How to Hire the Right (Travel) Public Relations Agency
Public relations is hard, unpredictable, and requires thick skin. The true PR wizards are hard-working (never been a 9 to 5 job!) individuals who are deeply knowledgeable about the media. They’re relentless in their problem-solving and endless story ideas. No matter how “senior” they get, pitching and media relations are the bread and butter of what we do. Media relationships can last a whole career if you’re doing it right.
When we take on a client, the PR person becomes an expert on their story and their specialty. Nothing was more true when I took on my first airline client in my early PR days. Now I’m an #AVGeek for life.
As a communications professional or brand manager, hiring the best travel PR agency or individual tourism PR expert is the key to positioning your travel brand as a leader in the industry. You want senior expertise and support. A team that jives with your ethos and someone who you enjoy working with. I cannot stress that enough.
Where do you even begin?
When putting a request for proposal (RFP) out in the PR universe, it’s a good practice to evaluate your goals, your core value proposition, and ideal outcomes by bringing on PR support. Do you want an agency? Do you want a consultant? Do you want a niche agency in your field? Do you want them to be versatile and be able to advise on social media, travel trade, sales connections, and more?
If you can have your agency do more, you have a more holistic approach and cross-pollination. People get tangled when they have a bunch of agencies or contacts - too many cooks in the kitchen - that aren’t talking to each other. If there’s a communications breakdown you could end up duplicating work, overspending budgets or losing out on opportunities to maximize your ROI.
If you do have multiple agencies, it’s crucial to create a positive workflow between agencies and regularly facilitate inter-agency communications. When done right, your agencies should work together on projects collaboratively. You need to lead by example and create the right work environment for all to be your best advocates. Otherwise, everyone gets protective and land grabs start if you don’t lead by example. I’ve seen this go wrong on MANY accounts over my career. Play nice in the sandbox, and the skies are the limit.
How much do you have budgeted?
When it comes to travel public relations, there is a wide range in pricing and tiers — from set hourly rates to large monthly retainers. Remember when you hire outside of your company, you’re not covering their healthcare, taxes, PTO, the media databases, reporting and technology services that the PR agency or professional is using. These are typically built into a retainer, project fee or agreed-upon hourly rates. I say this because sometimes people balk at pricing, however, they need to consider the level of talent, industry knowledge, connections, business counsel, and idea creation that goes into that fee. Price is important but shouldn’t be driving your decision-making. Follow your instincts and don’t forget that you also get what you pay for if you go cheap.
Once you know what you’d like to get out of hiring PR support and budget consideration, then you have to find the appropriate contacts and agencies to send the brief or RFP to begin the process. Focusing on travel PR (my specialty), places to look are PRWeek, O’Dwyer’s, LinkedIn, PRSA Travel Section, HSMAI Award winners, Travel Massive, and the Travel PR Czars Facebook Group. You can weed out a lot of entries if they don’t follow directions from the start because you’re going to get a lot of responses. Channel them to one point person’s email or even create a submission form to stay organized.
Here is a free template to get you started.
How to test the agency team…without overdoing it.
Be concise and direct. You shouldn’t ask them to provide you with countless ideas through an exhaustive RFP. It’s a professional courtesy as we’re all familiar with the agency cattle call and creative copyrights aren’t possible to police. There should be a balance.
New business responses take a lot of time and creative input that pulls people away from servicing current clients, so be deliberate, clear on realistic timelines and expectations on your side. You may be the client to win, however, it’s no prize being on the receiving end of a difficult client. Treat those how you would want to be treated, and that’s a good policy across any industry or business transaction.
One thing: when you ask for a travel PR RFP, avoid asking for multiple hard copies so each team member can read one and mail it to your office. It’s incredibly expensive to print and bind, plus the amount of paper is unnecessary. It’s really time to deviate from that old-school process and be more sustainable as well.
As you get into the shortlist, you want to get a sense of who would be on your team day-to-day. You want someone clever and quick on their feet. That is literally what a PR person should be. It’s a high-stress situation when pitching new business, however, they should be able to give you a sense of their personality and creative ideas on the spot.
Don’t always just look at the larger agencies - ahem - I am from the background of a small, medium, and mega-agency, plus in-house work. There are more like me out there who’ve left agency life to strike out on their own terms. That was the impetus for my move. I wanted to provide media relations, business counsel, partnerships, social media, events, and not “stick to my lane” which has always provided more value to clients. See what your responses reveal in their style and do those align. Do they cover the breadth of knowledge or serve as an extension of your own to become a strong team? TEAM is the key word here.
You cannot hire an agency like a set it and forget strategy. PR is very time-consuming and takes a lot of work from both sides. Build in your own time to manage and participate. My best clients are involved in the process, trust us and treat us as an extension of their team. Tell us all the things, good, bad, and worth championing. On the flip side, we are here to provide expert counsel and constructive feedback. It has to be a true partnership.
For smaller brands/businesses, it’s important to be upfront with your budget and account needs. You can start small, in hopes to grow with the success of your efforts with your partner agency/individual. In many cases, you will not require this dense of a response. I’ve found that a shorter Word document and visual PPT will offer insight into the prospective agency.
There’s much more to be said about hiring the right agency but I think this is a great starting point. Enjoy this complimentary template to help you get started, and reach out if you have any questions! I offer an hourly consulting service called “Pick My Brain” where you can ask me anything.
