As a busy marketing lead at a growing organization, you are wearing a number of different hats on any given day. In addition to being responsible for increasing revenue for your organization by driving sales leads with marketing efforts, you are likely also tasked with amplifying your brand’s message.
When it comes to brand awareness, it’s possible you’ve turned to an outside SaaS PR agency to help. After a couple of conversations, you’re ready to make the call but realize your budget won’t afford you an agency partner just yet.
So, what now? Before counting your losses and trying to finagle some minor in-house PR support, there are a number of things you can do before hiring a SaaS PR agency to ensure your team is set up for early success. As you get your dollars in order, here are the top three things you can do ahead of making a decision on an agency:
Define your brand identity
A brand’s identity stretches far beyond a beautifully designed logo and is fundamental for PR success. While a PR agency can help you refine your brand’s vision into key media messages, you are ultimately responsible for determining your company’s identity. Think of it this way — if you haven’t established what your brand is, what it stands for, and what makes your organization unique, then how can a newly hired PR agency communicate that message to media contacts unfamiliar with your industry? Before hiring a SaaS PR agency, come prepared with as much information upfront as possible. Some questions to help include:
- What makes your business unique?
- How are you different from your top three competitors? How are you similar?
- Why was your organization created?
Build a company blog strategy
Go all in on creating content for your company blog. Well ahead of enlisting a PR agency to generate awareness of your organization, a company blog can be home to company news, employee hires and industry perspectives that help define your marketplace point of view. In addition to making good social media fodder, these industry perspective pieces make excellent contributed thought leadership pieces that PR teams can leverage with their content-hungry media contacts.
Whether a blog post or a robust resource like an Ebook, a well-rounded PR agency with on-staff writers can take advantage of your existing content to extend its reach by pitching pieces to media as bylined articles, or even more thought-provoking pieces like an op-ed. While a company blog may seem like a big commitment up front, it will set a new PR agency up for success early.
Get your Google Analytics in order
Any PR agency worth its retainer will request access to your Google Analytics in order to track how media coverage for your organization is impacting overall website traffic goals. Early on, make sure your analytics account is working properly and goal conversions are in place. Like you would with other marketing campaigns, it’s also a good idea to benchmark your traffic analytics before PR efforts kickoff — this way you will be able to track PR’s impact on your traffic over time and more easily report on lifts to direct, organic and referral traffic and share those reports with leadership — who are sure to be asking.
Think you may be ready to hire a SaaS PR agency, or maybe need a second perspective on what you can do to make a PR agency relationship successful? Contact Lindsey Groepper to learn more!
