Becoming part of the team

As an agency we’re always looking for ways to provide added value to our clients. Here our senior PR executive, Lauren Alcock, discusses why it’s so important for PR professionals to become part of a client’s team and immerse themselves in their culture.

 

As I work towards becoming an account manager, I am currently managing several client accounts within the business.

I have great relationships with my clients. I understand their objectives, their target audience and their press. But despite this, I am continuously looking for ways to expand my knowledge about the companies I work for and the industries they operate in.

Over the last few months, as an agency, we have been dedicating account time to working in-house with our clients to further our understanding of their business.

Even though client meetings are invaluable, sometimes they are not enough to give us a true representation of the company. This is because we are usually meeting with the directors, so we don’t find out about what is actually happening in the day-to-day running of the business.

I have found that meeting the team and working on the shop floor, even if it’s only for half-a-day every six months, has vastly improved my understanding of how a business operates.

For example, last week I spent the morning at Morrison Freight, a Freight Forwarder in Great Blakenham who has been a client for almost 12 months.

I met with each staff member individually and as part of their departments to find out more about their roles, their experiences and how they feel about working at the company.

This has given me valuable insight into each of the different departments and improved my understanding of the services they offer their customers. It has also helped me to shape my PR and social media campaigns for the new year. And it has benefitted staff too.

After all, employees should see us as part of their team, rather than just people who work for the directors.

By building these relationships with them, we are more likely to receive more input from them on what’s going on in the business, allowing us to find out about projects that may be useful for PR purposes.

Also, as we manage our clients’ social media accounts, it’s important to know that the employees are seeing and engaging with the content that is shared from their company page. And if they’re not, we need to find out why not.

Getting team members involved in liking and sharing social media posts, celebrating award success and resharing content like press releases or blogs on their individual platforms is great for the company’s reputation. As their agency, we can advise and help them in creating and utilising their social media platforms.

They can also help us by feeding in content and information that they would like us to share from the business page.

Employees are essentially the bread and butter of the business, so having a good relationship with them is vital if you are to be successful in promoting their brand.

Over the next few months and into the new year, we will be arranging to spend more time working with our clients, meeting their teams and adding extra value where possible in order to further enhance the services we offer.

For more information about what we do for our clients, visit the case study page on our website.

Share this article: