A long-running conversation on LinkedIn features a variety of PR pros giving their views on sharing media lists with clients and soliciting opinions in regard to policies employed at various agencies. While the intent of the original poster was to solicit opinions on whether (s)he should share a media list with a client, it actually opened up a whole can of worms.
The central issue, as I and other respondents see it, is that this wouldn't even really be an issue if PR pros better positioned themselves and were more confident in their abilities. In other words, while tactics and the success of the tactics employed are a big part of what makes of successful, the strategy used to determine the actual tactics is what determines everything.
Unfortunately, strategy is something we rarely talk about. Pitch meetings with prospective clients are dominated by promises of high-level media placements and pronouncements of capabilities. Yet, the very fact that these elements take center stage at a pitching meeting sets up a situation where you're going to live or die by the hits only. It also positions the industry as little more than a telemarketing operation specializing in delivering marketing messages.
Any PR pros who work for small or mid-sized businesses can back this up. Often, clients will leap the assumption that if you don't personally know every editor at a publication you're pitching, you'll go nowhere. They don't even think about the fact that the messaging you use and other elements you create will be as instrumental, if not more so, than any relationships you may have. No one expects every lawyer to know every judge they may appear before on a personal level, but yet PR pros have let themselves get backed into that corner. Worse still, we've got no one to blame but ourselves.
My challenge to PR pros out there: Position yourself as a strategist who employs customized tactics that suit a client. Don't let yourself be known as someone who only does the "smile and dial."
No comments:
Post a Comment