PR plays a key function in a successful business. And for PR to be productive you will need to trust more than friendship or basic instincts in choosing an “ideal” PR company. Since public relations are about communication and steering the company towards realistic targets, you must consider a number or crucial and tangible issues.
Be clear that PR cannot be handled just by the firm it is a partnership between you and the PR experts. It is your inputs that will provide the PR firm with direction. You must on your side provide complete and updated information, be available to advice on or check material put together by the firm and spend time with the PR team on ideation. Only when the grounding is laid clearly will PR be successful.
1. The company must have worked for a business such as yours before or have at their fingertips the strategies they will employ to meet your PR objectives.
2. The PR firm must have updated its systems to include all the latest in media and communications.
3. The company must understand your business thoroughly and know in no uncertain terms how much strategic versus tactical support they can provide.
4. Determine whether the staff deployed for your project has both experience as well as expertise. Find out about their successes and failures.
5. Ascertain whether they can comfortably reach out to your target market and if they cab quantify their value.
6. Study the proposals presented by them on your project and use your in depth knowledge of your business and the market to determine to what extent this will work.
7. A dedicated PR firm will not hesitate to disagree with you on any aspects of your plan they are not in agreement with. They know the ins and outs of their business and know what works and what does not.
8. The firm must not just have a series of meetings there should be constant interaction as well as reviews of work undertaken and subsequent results.
9. The contract must be clear and transparent with no hidden clauses. The PR firm must have a system where it clearly understands and then delineates in a contract its responsibilities.
10. Be sure to check their testimonials and credentials. Go through their case studies to determine their efficacy and do some research to find out their standing in the market.
The most apt definition of a PR relationship is that of the Counselors Academy of the Public Relations Society of America. It says, “ a successful relationship between client and public relations firm or counselor has as a fundamental: a match of capabilities and needs, a 100% agreement on objectives, constant and instant accessibility, full information sharing, interaction at all levels, regular updates as well as progress review, and a clear contractual agreement.”
10 ways to identify if your public relations company is right for you
Ways to Identify and Tackle Click Fraud
Identifying and tracking examples of click fraud is the first step to eradicating the problem. Click fraud is an enormous drain on the resources of advertisers operating on a national and international scale, estimated to occupy around 30% of all pay per click advertising spend. With so much at stake, its no wonder the search engines are investing so much time and effort into devising solutions.
One way in which Search Engines and other pay per click programme providers have attempted to curb the growing click fraud problem is through introducing IP address repetition algorithms. These formulae are designed to pick up on suspicious click patterns emanating from a singular IP address, which can help to uncover the existence of click farms and competitor-led sabotage, as well as identifying potential fraudsters at source.
However, there is an array of problems with this method of attempting to identify the fraudsters. Firstly, fraudsters logging on through a dialup modem, DSL line or cable modem can almost completely bypass this check, as with every new online session, a new IP address is generated. Furthermore, there is an extensive range of software available to alter IP addresses, which again can be used for 'cheating' the algorithm. Cookie and session tracking are other methods by which search engines can attempt to uncover potential fraudulent activity, but again there are ways around these for the fraudsters.
More comprehensive software is being developed which profiles and reports on the browsing habits of each click-through to enable companies to track and monitor suspicious behavior, although this could be seen by many as intrusive and ineffective as anything on a small scale is still likely to go unnoticed, based on the vast coverage of ads across the internet.
The problem of click fraud recently hit the headlines with a class action raised against Google, prompting Google to offer $90million as a potential settlement. Perhaps an acceptance of their responsibilities, Google's offer goes some way to suggest the extent of click fraud, and its vast costs to the internet economy.
There are a number of self-help remedies that can be implemented to keep an organization out of trouble. The first of these remedies is the reliance on search engine optimization and organic listings. If a site is well and fully optimized, it could eventually realize a ranking that another site is willing to pay $2.50 a click for. Similarly, with organically high rankings there are no clickthrough rates, therefore the costs associated with PPC are not applicable. Although the process is significantly more laborious and takes significantly longer to see results, the SEO process is much cheaper in the long run, and with an estimated 25-30% of all clicks being performed fraudulently, an organically high listing can save money which would otherwise be drained by click fraud for more beneficial reinvestment.
Year on year, as the pay per click advertising market continues to grow and expand, surely click fraud will follow suit. Unless an effective means of preventing click fraud is developed and successfully implemented, buyers will steadily lose confidence in the advertising medium and turn to more effective, less wasteful marketing methods, which would seriously hit the search engines and could potentially threaten the online economy as a whole.
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