The agency I had my placement with was lead by a General Manager who was very into providing value added service for our clients. He constantly reminded us that achieving deliverables are just the fundamentals and basic. Achieve or exceeding deliverables are good, but not enough to sustain an agency as competition is tough.
Adding value is indeed a competitive edge, it not only satisfies customers, but it also gets clients talking and it never hurts an agency to have good word of mouth passed around from clients, as it acts as free advertising for the agency.
Allow me to highlight two effective ways that our agency adopted to add value when serving clients. Firstly, one way it is done is by not only listening to what clients want and merely delivering it. It can be enhanced by placing one self in the consumer’s perspective and seeing what they might want to see or hear from the clients company, can help to generate ideas that can be suggested to the client. Analyzing and spotting trends, and proactively seizing them where applicable to the clients can also help your clients to see that you are always on the lookout to find means and ways that can work towards their advantage.
Deliverable may be generated from the PR or communications plan but PR is also very spontaneous and the world and the environment are constantly changing and sometimes it springs up surprises on the industry. Therefore as PR practitioners, we must constantly and closely monitor the news for events or occurrences (such as natural disasters for example) that the clients can leverage on to get into the news, and that adds value as it is more than what is expected or required from the initial plan or strategy.
In the agency where I did my placement, in order to remind the media of the client’s products, we created gift guides for every occasion. The gift guides contained a catalog of a client’s products. It was well put together and distributed to all the target media. Some publications lifted it completely and featured it in their publications. (http://pricewatch.vr-zone.com/articles/philips-mother-s-day-gift-guide/7233.html) In publications where were not including gift guides, some extracted products from the gift guide and featured it. This gave coverage to the products that would not have gotten extra coverage without the gift guides that were distributed that acted as a reminder to the media.
Interesting reads: http://blog.emlwildfire.com/2011/05/the-role-of-influencers-in-the-pr-world/
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