As you sit in your home office attempting to break your record for daily coffee intake (mine is five cups), please take approximately 42 seconds to review this cautionary tale below before reaching out to a media relations firm.
Too often we ask business leaders why they are considering hiring FischTank or a PR/media relations firm firm in general, and their response is simply “we need to get media coverage,” “we need to be online,” or something equally generic. It’s not that these responses are wrong, but that they’re simply a means to an end.
My quarantined friends, the real question decision makers need to ask themselves is “what are my objectives?” If you don’t know why you’re hiring a public relations firm, then you’re certainly going to struggle when someone challenges you to define not only the decision, but the ROI for the program.
Media coverage and public relations as a whole should be objective-driven. If your PR firm or your internal team isn’t defining objectives, like the examples below, then what’s the point? Below are a few specific outcomes when our media relations firm asks “why do you want to hire us?”:
- Media coverage represents sales/marketing touch-points that can be used by business development teams
- Lead generation, lead generation, lead generation
- PR efforts such as blogging or media coverage are critical tools for online marketing, social media, and improving SEO and ORM
- Targeted media exposure and content writing can help you reach influencers in key markets and demographics
- Consistent media coverage is attention grabbing for prospective investors and validating for existing ones
- You can tell your company story through media clips, quotes and mentions
These are just a few examples, of course. If you’d like to discuss a PR and media relations firm program driven by objectives, just shoot us an email at [email protected]. We’re inside and not going anywhere ever again.
