I am always impressed by small business owners and their entrepreneurial spirit. Fortunately, I’ve been very lucky to work closely with many public relations agencies that I believe will be among those to survive as the economy improves.

Recently I spoke to a small agency owner who had just contracted with BurrellesLuce for three monthly Share of Voice (SOV) reports. (To find out more about SOV, read our white paper, “Do Share of Voice Metrics Matter in an Online World?”) He told me he was using the SOV reports as a value-add for his biggest clients. He advised me that he was using them to compare the outcomes of brand and project campaigns his team worked on for various clients.   

When I dug a little bit deeper and talked to him about quantitative reporting (which is what this SOV report consists of) versus more qualitative reporting his response was, “Sometimes a thirty-thousand foot view is enough.” He went on to add, “My team provides other reporting, but this perspective of how we’re doing compared to competitors resonates with clients.”

I asked him how he persuaded his clients to add the service and he scoffed, replying: “There is no extra charge for my clients. This is an agency business expense.” He then revealed how his team further uses the reports – drilling down into competitors’ coverage to identify journalists and bloggers who are not currently covering his clients. This is a classic example of using public relations efforts to show value and hold on to top clients.

Are you taking advantage of everything you can to bring maximum value to your current and prospective client base? Are you downloading free whitepapers, like those provided by BurrellesLuce, and sharing them with your clients? Do you use the resource section of professional associations like PRSA? What are other ways you are leveraging your existing resources?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Media Measurement, Media Outreach, Media Relations, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.