If your business is looking to raise its profile and implement a PR function, one key decision will be whether to go down the route of employing an in-house team or outsourcing the work to a PR agency.

There are obvious benefits to each, but it is all about finding out which one is more suitable to your business.

 

Talent

If you decide to go through the DIY route, you obviously have the advantage of overseeing the hiring of your own staff members to handle the PR tasks. Staff will be solely working on one account and it will be easier to monitor their successes and failures. Having a PR person directly on hand on a day-to-day basis to answer queries and bounce ideas off will obviously be useful as well.

However, the benefit of going with a PR firms means you will able to use the experience and creativity of a whole talented PR team at the peak of their game. Agencies are much more fast paced, and team members are a lot more used to coming up with innovative ideas for campaigns on the spot, not forgetting a wealth of experience in getting stories published within the press surrounding a wealth of different topics. Working with an agency also means you get the benefit of a diverse range of skills from across the team such as social media, media relations, email marketing, event organisation, graphic design and more.

 

Connections

Working with a PR team at an agency can include people from a selection of different backgrounds; from ex-journalists, media experts and young professionals who have been working in PR their whole career. Each will have their own ‘black book’ full of media contacts to take advantage of. They will also be able to work collaboratively with other businesses that they will be providing PR for.

This isn’t to say an in-house person or team will not have similar connections, but it’s important to remember they won’t be regularly picking up many new contacts due to the fact they will be focused solely on working with one business rather than speaking to multiple clients, and therefore Journalists, at the same time.

 

Budget

There are some exceptional in-house PR workers out there, who can be a tremendous asset to a company, but they do not come cheap. Much needed resources such as a media monitoring service and a media database can also be quite expensive and could prove to be a big gamble that doesn’t pull off if you are unfortunate enough to recruit someone not suitable for the role.

On the flip side, the cost of a PR agency will obviously vary depending on the services you will be requiring and the amount of time that will be dedicated to your tasks. You are much more likely to be able to stick to a budget with a PR agency. They will be able to delegate tasks to different members of the team to ensure that you are getting a fair amount of man-power focused on achieving results for your business.

If you are looking at your PR needs, why not see what Make More Noise can do for you? Contact us at hello@makemorenoise.co.uk or call 0121 306 0996 to arrange an initial meeting today.