This is a list of the top traits for our media relations team members by our clients. These traits have won us praise over many years:
1. Communicate well with me
2. Be competent and experienced, in technology and business
3. Establish good relationships and be a teammate of my staff
4. Demonstrate leadership
5. Be innovative and creative
6. Understand and address my real needs
7. Know and leverage the available resources for best results
8. Complete work on time and within budget
9. Be responsive
10. Do high-quality work
Certainly, one could say these are obvious, but in practice, we get clients that have had poor experiences with other PR agencies and referenced one or more of these issues.
Good communications mean both being available when a client has an issue and being proactive in showing the client that they receive the media relations work for which they pay.
Competence means a lot in our core space of technology, software, and logistics, but it matters even in consumer PR. The primary skill is an understanding of “why.” Why does it matter that regulations change or the basis of competition changes or supply or demand changes? How do changes influence suppliers and customers? Valid comments on the business consequences of change make interesting reading for your audience and the audience of the news publication that would like to interview your spokesperson.
Good relationships often mean becoming part of the client’s team; an extension of the resources that the client brings to media relations.
Leadership is valid and valuable guidance through the many approaches to publicity.
Innovation plays on competence and an understanding of industry issues to form creative ways to position clients as thought leaders and forward-thinkers.
For us, real needs keep overhead low and value of our services high. Our tasks implement the strategy, create awareness, impart knowledge, help sell, and help close.
For many years, most of us have become part of a pool of resources to achieve a goal. As an agency, we must understand and execute on leveraging the client’s resources and ours to get results. The account lead is often a manager of available resources.
We work on retainer, so that keeps us on budget. Living documents and periodic reviews keep us on schedule.
For us, being responsive is both being accessible (by phone, text, or email) and being flexible to deliver what clients need when they need it.
High-quality work achieves the goal. Quality is conformance to requirements.
