If you’ve decided to hire a PR agency to raise your company’s profile, one of the first things you’re likely to consider is whether to choose one specialising in your industry or one with a broad range of expertise and clients.
As is true of many professional services, in PR there are agencies that focus solely on specific sectors and industries. Whether it’s tech, finance, marketing, recruitment or hospitality you operate in, there is sure to be an agency tailored to your niche.
But should you appoint such an agency, or go with one that has clients across a wider range of business areas? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but here are some things to consider.
What kind of expertise do you need?
It’s undoubtedly true you need a PR agency that can understand your business and industry, but is it strictly necessary that they have all that knowledge in advance?
Most seasoned PR pros won’t take long to get to grips with your area of expertise as getting up to speed with new industries is a core part of the job in more generalist agencies. In fact, many PR firms now have former journalists on staff, people trained in asking all the right questions and quickly developing enough of an understanding to write detailed stories on topics they may previously have known little about.
You may also find that a team with knowledge and experience gained from different sectors can be very valuable, as there are likely to be ideas from other fields that can be applied to make your media outreach stand out above your competitors.
If you’re in a heavily regulated industry, however, you may need an agency with deep expertise in your field. If one wrongly worded communication could lead to a reputation management disaster or even legal action, the risk may outweigh any benefit of a more generalist approach.
Another factor to consider is how far you want to cast your media net. Some firms only want to be seen commenting on topics directly relevant to their business, using only a narrow range of spokespeople. Others are keen to raise the profile of their wider operational team. If you’d like to see your head of finance in accountancy publications or your HR manager in recruitment magazines, an agency with a broader client base can be useful.
Keep your competitors close or steer clear?
Chances are that if you’re thinking about PR, you already know some agencies specialising in your industry. But so will your competitors, many of which will be their clients.
Working with an agency that has many clients in your field can be of benefit. The agency may receive requests for comment from publications that know they have relevant clients and it probably also has personal relationships with journalists writing about your industry.
But while valuable, connections are meaningless with a good story. Contrary to popular belief, a PR professional being well-acquainted with a journalist or publication doesn’t guarantee coverage. It might mean contacts are more inclined to read their emails and respond politely if it’s not for them. However, if a story being offered isn’t strong enough, a journalist won’t write about it just because they are friendly with the person who sent it.
And while a specialist agency may well drum up more inbound enquiries, with so many clients in the same field, those opportunities won’t always – or even often – come to your company. An agency could give an opportunity to a competitor for reasons as varied as another firm paying higher fees, being quicker to meet journalists’ deadlines or even having had little coverage of late, meaning the agency might need a win on that account.
What are your business ambitions?
Some companies operate solely in one industry, with no plans to target any others. These firms can be better off with a specialist PR agency.
Others, however, have or aim to have clients across a wide range of industries. A payments company is a good example – many will target clients in certain sectors, but also have smaller client bases in other industries, with a view to widening this out further. A more generalist agency could therefore be a better long-term fit to help them expand their media coverage as they move into different industries.
For such a company – and in fact many others – the perfect solution might be a more generalist firm that also has some experience in your current main industry.
This can be something of a best-of-both-worlds approach, combining experience gleaned from existing clients or team members with ideas from other types of companies across the wider business world.
Which people will you work with?
Of course, you’ll only get the best of both worlds with the right people on your account. It’s just as important to ask about the experience of those you’ll work with on a day-to-day basis as it is to ask about an agency’s experience.
This is equally so whether you’re leaning towards a specialist or a generalist agency. The former’s expertise could prove far less advantageous than expected if the highly experienced person you met during the pitch process is replaced by a recent university graduate with little real-world experience of any industry, let alone yours.
Similarly, you’ll only get the benefit of an agency that has expertise in your industry and many others if you have access to people from across the agency. It won’t be much use if teams work in silos and ideas aren’t shared across the business.
Thus, ask to meet the people you’d be assigned if you hire a particular agency. These are the people you need to feel confident in before signing on the dotted line.
