How a PR Agency Can Turn Knowledge into Data
The solution to many of the problems that eat up PR agency time (creating media lists, managing media contacts, and maintaining momentum when a key account member leaves) is within reach.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” But, in the world of PR, we know that this just isn’t true. It can be stated with certainty that PR pros are going to create media lists for new clients, that executives reaching out to key media contacts for the first time will need to do so with great care, and that, no matter how well good staff are rewarded, they will be lured away. Yet in each of these cases, agencies are invariably left scrambling to deal with these situations as they arise, even though the technology that can help them is out there.
Muddling Through
One of the most time-consuming tasks that PR professionals face is as predictable as it is onerous: creating media lists. Inevitably, the process starts with a list created for a former client. Then an account exec is tasked with supplementing this information with commercial sources. The exec then likely sends it around the agency for comments and additions. This is an irritant for almost everyone involved, and it eats up time that could be spent doing something more valuable.
The kicker is that the relevant information already exists within the agency, but any effort to capture all of this data in a single repository typically defeats even multiple PR agency initiatives to do so.
Handle with Care
More than almost any other type of business, a PR agency is only ever as good as its contacts. And managing these contacts is getting increasingly more difficult. Today, agencies need to know which of the many available platforms is the preferred channel of communication, what time of day people prefer to be contacted, and which other stories might already have been pitched to contacts by colleagues. Arming your media relations teams with this information and to avoid bombarding the same key contacts is crucial.
Succession Planning Is Planning for Success
As mentioned above, PR is a relationship business, and this is as true for clients as it is for the media. Whenever an account team member leaves – and no matter how detailed the handover – there are always some agonising moments as colleagues try to forensically determine contact details and reconstruct threads of conversations. Surely, in this day and age, there has to be some way of automating this process. Right?
CRM (Can Really Make) a Difference
The common thread in all of these different challenges is that all the information you need currently resides within the brains of your staff. The trick is to turn that knowledge into data that can be accessed and used across the agency. Today’s cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) software does this and much more.
To find out more about how CRM can help your PR agency run more smoothly, get in touch now. As Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” so perhaps you’d be crazy not to get in touch?
I’d also personally love to hear what you think; get in touch – amy.jackson@bullhorn.com.
