Results fall short of goals

PR effectiveness is actually easy to measure. How did they perform against goals you set at the start of the relationship? Here’s a PR firm scorecard template if you don't already have one. Susan Getgood offers some practical measurement tips too.

Competitors get more coverage

PR is all about rising above the noise level. It doesn’t matter that your firm has done all the checklist list items if they cannot help you stand above the crowd. One way to tell whether you’re getting above the noise level is to ask your sales team. Which competitors are they running into? One of my clients is in an industry with 40 direct competitors. Yet only three or four are actually invited to the table when it comes to six or seven figure deals. With just a freelance PR person, they secured excellent product reviews resulting in five inquiries per day for months. So don’t just mimic your competitor’s PR efforts but know what they’re doing so that you can find creative ways to leverage their spending (e.g. let them educate the market about your category) while you break away from the pack. Here’s a brilliant PR stunt that BigFix’s creative firm, Rassak Experience, did in the patch management software industry. See video here.

They’ve stopped proposing creative ideas

PR firms should be in your face. They should be coming to you all the time with fresh ideas to get more industry visibility. They should be pushing the exec team to get out and network/build relationships with analysts and key editors. They should be proposing events, speaking engagements, contributed article topics, new hooks, and securing more customer testimonials.

But more importantly, the PR firm should be coming up with creative ways to generate buzz. When I was at Firetalk Communications, our team came up with the idea of staging a protest at a high profile VoIP conference to keep the internet free from FCC taxation. We actually had police come by to check if we had permits to protest. Here’s another creative viral marketing piece that a freelance PR consultant dreamed up for a data backup company LiveVault featuring John Cleese in a hilarious spoof on a very boring topic…IT storage.

Excuses start lowering expectations

There are a million credible reasons your PR firm may be failing to meet the goals. Since they have creative staff on the payroll, they’ll come up with some reasonable believable reasons. The ones I hear the most are:

• "We need more customer success stories to get ink flowing”


• “The analysts are researching the topic but not writing yet”


• “We can’t get the editor to return calls for an interview”


• “This space is just not getting much press these days”

The assigned partner skips meetings

This is really just a symptom of loss of commitment to your business. It doesn’t matter that they may have better paying clients, hot deadlines, and other demands on their time. You pay them a retainer to dedicate resources to your business. If you’re paying more than $15K per month, you should expect at least one full time person who wakes up every day worrying about your business. And it’s okay if this full time person is a junior PR associate because often they are very hungry to build their resume by showcasing your business as a personal win. But the associate should be backed up by very seasoned PR professionals so you’re getting both energy and experience.

You would not recommend your PR firm

The ultimate, simplest test of your satisfaction level is whether you would recommend your PR firm. Bain published a nice study on the power of this simple customer sat metric in “One Number to Grow”. If you can’t recommend them why would you continue doing business with them?

So what can you do to step up PR performance?

• Communicate often – jointly review your PR goals at least quarterly and discuss changes to PR approach based on changing business needs and on actual PR effectiveness. Have weekly calls with the PR team to provide ongoing, on the spot feedback on what’s working well or not well rather than saving it for contract renewal time. Let them know of any milestones coming up such as new product launches, customer wins, new hires, new partners, etc.


• Provide compelling content –PR firms need great material to create buzz. The most asked-for piece yet least forthcoming is customer references. Get your sales team to lock in customer reference commitments at the time of signing a deal.


• Make PR a part of your team – invite your assigned PR lead to work on your site a day a week or participate in key meetings (sales reviews, customer events, all-hands meetings, celebrations, marketing strategy planning sessions, etc.). The more they know about you personally and your business at large the more they’ll be passionate about working for you.


• Speak more – be willing to get out on the speaking circuit and accommodate press/analyst briefings as the PR firm locks down appointments. Editors especially are very deadline driven and the PR firm has a very short window to get you a briefing opportunity. Make time for this. I recommend reading this great article entitled “How to How to Become a Great Media Spokesperson” by Vivian Kelly (requires login).


• Challenge them – send your PR firm media clips that impressed you from a competitor’s PR efforts, and tell them why you liked it.

Despite the edgy tone of this piece, I encourage you to think of your PR firm as a key part of your management team. If you’re like most CEOs and CMOs, you’re already spending upwards of 10% of your time on PR so it’s worth treating the PR firm as a valued, trusted member of your management bench.

Resources:

• “Ten Questions of Adam Lashinsky [Fortune Magazine]”
• ”PR Measurement” on Susan Getgood’s blog
• “How to Become a Great Media Spokesperson” by Vivian Kelly (requires login to MarketingProfs website)
• “The New Rules of PR” by David Meerman Scott (requires login to MarketingProfs website)

© copyright 2006 Sridhar Ramanathan of Pacifica Group

Sridhar,

I think you're pretty right on. I especially like the scorecard template -- I mentioned that Trainer takes it a step further and guarantees results based on agreed-upon deliverables. If more PR firms did this, it would be a different industry. Plus, the measurement grid you display has a strong resemblance to what we use to guide our progress. And of course, I couldn't agree more about making your PR firm a key partner of the management team.

On the flip side, I would argue that you not all companies want a full time junior PR person assigned to their account. The problem I've come across too many times here is that person is doing the media/analyst outreach and not always able to convey the company's value prop or overall market knowledge -- or think quickly to react to objections. And all too often, companies start seeing less and less of that senior PR person...

Still -- I like the entry.
Marc

Posted by: Marc Gendron | December 26, 2006 10:15 PM

Sridhar--

All very good points. The only one I would add is being well prepared in the process of choosing a PR firm in the first place. You should be very clear not only in understanding what you want PR to achieve for your company, but how they are going to achieve it, and whether their style of work fits with your objectives. Although there are many different PR specialties and areas of focus, I've found two categories that tell me what I need to know about PR companies I work with.

One type of PR company focuses relentlessly on tactical media relations. They "smile and dial" all day long down long lists of media and analyst contacts. They broadcast press releases to every corner of the globe. They focus on churning numbers to crank out tactical results. These companies will often have broad industry coverage across many vertical markets.

The other type of PR firm focuses on relationships. They have very good personal connections with a targeted group of influential analysts and editors who will always take their calls because they know valuable information is forthcoming. These companies are typically more industry-specific and focused.

Of course, this is a vast generalization--the reality is more of a spectrum--and it's not to say that one is intrinsically better than the other. For some projects, a highly tactical machine is a better tool than a boutique firm. But the point is that you should know who is going to be working on your account, what their approach is, who they have relationships with, and what they have delivered in the past.

This is a good and necessary discussion.

/chris

Posted by: Chris Kenton | December 29, 2006 12:50 PM

Thank you, Barak Kassar,for setting the record straight that it was his firm, Rassak Experience (www.rassak.com), not SHIFT, that created and executed the BigFix viral marketing compaign. I apologize for my error.

Sridhar

Posted by: Sridhar Ramanathan | January 13, 2007 1:27 PM

Sridhar,

This is a great piece you wrote. I would suggest that companies and agencies also agree on “rules for engagement.” The scorecard is great, but my gut – and experience – says that most poor client/agency relationships stem not from meeting quantitative objectives, but from not meeting qualitative expectations.

I look forward to our continued dialog!
Stuart

Posted by: Stuart McFaul | March 19, 2007 12:57 PM

I would like to share copies of your article "When to fire your PR firm" with my class in Public Relations Management. May I have your permission. Thanks, Dave Meeker

Posted by: Professor David Meeker | July 18, 2007 12:12 PM