Starting a PR firm has never been easy, but it’s become an even more difficult task in today’s times. The growth of the digital environment’s popularity has generated more and more competition between brands in every niche and industry.
As a professional who’s considering founding a PR agency, knowing what to expect and what to do before the “storm hits” is not just important, but critical. The startup phase is the hardest, and the one that plenty of entrepreneurs can’t get past.
That doesn’t have to be your experience.
In today’s post, I’m sharing seven things to consider before starting your own PR agency, so pay attention and put these tips into action:
1. Are you truly ready to hit the ground running?
Before you get started, you must be fully confident and ready to move from point A to point B. To gain that confidence, you must analyze and assess the resources you have right now.
Ask yourself the following questions. If any of the answers dissatisfy you, fix their condition before starting your company.
- Do you have basic accounting skills? If not, build them or find an accountant.
- Do you possess basic legal skills? If not, start reading or find a lawyer.
- Do you have good writing skills? If not, find a good content writer from the best essay writing services review.
- Do you have a customer support representative to help you deal with unsatisfied clients?
- Do you have a real strategy that you and your employees are going to follow?
- Do you have enough budget?
- Are you willing to fully commit to your newborn PR company until you achieve your goals?
2. What are your goals?
Every PR agency should have long-term and short-term goals. Every big goal should be split into “smaller” objectives, and each should be prioritized according to your strategy.
Choose a big goal. This will be your long-term goal. Brainstorm to establish the steps required to get there, and assign deadlines. If you fail to plan out your roadmap, chaos shall arise.
3. Who is your target audience?
If you haven’t considered it yet, bear in mind that even PR firms have target audiences—before you start your agency, you need to know who you’re appealing to.
Of course, when you run a PR agency, it is usually you or your employees who are defining the target audience of the company. Before you get to do that, make sure you define yours!
4. What is your Unique Value Proposition?
There are a million “promising” PR agencies, and yet your goal should be to become “one in a million.” That means you need to stand out from the crowd before even attempting to successfully position yourself in a highly competitive marketplace.
You’ll need to define what makes you better than the rest, and why would publishers and customers choose you instead of your competitors?
What can you do and nobody can? Differentiation is key to PR startup phases, as well as to the long-term development of all fresh companies.
5. How are your competitors thriving?
Finding out what you can do and what they can’t won’t happen unless you study and analyze your competition.
There are plenty of digital analysis tools that can help you gather insightful data about your competitors’ PR and digital marketing campaigns.
You can also figure out what they’re doing by constantly assessing their activity, by subscribing to their email lists, and by becoming one of their prospects/audience members.
6. What software are you going to leverage?
Time management and priority management are keys to sustainable growth, and yet, there are so many entrepreneurs who fail at these chapters.
Automation is key to enhanced productivity, regardless of the industry you’re in. For example, you should leverage digital marketing tools to automate your email marketing, social media marketing, SEO marketing, and so on.
Let’s not forget about the communication software, because in order to effectively interact with clients and/or employees, tools are definitely a must.
7. Are you ready to lose your time, money, and energy?
Lastly, you really need to be honest with yourself and see whether you’re truly ready to launch a successful company. Not just a company, you want a successful one!
Therefore, try to aim for a balance between the “just do it” mentality and the “better later” mentality. You need to be realistic and objective because the moment you begin, your time, money, and energy will be at stake. So, are you really ready?
Takeaways
Starting and running your own PR agency is a possibility for everyone. You can simply start, but that doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get somewhere.
My last piece of advice is to always try to be realistic, objective, and introspective. Awareness is key to every business success—know your business, know your audience, know your competitors, know the trends, know, know, know!
