Making the decision that your business needs to engage with a PR agency is a big thing, as well as being a potentially large investment. Whilst any PR agency worth their salt will pay attention to the brief and work hard to achieve the outlined objectives, the relationship will be all the more successful if it’s something of a two way street, i.e. you get out what you put in.

Here are our tips as seasoned PR pros on how to get the most out of your chosen PR team:

Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate

Welcome the new PR into your team as if they were an internal new recruit – the more integrated they are, the better their understanding will be of your business and your preferred ways of working. They will also probably ask you for a lot of information, particularly at the start of a contract – give them what they need so that they can crack on and do a great job for you. In fact, there’s no such thing as too much information – PR pros will spot a story in amongst a pile of what may seem, to the layperson, totally irrelevant documents.

Getting to know the person or team managing your PR in terms of their particular skills will also be beneficial to you. Perhaps you’ve engaged with them purely to improve media and stakeholder relations – but if you learn that they can also help you formulate a social media strategy you’ll save yourself recruiting for another external resource later down the line. (In this sense, true PRs are more often than not total social butterflies – if they don’t know something, you can guarantee that they will know someone who does so ask away with any questions you have about – well, almost – anything).

What gets measured, gets done

In some ways the statement ‘what gets measured, gets done’ is a bit prescriptive and perhaps not in line with a more creative way of thinking. However, you’re paying for this facility and your PR team (if you’ve chosen well…)

will be experts at reporting back to you, and will hopefully hold themselves accountable according to what was included in the initial proposal and agreed in the final contract in terms of Key Performance Indicators and Service Level Agreements.

Meetings and calls

Finally, simple as it may seem, it’s important to keep in touch to ensure that the relationship is as productive as possible and developments (and issues) are dealt with as swiftly as possible.