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Key Takeaways The ideal agency provides three things: a standardized workflow, measurable results and the strategic backbone to tell you when your narrative is failing.
Make agencies prove their process, demand recent wins that match your requirements, get specific about who will run your account, be honest about your budget, and be careful with independent publicists.
Choose an agency that will challenge you. If the agency only agrees with you, they are not protecting your best interests.
If you are hiring PR because you want “more visibility,” stop. Visibility is not the goal. The goal is trust at scale. The right PR partner earns you credibility you cannot buy with ads, and the wrong one turns your story into noise. Your job is to choose an agency that builds equity, not one that chases attention.
If you want PR that actually moves the business, you need a selection process that rewards execution, and here’s how you can do just that.
Reset your baseline before you start
Most bad PR experiences are not proof that PR does not work. They happen because expectations were vague, the agency was running too many accounts, the retainer did not cover actual labor, or the agency could not show what it was doing week to week.
Stop looking for “creative partners,” and start looking for an operating system. The ideal agency provides three things: a standardized workflow, measurable results and the strategic backbone to tell you when your narrative is failing.
Cut the list fast
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