How to Choose the Right PR and Strategic Communications Firm

What should you look for in a PR firm?

Choosing the right communications partner starts with finding a firm that understands your needs, brings relevant experience and can offer strategic guidance tailored to your goals.

Experienced professionals, satisfied clients and knowledge of your business sector are more important drivers of good decision-making than lowest price, sales charm and willingness to please.

At C2 Strategic Communications, we approach potential partnerships by first understanding a client's needs and determining how our experience and expertise can help. Taking the time to establish that alignment from the start is an important predictor of future success.

As you evaluate potential communications partners, consider asking these questions:

• What experience and knowledge of the sector do you bring?
• Could I see examples of similar work and talk to firms that hired you?
• Am I talking with the people who will be part of my account team?
• Can you describe a situation where you advised a client to take a different approach than they initially sought?
• What is your approach to working with in-house communicators and C-suite leaders?

Does experience matter when choosing a communications firm?

Absolutely. You wouldn’t want to hire a mechanic working on his first car or a medical professional using you as a guinea pig for her first procedure.

Successful public relations and communications involve much more than creativity and connections. Insight comes with familiarity, repetition, successes and failures.

At C2 Strategic, we work with C-suite leaders who expect to get advice, insight and deliverables from professionals they respect and trust. We’re not afraid to share different approaches, speak up about potential pitfalls or pivot when a situation changes.

Keep in mind that experience doesn’t always mean decades spent in the business. Judge the maturity of 20- and 30-somethings based on their mental age, not what’s on their birth certificate.

“Successful public relations and communications involve much more than creativity and connections. Insight comes with familiarity, repetition, successes and failures.”

Chad Carlton | Owner and CEO, C2 Strategic Communications

Should you choose a local or a national PR firm?

Context, connections and community commitment are real advantages when choosing a public relations firm. Local firms often have a strong understanding of community experiences and history and bring deep connections to key business, government and media players.

Most of our clients hire us based on recommendations from leaders in communities we serve across Kentucky and Indiana. Those connections have deep roots that can make a tremendous difference in whether a story gets placed in a publication, a meeting gets scheduled or an alliance is formed.

However, national PR firms can be the right choice when you’re facing high-stakes crisis communication needs with national or industry implications and don’t have a proven local firm that you can depend upon. The much higher price tag may be worth it if you need people with New York, Los Angeles or Washington media connections.

What services should you expect from a strategic communications firm?

Most firms have a long list of communications services, such as media relations, event planning or digital strategy.

Ask prospective firms: Which services are your greatest strengths, and which are you still developing? Will you outsource services outside your expertise to a proven partner or freelancer?

In our experience, the services that really make a difference to clients are those focused on strategies over tactics.

When interviewing firms, consider:

• Are they truly listening or just selling?
• Do they ask smart questions to gain greater insight into your situation or needs?
• Have they done their homework before the first meeting?
• Are they able to put themselves in your shoes?

What questions should you ask before hiring a PR firm?

The first question should be to yourself: Why should I hire a PR firm? You might find that strange coming from the founder and owner of a PR firm, but it’s important to make sure it’s the right choice.

Hire a PR firm if you:

• Have important communications needs that exceed the bandwidth and/or expertise of your internal team (whether that’s a temporary project or a continuing need).
• Need stronger connections to media outlets, business leaders, government agencies and potential partners.
• Face significant opportunities, threats or challenges to your reputation that your own team members might underestimate or lack experience in resolving.
• Can build the capacity and talents of your own communications team by bringing in professionals who can mentor and teach (a really smart move for nonprofits and small businesses).
• Want the best outcome for a high-stakes opportunity that justifies additional investment.

Here are the top 10 questions to then ask PR firms:

1. What outcomes and deliverables can we expect from you?
2. How will we benefit from investing in your services?
3. Who will be part of our account team and why?
4. How will you communicate with us during the engagement? Calls and meetings? Emails? Reports?
5. What happens when we disagree with your approach or don’t like the deliverable?
6. How do you determine the cost of an engagement?
7. Will you identify tasks that we can do internally to keep costs lower?
8. What makes you a better choice for us than other firms?
9. What can we do to make sure our relationship is a greater success?
10. Why do you want to work with us?

Do strategic communications and PR matter as much today?

Technology is evolving quickly — think AI, facial recognition and communications satellites. The world is awake and alert 24/7 with information (and lots of misinformation) traveling in seconds from more sources than ever. Political division and economic volatility are just part of reality.

For all these reasons and more, leaders need a clear, strategic communications plan just as much as they need a financially sound business or operations plan.

You know your business or agency better than anyone. If you don’t tell your story effectively, repeatedly and consistently to the audiences that matter, no one will. Or worse yet, someone else will define you.