Dynamic Business

From measuring success to costs and services, here’s what you need to know before turning to a public relations firm.

Hiring a public-relations firm for your small business can be a difficult decision. There’s no guarantee that a PR campaign will produce the desired results, and the costs can be quite high. Yet, a successful campaign can help you expand your business in ways you never could on your own.

So how do you find a PR agency that is likely to benefit your business? “It comes down to a combination of your budget, expectations, their track record in delivering results, and your chemistry,” says Dave Manzer, founder of PR Over Coffee, an Austin, Texas organization that educates small businesses on how to do PR.

Here are 10 questions to help you assess PR agencies:

How are you going to measure your success?

Before hiring a PR firm, you need to know how it will measure success, says Joan Stewart, founder of the Publicity Hound, a publicity firm in Port Washington, Wis. “Likes” on your Facebook page and print media placements are common metrics for success in the PR business. But Stewart advises that you hire someone who looks beyond those measures to factors that will help your business grow, such as tracking how much your prospective client email list and traffic to your website have grown because of a PR campaign.

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