PR Freelancers For Every Need

Maintaining connections with your target audience requires more than just a series of effective marketing campaigns; it often requires a comprehensive “public relations” strategy. That’s where PR consultants step in. A PR expert can help businesses navigate the complicated business landscape, sending the right message to their target audience and mitigating potential disasters. 

With a PR consultant by your side, you can protect your brand from unexpected issues and ensure your marketing efforts have the best possible impact on your profits. 

What is a PR Consultant? Understanding PR Experts

According to PRSA (The Public Relations Society of America), Public Relations, or “PR,” is the strategic communication process companies use to build beneficial relationships with the public. The concept generally overlaps with marketing, which means PR experts and marketers often have a lot of shared skills and insights. 

While the duties of PR consultants and marketing experts can overlap, the two serve different functions. The main goal of marketing is to drive sales, while the aim of public relations is to improve, enhance, and protect the reputation of your brand. 

Companies can access assistance with public relations in a variety of different ways, including hiring a PR Consultant. PR consultants are advisors who work strategically with a business or public figure to help them shape and improve their image. 

They can help keep the public informed about the values and vision of the company by organizing events, preparing promotional materials, and partnering with publications and media companies. They also assist with conducting research into business opportunities, target markets, and competitors, helping organizations build better strategies for growth. 

What Does a PR Consultant Do?

The services offered by a PR consultant or expert can vary depending on a variety of factors, including whether they work as a standalone freelancer or as part of an agency. All PR experts are well-versed in the concepts of branding, marketing, and reputation management. 

They use their skills in these areas, alongside an understanding of psychology and communication principles, to assist businesses with a variety of tasks. Some of the most common responsibilities of PR consultants include:

Reputation and Crisis Management

As mentioned above, the main focus of a PR expert is on enhancing a company’s reputation and making sure it remains consistent. Many PR consultants help with the development of reputation management strategies. These strategies could include everything from planning messaging campaigns, website copy, and email newsletters. 

They can also provide guidance during difficult times for businesses, helping them to address unexpected issues affecting their reputation. According to some reports, around 69% of corporate leaders have experienced some form of reputational crisis in the last 5 years. PR consultants can come up with crisis communication plans to mitigate disruption.

Media Management

PR Consultants work with businesses on a comprehensive range of media strategies, often connected to three main forms of media:

• Owned media: The content your business controls, such as your website copy, blog posts, and social media messaging. PR freelancers can guide you on what kind of media to create to best position your brand in the eyes of your target audience. 
• Paid media: The promotional content you pay to access, such as paid and sponsored ads, influencer marketing campaigns, and social media ads. A consultant can help organizations identify key opportunities where it makes sense to pay for promotion. 
• Earned media: PR consultants can also help manage the relationship between other media outlets and your company. They can contribute to your earned media strategy by writing pitches and sending press releases to influencers, journalists, and thought leaders. 

Content Development

While a PR consultant may not create content for your company directly, they can work with your internal marketing teams and other content freelancers to help produce the most effective resources for your business. They can guide professionals on creating press releases, internal copy for your marketing campaigns and website, and even strategies for social media. 

Consultants can even craft editorial guidelines and strategies that guide content marketers on using the right tone of voice and personality in their marketing strategies. This ensures companies can create a consistent image for themselves in a range of different landscapes. 

Opportunity Planning (Events)

PR consultants are also excellent at working alongside event organizers to develop the tools and resources required for an effective event. They can assist businesses in coming up with speeches and presentations to share with the world, whether you’re announcing a product release or a business change. They can also interact with other companies on your behalf. 

This could include reaching out to trade shows, event holders, and other organizations to ensure that your events and announcements get the right level of media coverage. 

Conducting Research 

Like many marketing professionals, PR consultants can also invest a significant amount of time into market research. They can learn about your competitors and the strategies they’re using to elevate and promote their brand to give you insights into where you can differentiate yourself.

They can offer insights into the changing buyer trends and preferences relevant to your industry, as well as the unique values your target audience might have. This can pave the way for the creation of more advanced user personas and personalized marketing and sales campaigns. 

Measurement, Tracking, and Analytics

Often, measuring the impact of your PR strategies can be a complicated process. It can be difficult to align the activities your business invests in with their potential outcomes. A PR expert or consultant can assist with this process, helping you to derive valuable and actionable insights from data. 

They can monitor everything from backlinks and mentions of your business to domain authority, customer sentiment, changes in site traffic, and even customer engagement. This can help business leaders and marketing teams uncover new ways to improve the effectiveness of a PR strategy.

PR Agency vs. Freelance PR Consultant

While many businesses can benefit from PR support and expertise, it’s worth remembering there are multiple ways to access extra assistance. Some organizations hire their own internal PR expert to support their marketing, sales, and product development teams at all times. 

While this can be an excellent way to get consistent support with reputation management, it’s also an expensive choice for smaller businesses. Many companies don’t have the budget required to hire a dedicated PR expert, which often means marketing teams and business leaders are left to handle PR initiatives themselves. 

Another alternative is to hire a PR agency. This has traditionally been one of the most popular choices for businesses that need regular access to support without hiring an in-person team. A PR agency or organization provides services through a range of staff members with varying levels of expertise and experience. This generally means companies can leverage the help of multiple experts at once.

A PR agency can offer access to everyone from outreach experts to PR content creators and analysts. These agencies manage the training and development of professionals themselves and can deliver access to innovative tools and resources. 

Unfortunately, once again, hiring a PR agency is often not a realistic option for many smaller businesses. You pay for the support of an entire team at once, regardless of which resources you use, which means monthly fees are often much higher. Additionally, you may be tied into a specific contract length with your PR provider. 

To make matters worse, some PR agencies offer differing levels of support to clients based on how much they pay. This could make it difficult for businesses to access the agile guidance they need during periods of reputational crisis. 

The Benefits of Hiring a PR Freelancer

Emerging as the ultimate alternative to both in-house PR experts and agencies, the PR freelancer has become a valuable choice for businesses of all sizes in recent years. A freelance PR consultant gives businesses all of the benefits they could expect from a dedicated agency or in-house team member, with greater levels of flexibility and agility. 

Compared to other options for PR support, a PR freelancer offers:

Specific Expertise

With a PR freelancer, companies have the freedom to choose the exact professional they need for their specific projects or campaigns. Using the right freelance platform, companies can access a wide range of professionals, all with their own diverse skill sets linked to outreach, earned media management, paid media, and beyond. 

This means you have more freedom to choose the right level of support for your business, aligned with your marketing and promotional goals. Plus, you pay exclusively for the services and expertise you need rather than paying for a “bundled” PR service. 

Valuable Insights

A PR freelancer is a public relations professional with years of experience in everything from reputation management to branding, customer psychology, and data analytics. Freelancers know they need to stay ahead of the curve in their chosen market to ensure they can deliver exceptional results to the companies they serve. This means they’re always learning and expanding their skills. 

They can offer valuable insights into everything from the marketing strategies that work best for brands in your industry to the methods you can use to mitigate reputation issues. They also commit to training themselves, so you don’t have to invest in endlessly educating internal employees. 

Flexibility

One of the biggest benefits of choosing to work with a PR freelancer rather than an in-house consultant or agency is flexibility. You can choose how many freelance professionals to add to your team at any given time and work with them for as long as you see fit. There are no contracts to tie you to a specific professional. 

This means as your business needs change, you can switch to working with different professionals, scale your freelancer team up and down as needed, and maintain complete control over your budget. 

Improved Reach and Visibility

PR consultants are experts in ensuring your brand gets the attention it deserves. They know how to use a mixture of owned, paid, and earned media effectively to engage and convert your target audience, and they can guide you through strategies to boost your brand reach.

Most importantly, they can ensure you’re taking a data-driven approach to growth, providing insights and reports that help you choose the right marketing strategies and campaigns to suit your specific needs. This enhances the ROI of marketing initiatives and helps reduce customer acquisition costs. 

Access to Innovation

PR Freelancers can use a variety of different tools and resources to enhance the outcomes of your PR initiatives. They may use everything from social media monitoring tools for customer sentiment analysis to keyword research tools to help guide your marketing campaigns. 

These professionals can use these resources on your behalf, so you don’t have to pay for additional software. Plus, they can offer training and guidance to help your other marketing professionals and team members adopt new tools for the future. 

Stronger Brand Reputations

Perhaps more than anything else, a PR freelancer will ensure your brand can build the best possible reputation to attract and retain more customers. They’ll implement passion and expertise into every strategy they suggest for your brand and tailor their recommendations to your goals and your specific brand positioning strategy. 

PR experts will give you new perspectives on how you can grow your brand, help you understand how the media and your target audience work, and they can even help to protect the integrity of your brand when disaster strikes. 

How to Hire a PR Consultant: Step by Step

In today’s world, the public relations industry is just one of the many sectors struggling with an evolving skill shortage. Though increasing competition in the business landscape and diminishing customer loyalty have led to increased demand for PR professionals, finding the right expert for your team is often extremely complicated. 

Fortunately, choosing a PR freelancer instead of an in-house staff member or agency can lead to a much simpler process for businesses. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide to hiring the best PR consultant for your organization:

Step 1: Assess Your Specific Requirements

Before you hire a PR consultant, it’s important to decide what kind of support you need. Most PR consultants can offer a variety of different services, helping you to manage and enhance your owned, earned, and paid media assets. However, different freelancers may also offer additional services.

Some may be able to help you with the development of crucial assets, like speeches, marketing campaigns, or editorial guidelines. Others can help you with analyzing and understanding your competitors, market, and target audience. 

Knowing exactly where you’re going to need extra help with your PR initiative ensures you can make the right decision about which specialist to hire. 

Step 2: Look for Critical Skills

Alongside essential abilities, such as being able to reach out to media partners on your behalf, create branding strategies, and assist with asset development, PR consultants need specific skills. If you search for your freelancer on a reputable platform, you should be able to rest assured that each professional has already proven their capacity for these skills.

However, it’s still worth assessing the portfolio or profile of the professional you’re considering working with. Make sure they have exceptional communication and collaboration skills and are excellent at time management, organization, and problem-solving. 

Step 3: Know Your Budget

Hiring a freelancer for your PR campaigns is often a lot less expensive than working with an agency or searching for an in-house professional. However, there will still be costs to consider. The price you pay for a PR freelancer will depend on various factors, from the kinds of services they offer to their level of expertise and how much time they commit to your business. 

A reputable freelancer platform will give you a clear and transparent insight into how much you can expect to pay for your services. For instance, Growth Collective provides an instant estimation to every business leader creating a role on the platform. 

Step 4: Consider Seeking Industry Knowledge

The best PR strategies for your business will vary depending on your company, target audience, and the industry you serve. Although most PR professionals will be able to conduct research to gain a deeper knowledge of your market, it might be helpful to work with a professional who already has experience working with similar brands in your niche. 

Usually, you’ll be able to examine a freelancer’s profile or online presence for insights into the kinds of companies they’ve worked with in the past. You can also consider requesting case studies, reviews, and testimonials from previous businesses they’ve worked with.

Step 5: Set Clear Expectations

Finally, when working with any kind of freelancer, clear, consistent communication is essential. While your professional will usually be able to do a lot of work independently, without your guidance, they’ll still need direction at times. Provide your freelancer with a clear insight into what you want to achieve with your campaigns and how you’ll be measuring results.

Ensure they can access any essential documents or resources they might find useful, such as your existing customer personas and brand guidelines. Additionally, make sure you can check in with your professional frequently to request insights into campaign progress.

Ready to Hire your PR Consultant?

In a world where brand reputation and customer trust are more important than ever, hiring a PR consultant can be an excellent way to gain an edge over the competition. The right PR expert will be able to guide you through the steps you need to take to elevate your brand identity, improve relationships with customers, and preserve your reputation.

What’s more, they can assist you in ensuring you’re getting the best possible ROI from your marketing and sales strategies. If you’re thinking of hiring a PR freelancer, it’s important to choose the right platform to help you find the ideal professional. 

Here at Growth Collective, we can match every company to the ideal freelancer for their needs, offering access to some of the most experienced professionals in the business. Contact Growth Collective today to learn more about hiring your PR expert.