For Advertising Firms that Promise PR — Outsource it

In an effort to provide more value to clients, many ad agencies are not only offering traditional advertising campaigns, but are also including some level of business to business marketing publicity as part of the program. Marketing publicity — which involves promoting a product or service through published articles in print and Internet publications — has an inherent credibility that appeals to potential customers. However, the addition of PR to an ad campaign begs the question: can an agency deliver a proper marketing publicity program when its core competency lies elsewhere?

Most advertising agencies handle this additional discipline by hiring an in-house PR person. However, these “one-man-bands” often don’t have the background; the resources — costly media directories, software programs, and wire service subscriptions; or the combination of skills — writing, pitching and client relations - required to produce results. When this occurs, many agency clients end up feeling short-changed on the PR side.

A viable alternative instead is to outsource or subcontract the PR work to a business to business marketing firm, leaving the ad agency free to concentrate on its core competencies. This approach not only makes things easier, but also means that the client receives a superior product and may not look elsewhere to satisfy their PR needs.

“Conducting a business to business marketing publicity campaign demands a tremendous expertise, time and effort to generate a large quantity of published articles,” says John W. Elliott, CEO of Power PR (www.powerpr.com), a marketing public relations firm.

According to Elliott, a marketing publicity firm should have no problem working under the direction of an ad agency, and could even operate as a true subcontractor without letting the client know that a separate PR firm was involved.

“In the past, we have worked for outside agencies as a subcontractor and it’s worked very well,” says Elliott. “Those firms can forget about the headache of setting up a separate department to handle the marketing publicity. At the same time, they can be confident that we will generate a large volume of articles.”

According to Elliott, it takes a high volume of calling, skillful writing, and superior client relations to generate a large volume of press.

Elliott says that Power PR makes literally thousands of one-on-one phone calls every month on behalf of their clients, adding that this very different than the “mass fax” approach of most ad agency in-house PR personnel. This is the differentiator between generating a large volume of quality published articles and getting a few small hits.

Writing editorial-quality feature articles and news releases is also a highly specialized skill. Although many in-house staff have written short press releases, writing a feature article about industry issues or customer testimonials are exponentially more difficult.

“To deliver on the promise of marketing publicity ad agencies should seriously consider outsourcing the business to business marketing publicity to a public relations firm that will do a bang-up job and make them look good,” says Elliott. “It’s a win-win situation for the agency and the client.”

For more info
Contact: John W. Elliott
johne@powerpr.com
www.powerpr.com
Phone: 800-757-3715
FAX: 800-504-9983

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