course. Do not burn through hours for the sake of tracking time. A strategic consultant spends time wisely to optimize for the best chance of success. It is better to spell this out before the client asks the question. By the time someone has to ask you this, you have already lost. 

Tackling The Real Problem

The presenting problem is never the real problem. 

Tie problems to pain points. What is the loss and cost of not doing this today? 

As a consultant, every proposed solution must have a compelling and persuasive statement attached to underscore business value.

  • Why is this happening? Do we understand the root cause? 
  • What is the solution? How much will it cost to fix the problem?
  • Why is this important to our users? 
  • What is the level of prioritization of fixing this problem? 
  • What do we stand to lose if we don’t fix it now? 
  • How much will this problem cost us if it gets worse?

Always be able to answer: Why are we doing this? How much will it cost us in lost revenue if we don’t do this? 

How can we make this happen at a high level? What is required as part of you proposed solution? Don’t make someone guess. 

PR Agency Client Consulting Success: 

A successful consulting engagement must include respect for the exchange of value and knowledge transfer. If someone is looking for an order taker instead of true consulting insights, the lack of alignment will hurt the relationship. If you do not have alignment on exchange of value, neither party will be happy. Work with clients who value what you bring to the table. For some clients, that looks like action items. For others, it takes the form of strategic insights shared in a meeting that lead to deliverables their team can execute on.

PR Agencies are an extension of your internal marketing and communications team, so it is important to work with agencies that align with what you stand for. The best agency campaigns are produced by people who care about the brands and products they promote and represent. 

Your purpose must align with your mission statement. But most importantly, the agency’s purpose should also align with your mission statement, too. Without realizing it, you could be actively working against each other if your values do not align with the agency you hire.

ABOUT RUBY MEDIA GROUP 

Ruby Media Group is a top consulting agency known for execution excellence. The agency is focused on guiding clients through the evolving digital landscape and navigating successful digital transformation strategies through modernization, technology implementation, and marketing consulting. Through Kris Ruby’s experienced leadership and a data-driven approach, Ruby Media Group has helped hundreds of clients gain visibility, drive business goals. and achieve national media recognition.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kris Ruby is a social media strategist, online business consultant, and the founder of Ruby Media Group, an award-winning social media marketing agency in Westchester County, New York. She is known for helping business owners, entrepreneurs, and executive influencers build their brands through social media and content marketing.

 

client-agency