Generally speaking, an excellent agency serving a client follows three basic processes: 1) pre-service diagnosis; 2) in-service basic action guarantee; 3) post-service summary and evaluation.
Process 1: Pre-service Diagnosis – Grasp the Overall Demand Direction
a. If a company has not set an annual overall marketing plan and needs to rely primarily on PR communication to help set up annual marketing activities and promotional content, this type of enterprise is suitable for agencies with integrated marketing and PR planning capabilities. Because marketing activities planned with PR thinking can not only drive sales but also have news reporting appeal. Many front-page news stories are generated from this type of client service. It is like a blank canvas – drawing a beautiful picture on it is easier than perfecting an already partially drawn picture. Of course, this ease depends on the client's planning strength. This type of service often achieves excellent communication results at a fraction of the cost of hard advertising.
b. If a company has already formulated its annual marketing mainline, including activity and product promotion plans, and needs to leverage PR company resources for execution, this execution mainly includes news writing and publishing. The core capability of the agency becomes how to strategically transform the client's established mainline into articles that news media are willing to report, especially large articles with images. Different planning capabilities and media relationships will be fully demonstrated at this stage, creating a clear divide in service quality.
c. If a company has its own unique marketing model and execution methods, but because of a special honor, special opportunity, or special-function product, it needs to conduct a round of extensive communication to maximize the spread of key core information. This falls under opportunity-driven PR marketing. For enterprises, such opportunities are rare – if missed, they are gone; if seized, they can elevate the company to the next level. This type of service is 70% derived from the enterprise's own high marketing awareness and 30% from the agency's keen discovery ability.
The basic actions of an excellent PR company during service consist of three parts: creativity, writing, and publishing. Process 1 has already helped the enterprise define the service scope, ensuring effectiveness and relevance. So, in the following three processes, how does the agency provide service?
Creative Phase: The creative phase is the key to determining the quality of this service. Excellent PR companies will send their core advisory team to participate in creative meetings, conducting 2-3 rounds of brainstorming to create key creative ideas suitable for the enterprise's characteristics. The advisory team represents the company's highest professional level; they face all projects but are not specifically responsible for any one. They serve cross-industry enterprises, borrowing best PR practices from different industries and combining them with the enterprise's own characteristics, contributing to the enterprise's service by participating in the creative phase. This includes directional big ideas such as theme activity creativity, communication topic creativity, and core PR strategy.
Writing Phase: Based on the main creative ideas proposed in the creative meeting, the writing phase completes the drafting of proposals and articles. We call this the pen-holding phase. The key for people in this phase is excellent writing skills and strong comprehension, able to transform the brilliant ideas from the creative meeting into text form, so that the client can understand the overall creativity and execution methods by reading the proposal. For article writing, it is also necessary to organically integrate consumer characteristics, media style, and product advantages to produce articles that not only attract consumer reading but also effectively express product advantages and cater to media focus points. This phase is equivalent to the production phase in a factory, where the finished product is the article visible to the client.
Publishing Phase: After the written proposal and articles are presented to the client and approved or partially modified, the media publishing phase begins. The effectiveness of media publishing largely depends on the PR company's media resource relationships. For the same theme and content, different resource relationships will result in publication in different media, different sections, and different sizes, leading to significant differences in results.
Process 3: Post-service Evaluation and Summary – Good Service Accumulates
Most PR companies consider their work done after news release, but excellent PR firms add a valuable evaluation and summary phase. This phase not only accumulates experience for the enterprise's marketing services but also refines the PR company's service skills.