When engaging a PR agency, you want to trust that the professionals know what they’re doing and how to get the best results to elevate your brand. It would be ideal to give the agency a brief and then sit back and let them take care of it, but that’s not how campaigns usually work. Instead, think of a PR agency as an extension of your brand and team, another partner in your business that is working to achieve the same goal as you, and then work alongside them to bring these goals to fruition.
So, before you engage a PR agency, here are 3 questions to consider when deciding which agency is the right fit for your business.
This week, we look at the ways PR agencies contribute towards improving your brand’s digital footprint beyond traditional and digital media to yield greater results. So, before working with a communications agency, ask the following questions to see what they can offer your brand and how they will achieve results that go beyond the brief you give them.
- What can they offer outside of traditional PR?
Exposure is fundamental to growing your brand and customer base, and there are many alternative ways to get exposure for your business. While traditional media such as print and online articles as well as TV and radio are desirable and helpful in growing your brand recognition, you want to also consider what else an agency can offer you. Can they coordinate influencer relations, collaborative partnerships with other brands, launch events and media functions? What results will they deliver that other agencies won’t?
- What tangible results can they show you?
When you engage with a communications agency, they will work hard to make sure your brand name is recognised, promoted and widely shared. From interviews with spokespeople to online promotions, your brand should get more attention from the campaign. So, with all of that extra exposure, you want to ensure you’re seeing results and ultimately achieving your bigger goal, to increase sales and the bottom line.
This is where case studies are crucial in deciding which agency to work with. Ask the communications agencies that you’re considering to provide you with examples of tangible results, stats and figures that stemmed from their previous campaigns. How much did sales increase during and after the campaign? What impact did the campaign have on SEO and site traffic? Can they show you examples of how the campaign achieved greater success for the company? How will they go about measuring these results?
It’s great to promise big things for a client and pitch creative ideas that will boost the brand’s presence, but what you ultimately need to see is that an agency can deliver on those promises by showing you results.
Case Study: Luxo Living
For example, Luxo Living, Australia’s largest online boutique furniture store, connected with our agency to promote their brand, improve SEO and ultimately increase sales of their furniture line. One of the ways that we set out to do this was through influencer marketing to collaborate with the brand and promote their products.
So, to measure the success of the influencer relations program that we have been executing, Agent99 suggested offering exclusive discount codes to influencers to provide their followers. This way, we could assess how influencer marketing directly translated to sales, as well as measure the tangible results of our work.
- How will they WOW you?
We’ve previously mentioned that at Agent99, we like to add ‘surprise and delights’ to our campaigns. What this means is that we achieve the results and meet (and exceed) the KPIs that we set out to achieve, and then we brainstorm additional ways to ‘wow’ our clients by pitching ideas that they didn’t expect, or ideas that go above and beyond the brief and expectations. So, we suggest you ask communications agencies how they will wow you.
This is a great way to initially see how agencies pitch their big ideas, how creative they are and how far they’re willing to go to secure the results you’re after.
Case Study: Luxo Living
In addition to the media and influencer relations campaign that Agent99 worked on for Luxo Living, we also worked on a surprise and delight idea, to host a ‘12 Days of Christmas’ Instagram giveaway, partnering with like-minded brands that related to the client’s verticals to ultimately increase awareness and sales for all brands involved, ahead of Christmas.
As part of the giveaway, each brand would promote the competition on their social channels and share the giveaway with each respective audience. Then, to win, entrants needed to follow, like, and tag a friend on each brand’s social media account. This way, Luxo Living was able to reach new audiences with similar demographics and interests, ultimately increasing the client’s digital footprint, brand awareness and sales. While this giveaway was not in the original campaign brief, going that extra mile added a ‘wow’ factor to the campaign and benefited both our relationship with the client and their brand.
By Agent Emma
