For many brands, taking the step to working with a PR consultancy is a big decision. Identifying the right time to expand your PR efforts or in some circumstances transition from in-house to an external team can be confusing and daunting, so here is RKM Communications‘ guide to getting the most out of your relationship and ensuring that all-important Return On Investment.
Are You Ready?
PR can be a big investment, and not only in the monetary sense. The most important thing to consider is whether you’re ready! A PR consultancy will be able to identify your brand’s USPs and create a story that will grab press interest; you still need to have the raw materials in place including brand materials such as logos, font, imagery, background information. Also consider where applicable product samples and stock to allow your PR team to hit the ground running.
In addition to the above, new-to-market brand need to consider much more and we are often asked as a communications consultancy to work with new brands and use our knowledge and expertise to consult on place in the market, analyse the competition, establish brand tone-of-voice and assist with distribution and build network introductions. RKM is a specialist London based communications consultancy; supporting sales and growing market share for clients within the beauty, medical aesthetics and wellness sectors.
Outline Your Objectives
Strategy is key in media relations and PR and this is all built around your objectives. In order to deliver the results you want, a PR consultancy needs direction on what you want to achieve; allowing us to devise effective methods in helping you and your team to achieve the objective. One common reason for not reaching a goal is that there is a lack of direction; setting an objective ahead of a PR campaign is essential. A few simple steps for ensuring objectives will be met is to make any PR goals quantifiable and measurable. This gives a good amount of scope for working with a PR consultancy. It’s also good to make a goal as specific as possible.
Be Realistic
Building a brand reputation in the media takes time. What most brands new to PR and media do not realise is that magazines work quite far in advance (as long as 3-4 months for the long lead monthly glossies like Vogue) and that is in addition to the information transfer from client and content generation. Laying a solid foundation is imperative as anyone who doesn’t risks major issues down the line with mixed or wrong messaging. We assign the first month of working with clients as ‘foundation month’ this allows you to provide us with relevant materials; it is the time in which we will create your PR calendar, write press releases, creatives and formulate a targeted media list appropriate to your brand audience. Whilst we still pitch for features during this time, it’s important to note that foundations need to be laid to ensure consistent coverage comes through.
PR is a Partnership
RKM is an extension of our client’s teams and you’ll get so much more when working in partnership. No one knows your brand better than you do and often the internal team are our biggest resource! We want to be kept up to speed with all of your news, as we might spot a story you may not have seen. Our goal is to deliver on your objectives and to do so, we need an open, transparent communication with you; tell us what has sent your web traffic soaring or the piece of press that sold out your stock.. We want to develop relationships for the long-term and this is a marathon and not a sprint.
