Top Questions for a PR Agency Before Signing the Contract
I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who relished the prospect of finding an agency. Whether it’s a PR agency, an ad agency, or a social media agency, finding the right agency is important and an investment, and part of defining the right PR agency questions is to evaluate a PR agency, may we recommend a few questions for a PR agency that gets to the heart of the matter? These aren’t the questions you’ll find on every other blog post questions for PR firm; these are strategic and insightful.
What’s Your Ideal Client? Who Was Your Favorite Client?
This is a telling question because no matter the answer, you will get a somewhat clear idea of how the agency works and who they work best for.
Listen carefully to this answer for things like how much client engagement they want/need and what kind of client engagement.
Will you be weighing in with updates and strategic insights, or will you need to tell the agency when/how/where the news in your industry is happening? If you’re looking for a self-directed agency that doesn’t require a lot of hand-holding, this question will reveal that if the agency is super creative and needs your input on ideas and campaigns, you should know that, too.
How are You Using PR Technology for Your Clients?
AI in PR has arrived, and you want to evaluate your PR agency’s technology use to give you a reputational edge, not a reputation risk. It doesn’t matter if part of your strategy is digital PR; like all marketing and PR professions, the PR tech landscape has transformed over the last few years and there is no PR today without digital PR. For example, what is the AI policy regarding your internal and confidential documentation? Content at scale with AI is probably a red flag, as is something like AI UGC; all of this will come back to damage your reputation, digital or otherwise.
Be thoughtful about the way your PR agency is using AI agents to provide you with insight and make sure they understand the advantages and disadvantages of the tools they are using. If your PR agency can’t answer these questions, they probably aren’t up to speed on technology overall. That might not matter to you, but you should understand where the PR agency is in its technology journey.
This is also important because not all PR agencies are using technology. It’s not a given that your PR team understands digital trends or even how something like SEO works. I sometimes find the more experienced a team member, the better they understand the connections between digital signals and public relations because they have seen the change take place. So don’t make assumptions about the team’s experience with important trends and technologies.
What Are Your Internal Metrics for Success?
Knowing how your PR agency identifies metrics for success internally will reveal insights into how invested your team is in outcomes.
Evaluate your PR agency on how these metrics will align with your goals. If your PR team doesn’t have internal metrics or things they’re measured against, they probably have little success navigating a roadmap for you, and they certainly aren’t used to KPI-driven PR campaigns.
What’s the Makeup of the Team? How Many Clients Do They Manage?
Much is made of the size of the team or even whether the agency has experience in a particular vertical.
While that’s relevant to the extent that you don’t want to be explaining business basics to the team, the reality is the more important indicator is the team’s PR experience. This is because experienced PR teams have worked in and around dozens of industries like yours, and they know how to apply that experience to your goals. Don’t worry too much about them knowing what niche websites, it’s more likely they’ll bring some more to your attention if they’re using a data-driven PR approach.
This question will also uncover how much experience the team has in PR (is it all junior team members, or is it a mix of executive team and junior members?). It’s not unusual for the most senior members to manage more team members than the other team members, but if your day-to-day account team manages more than four to six clients, they’re probably overwhelmed.
These questions for a PR firm may reveal unexpected benefits to agencies you are considering and may reveal deeper questions as you evaluate PR agencies. I hope we can share our answers to these hiring PR questions, as well as a few others we think you’ll find useful.
