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5 Ways to Know if Your Marketing/PR Firm is Doing its Job

Guest post by: Harvey Farr

Article Overview: Creating and implementing a marketing/PR campaign is not that difficult. Creating and implementing one that actually achieve results is another matter. But how do you assess and evaluate how effective your marketing campaign is? Here are some tips to help you measure effectiveness.

5 Ways to Know if Your Marketing/PR Firm is Doing its Job

So you went ahead and hired a marketing or PR firm, or one that does both. They have developed a plan for you, it looks okay, and you’re off and running. Six months down the line you take a look at what has been accomplished and you find yourself starting at essentially two things: a bunch of emails from the firm to you, and a bunch of bills from the marketing firm. Then you find yourself saying to yourself, “wasn’t I supposed to see some results?” Result is the name of the game with consultants. In many professional areas results are easy to measure. If you hire a lawyer, you see results immediately. Either you are guilty or innocent. Either the paperwork is legal and accepted or it isn’t. When you hire a CPA, you get your tax return done or other documents and you can touch and feel the work product. Not so simple with public relations and marketing. True, you may get to see a new website or brochure, but the reason you did a new website and brochure is to increase business. Has that happened? And if so, is it due to the efforts of your marketing team? Here are five basic parameters to consider when evaluating whether your marketing firm is doing its job: 1. Did the firm take the time to learn about your industry and your particular organization? They should have, but not three months. Knowing the client is the first step before jumping into a new PR campaign. 2. Did the firm do an action plan? If there is any industry where a plan of action is necessary, it is in communications. You need to make sure your firm understands your product/service, who you are trying to reach and then recommend tactics that will help you achieve those goals. 3. Are you getting a regular flow of creative ideas from your firm, or are they simply doing the same thing they do for all their other clients. Marketing not only takes work, it takes a certain amount of ingenuity, creativity and vision. If you’re not getting fresh, new ideas, then how will you stand out from your competition? 4. Is the phone ringing? Is the website traffic up? Has business increased? This sounds over simplified, but sometimes it is difficult to attribute an increase in business to any particular actions. Make it a point to find out how people hear about you. It will tell you lots about whether your marketing is working. 5. Finally, what is your intuitive feeling about your marketing campaign? Are you seeing yourself in the press and on TV when you never were before? Do you feel like you are getting more recognition? This is not always something that can be measured statistically, but if your marketing is working, you will feel it. Hiring a firm to do your marketing is an important decision and don’t allow yourself to be sold a bill of goods at a presentation. The value of a firm is after the contract is signed, not before.

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Article Tags: marketing, marketing firms los angeles, pr, pr firm, pr firms los angeles



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