On Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Waddington. It was an inspiring dinner of intellectual curiosity and thought-proving stories and conversatios. I think we both learnt a lot from each other.

Of course, we spent most of the evening talking about the PR industry and our experiences over the years and I kind of got to pitch my concept of Inbound PR and how the inbound methodology is the perfect fit for PR.

There are two main reasons, I said, why inbound is the perfect fit for PR:

1. PR people are natural content creators and storytellers.
2. PR people suck at measurement.

If you are familiar with the inbound marketing methodology, you will see that content is at the centre of inbound (refer to this page to learn more about it). And content is something that PR people do better than anyone in the creative industry – marketers, advertisers or digital experts.

However, the single biggest challenge that PR pros have been facing since forever is measurement. Just google PR measurement and you’ll see tons of articles explaining how AVEs don’t work, we need a new set of tools, how PR hasn’t adjusted to the new era of digital and metrics etc. (See here, here and here for example.)

Inbound makes measurement possible. Inbound also doesn’t work without content.

But there’s even more.

PR agencies (and agencies in general) are notoriously known for not having the time to invest in their own PR or marketing activities but make their living out of advising and implementing such for clients.

If you are an agency owner or work in an agency, let me ask you some questions:

1. Do you blog?
2. Do you use social media?
3. Do you have a landing page on your site?
4. How much time do you invest in doing PR for your own agency?

Now, let me take a guess about your answers:

1. Hmm when we have time.
2. Yes, but mainly just to curate or share our own stuff.
3. No, no time for that and what’s the point.
4. We just don’t have time because we are swamped with client work.

You might be thinking, “Why do I even need any of that? We have our clients, our team is busy, we can’t invest time and money into something that won’t bring us much result.”

Yep, sure. For now you do. Do you think about the future, though?

Far too often I hear “We just didn’t have time to blog this month, there’s just so much going on with our clients.” 

This is the number 1 challenge for agencies –> we don’t have time for our own PR and marketing.

But that’s just wrong.

I’m sure you’ve heard about PR, but how about inbound? Do you know what it is?

Don’t worry if you don’t because after reading this post you will, and you will also know how inbound and PR fit together quite nicely.

Let’s start with PR.  

As per definition, public relations is the communications process concerned with building relationships between an organisation and its publics.

Going back to a few decades ago, PR was mainly concerned with media relations, events, reputation and crisis management, and investor relations. In fact, for a very long time public relations and media relations were considered synonymous (some still think so).  

PR is not just media relations

But PR now is not and shouldn’t be just media relations. Because today, the arsenal of PR activities has increased enormously. Media relations can simply be one of those activities.

I spent a good three years working in PR and digital agencies across Germany and the UK. Now I’m on the other side – as a Channel Consultant at HubSpot my role is to help our partner agencies grow their businesses.

That not only includes teaching them the inbound marketing methodology and how they can use our software for their own marketing, but also offering them strategic advice on how to choose the right market, develop and deliver better services, recognise areas for growth, make the right team decisions, establish expertise and more. So really - business consulting.

Just a few months ago I thought agency life was hard (and it is, don’t get me wrong), but now I’m seeing that running an agency isn’t easy either.

Especially when you have to compete with thousands of other similar firms out there.

From what I’ve experienced so far, the biggest challenge agencies face is developing a unique positioning that allows them to truly stand out and be seen as an expert, with clients chasing them for their knowledge and capabilities, rather than the agencies having to pitch all the time for new business.