For any business, choosing a Digital PR Agency in Nigeria can be stressful, and the outcome can impact the success or failure of your marketing at large. Appointing a Digital PR and communications agency is an option to consider if you want to amplify your business or products to the media. First, look at the role of a Digital PR Agency within your company.
What does a Digital PR Agency do?
A Digital PR firm helps to handle your company’s online reputation through owned, earned, and paid communications. The main objectives of a Digital PR firm are brand awareness, visibility, and online reputation management. Digital PR aims to build brand value while using digital tools.
Below, you’ll learn everything you need to know about hiring a Digital PR agency for your business. Entrusting your brand to the care of another company to represent your company on main digital channels – means you need the proper fit. So how should you choose the best PR firm for your startup? Take these five tips into account before you start your search.
Tip 1 – Where to look.
There are a plethora of agencies and consultants from which to choose. Talk to your networking contacts to get recommendations. Use Google search to validate your search, and suggestions are given.
Tip 2 – Determine your Digital PR Agency budget
Being upfront about how much you can honestly spend is essential. It saves everyone involved time and effort when you do. It is also necessary to make a firm decision on your top-line budget. Agencies are expensive, and you’ll need to clearly articulate your top-line budget, including base retainer, expenses, and incidentals. Ensure you have a clear path that requires written approval for any monthly expense exceeding your budget.
Tip 3 – Establish Digital PR goals.
A good agency should be happy to help work with you to refine your brief if necessary, but try to be clear from the start about the following:
- what you want to achieve
- who do you want to communicate with
- your priority messages and ideas
Also, provide relevant background information upfront so the agency can approach the brief properly. Do you want the agency to generate online media placements (and, if so, in top news platforms, sponsored blog posts, online content outreach, etc.); attain speaking engagements (i.e., local or national; keynoter or featured panelist?); and position you as an industry thought-leader? Understanding and outlining what you want digital public relations to accomplish is a necessary starting step.
Tip 4 – Look to hire an extension of your team, not just an agency
You must consider your Digital PR firm as an active part of your team, not a 3rd party. While your PR firm team will work with more than just your account, you should never feel like they are working with anyone but you. You want to hire an extension to your team; you’re not looking for an average client/agency relationship.
Tip 5 – Make sure you’re excited to work together
If the PR agency has done its homework and prepared correctly in the pitch meetings, it will present a few PR campaign ideas based on your RFP requirements. When the hard work is done, due diligence is completed, and a PR agency has been selected, you should be excited. The PR firm ought to have demonstrated a clear desire to be part of the startup’s journey, understanding its offering and the space it’s operating in.
For your business, there should be confidence that your goals can be achieved, an impact can be made within the press, and that they have decided on a team, they genuinely want to work with. If that’s the case, the selection process has been a success. These tips will make the process of hiring a Digital PR firm less painful, and they will help you to make an informed and wise choice.
If you’d like to learn more about how our Digital PR and Growth agency can help your business get in touch.
Contact >>> hello@whirlspotmedia.com
