Small business owners: how many of you would consider hiring a PR agency / consultant to help you promote ?

Question

your business?

If you would consider hiring such an agency, what sort of service would you be looking for and at what sort of cost?

If you WOULDN NOT consider this, can you say why not? E.g. Perhaps you just own a small newsagents and don't feel PR/media relations service would really be helpful to your business model.

Cheers

Answer 1

Seven years ago we hired a PR agency for about 6 months to help promote an art exhibition that we were staging.  They cost us over £2k per month and, on the plus side, got us some very nice sponsorship.

On the downside, I ended up writing or rewriting most of the press releases for them, they didn't target the right audience with their press submissions and at the end of the exhibition we hadn't covered all their costs.

With more experience under our belts, we do all our own PR and would take a lot of persuading to use an agency again.

Provided the agency could demonstrate that they understood precisely what we wanted to achieve from hiring them and that they were capable of reaching our target market, we might think about it but I'd have to be able to see the return I'd get on the investment.

If people are savvy about their marketing, they possibly can do their own PR.

If you're starting your agency, I'd advise getting to know a few niche industries well so that you can provide an outstanding service to clients within them.  People will spread the word for you if you're delivering results.

Good luck!

Answer 2

A small business cannot afford to pay an agency for what they can get for free from the nonprofit organization SCORE. Their volunteer mentors and consultants help us do for ourselves what you are proposing to charge to do for us so you can lead a dolce vita. Hmm.

http://www.score.org/index.html

Answer 3

Hi and greetings to ya. I actually own 2 businesses. I spotted you here,

in answers. Are you needing extra income? In one of my businesses, i

would consider paying high dollar, lets say 4 digits. Can you e-mail me at [e-mail] n let me no your details of what you

want.