PR and Marketing Agencies – How to Manage Expectations

In a recent post, I blogged about the importance of care factor to our culture – i.e. showing our clients, the media, digital influencers, our clients’ client and our coworkers that we truly care about the work that we do. But how can we put this into practice; how can public relations account managers demonstrate care factor?

At this B2B integrated marketing agency, we believe that it’s about managing expectations across a variety of stakeholders. In other words, it’s about communicating – regularly – activities, problems, solutions and strategies to your clients, team and management in an empathetic way.

To do this means that you should challenge yourself to think about those stakeholders’ individual points of view on a regular basis. Below are starter questions for us all to ask ourselves at least weekly:

About the Client:

• What do they see as the goals of the program, both short-term and long-term? How do they measure success?
• Who is their boss and what are their expectations of the program? What can you do to help your client look good in front of their boss?
• What questions might the client have today about PR activities? How can you answer them?
• How would you judge their satisfaction with the current program? (If needed) how can you improve that?
• What are you doing to challenge your client’s thinking, bring new ideas to the table and continually improve the program?
• How does the business make money, and how does the business line use PR and Marketing?

About the Account Team:

• How would you measure the team’s engagement in the account? How can you improve it?
• Are all team members regularly updated on strategic plans/conversations with the client? Are you keeping the team up-to-date on everything that they might need to know to make their work product better?
• Are you mentoring junior team members to take on more and more? Are you proving to senior members of the team that you are 100% “on top” of the account?
• Are roles/expectations/deadlines clearly defined and understood by the entire team?
• Has anything happened (good or bad) that the management team might get a call from the client about?

What else would you add to these lists?

To Connect with Katherine:

Phone: 212.840.1661
Email: katherine@blisspr.com
Twitter: @kilpatrickk
Linked In: Katherine Kilpatrick