Why should I use a PR agency?

A business man was not sure whether he should appoint a PR agency. He asked a PR account manager: "What can you do for me?" The manager answered: "We can help to make your company on news". The business man said:" I can do that too!"

Ain't you sure whether you need a PR agency or not? Actually there is no hard and fast rule when a company decides whether to use a PR agency. To make things more clear, you need to make sure you know how to distinguish advertising and public relations. Compared with advertising, PR is more convinced and persuasive. Unlike advertising, PR is more likely make people walk up to you and say: "Hi, I want to buy your company's product as I have heard that it is very good." instead of you walking to people to say confidently: " Hi, come to buy my product because it is good". Once be clear of this point, you would understand what's the point of using a PR strategy. At this stage what you need to do is to condiser whether to manage PR by yourself or alternatively appoint a PR agency. The following questions are suggested to ask yourself:

• How confident/successful am I at dealing with journalists?
• How much cost and time I spend at managing my public relations?
• Is my response quick enough to cope with those news that damage my reputation?
• Do I have enough resource (staff or facilities) to handle a PR campaign?

Once get answers to those questions, you should consider using a PR service by a third party (PR agency or freelanc PR consultant) if:

• Your PR or advertising budget is over £10,000 annually. If that is a one-off campaign you can consider about a service based on a rate of £200.00/day or £20.00/hour.
• You are not satisfied with the media coverage.
• You are keen to know what does your public think of you.
  
• You have some local media contacts but your company actually is national or international. You need people who have relevant experience and contacts. It is difficult to diffuse the information to national or international media without a suitable PR agency.
• You need multi-language personnal to help to expand your reputation worldwide. It would be costy to hire several multi-language staff only doing PR in your company.
  
• Some bad news related to you company has been published on newspaper but you do not know what to do. You need skilled and well trained PR professionals who are specialized in coping with crisis. They know how to spin a bad situation into an advantage to the company.
• An event cost you so much time and money but it is not as successful as you expected. You hope to save your resource from some work that is not your core competency.

Yes, you can make yourself on news, however, is that the news that you hope to be seen by your public? Do you have sufficient time and money to support those PR campaigns? Or have you successfully turned around a bad news to be advantageous to you? If your core competency is not PR but you need PR, then working with a PR service provider probably would find you a good value for money.