9 Reasons to Hire a Public Relations Firm

When searching through the Public Relations Forms website, I found this posting which I found to be very true. It discusses nine reasons why company's should hire a PR Firm.

9 Reasons to Hire a Public Relations Firm

1. Tweet Me

One of the reasons that public relations has been validated so emphatically by the business community is the rapidly evolving nature of communications itself.

In a word: Digital.

The “What” (information) may essentially be the same, but the “How” keeps changing. Companies today need a combination of communications counselor, navigator and interpreter to do it right.

Today’s public relations firms have the expertise and experience to help clients maximize social media platforms such as blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and many more social media networks.

2. Ever Ready

Monitoring the conversations taking place about your company and preparedness to act on negative or potentially damaging news can be a daunting task along with one’s everyday job. Firms provide a critical perspective for their clients, keeping them abreast of all manner of news and chatter, advising them on the best ways to respond, or in some cases to simply listen.

The new tools/platforms, specifically the power of search engines, have also upped the ante when it comes to reputation. Consider the public relations implications of this quote, taken from a 2007 Wired article, “Google is not a search engine, but a reputation management system.” Others have posited that we are indeed moving from the Information Age to theReputation Age. A 2007 article in Business Week showed how public relations could effectively measure, and help support and guard, reputation.

The stakes have never been higher for companies that must perform in a virtual fishbowl. Public relations firms as an extension of the clients’ staff are ever ready to offer the kind of client service that achieves agreed-upon outcomes.

3. Objective Expertise: Today’s sophisticated public relations firms can offer a wide variety of specialized expertise – market intelligence that can be difficult to bring in house. Public relations firms are some of the specialized consultants that provide critical outside perspective.

From crisis managers to corporate reputation experts who know how to mitigate risk, today’s public relations firms objectively counsel all types of organizations across the full spectrum of communications programs.

Objectivity is an important part of providing smart public relations counsel. Businesses profit from having not only the expert advice of its public relations firm to call upon, but also their unvarnished and experienced outsiders’ perspective.

4. Stakeholder Engagement and Influence: Who you know is important, but so too is the “diplomacy of interaction.” Public Relations firms can significantly bolster a company’s ability to engage key stakeholders such as employees, online influencers, community leaders, shareholders and public officials, counsel that includes -- but goes far beyond -- how to speak to the media. And depending on need, many firms today have global reach.

Public relations firms excel in researching, identifying and communicating with the online and offline ‘influencers’ who are important to a business’s success.

5. Storytellers: Public relations firm have a legacy of integrating the voice of the customer into communications.. Voice of the customer (VOC) is an important concept today and PR practitioners are highly suited for gathering customer input and reflecting their stories in their true voices. Trained as professional advocates, the ability to persuade through clear explanation is at the top of the hierarchy of skills PR firms offer their clients, while also helping to identify the most appropriate spokesperson for the task.

“In all this clutter and fragmentation, it falls to public relations professionals to lead companies into this conversation between consumers, mainstream media, employees, analysts, investors, bloggers and competitors around brands.”

-- -- Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP (speech: “Public Relations: The Story Behind a Remarkable Renaissance,” IPR dinner, November, 2008)

Public relations firms provide their clients’ third party credibility from “earned” media – the classic strength of public relations vs. other marketing functions – is more highly valued as marketing noise increases, the credibility that public relations and editorial provide cuts through the clutter.

Agency personnel are expert content creators who author Web sites, speeches, bylines, position papers, op-eds, brochures, Q&As and, of course, press materials.

6. Creative Platforms: Whether it’s figuring out the most appropriate message to present to the media, or developing a comprehensive communications strategy, clients want the best idea, period.

Creativity often inspires and informs the communications strategies proposed by public relations firms. This flow naturally to the tactics implemented in public relations campaigns, such as events, web design, experiential marketing, collateral material, and the always-important media relations.

The “earned” media aspect of public relations – unlike the “paid for” placement of other marketing disciplines – has to meet a very high, built-in standard. It must pass through the skeptical filter of producers and reporters before it can reach the public. Producers, reporters and bloggers evaluate each public relations tactic and pitch, then decide whether it’s important, interesting and – ultimately – newsworthy to their audience.

That’s a very high bar. But it forces the public relations firm practitioner to continually hone the communications relevance of every marketing public relations campaign, public affairs initiative and crisis response.

7. Speed to Market: Public relations firms are built for speed and are conditioned to work in the 24/7 Information Age. Just as they were configured to work with traditional media’s deadlines and requirements back in the day, today’s firms have incorporated the ethos – and the dialect - of the digital age into their workplace culture.

8. It makes financial sense: In relationship to the cost of doing business, public relations is extremely cost effective. For organizations to develop in-house specialization, the cost can be prohibitively expensive; firms which represent a myriad of client industries, geographies and cultures are able cross-pollinate ideas providing richer thinking that can be tapped as needed. Public relations firms are also able to provide peak-load capacity, which can scale up or down as programs ebb and flow.

9. The risk of inaction: The market has never been more fluid, information has never moved so fast, nor reached so many people who form and test their perceptions more quickly than ever. When it comes to communications in general, and implementing a public relations strategy specifically, doing nothing is often not an option for any serious business or organization. Today’s public relations firms work at the highest level of strategic consultation throughout the organization down to the critical ‘tactical’ work in the trenches and online, making sure the client is prepared and competitive.

All of these reasons go straight to what is using in a successful PR campaign. In most campaigns you need to be put your information in the digital world to get a larger audience engaged. You need objectives that you know are timely, attainable, ambitious, and with a goal attached. You need to be able to voice your campaign. You need creative platforms/tactics in disseminating the campaign. Are you need to do all of this in a timely manor (aka creating a calendar with dates that you will execute your campaign)