Best 15+ Public Relations Agencies in Beijing

Even if PR agencies are very successful in the services they provide, they may be caught unprepared for some problems and face a failure story that leads to closure. Among the many problems faced by agencies, the most common ones are; poor cash flow, underutilized teams, poor data tracking, and lack of strategy. Perhaps the most important of these problems is the cash flow problem. The first step in mastering cash flow is understanding the agency's overheads. To find their overhead, agencies need to list everything they routinely pay for, such as rent, payroll, software subscriptions, and other regular expenses. Then they make annual plans and comply with them. Agencies that cannot make a regular budget calculation in this way are more likely to go to closure.

The top five PR agencies in the world are as follows:

• Edelman

Edelman, the world's largest PR firm with more than 6,000 employees and a revenue of $984.9 million in 2021, is an American PR and marketing consulting firm founded in 1952 by Daniel Edelman. It is currently managed by Daniel Edelman's son, Richard Edelman.

• Weber Shandwick

Weber Shandwick is an American PR firm founded in 2001 by the merger of Weber Group, Shandwick International and BSMG. In 2021, it took the second place in the ranking of the world's largest PR agencies with a revenue of 860 million dollars.

• BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe)

Burson Cohn & Wolfe, which put $772 million into its coffers last year, is a New York-based multinational PR and communications firm. In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries, Cohn & Wolfe, with Burson-Marsteller. The combined agency is now known as Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

• Fleishman Hillard

Fleishman Hillard St. Louis, Missouri is a PR and marketing agency. The company, which generated $680 million in revenue in 2021, was founded in 1946 by Alfred Fleishman and Robert E. Hillard. It is currently headquartered in Missouri, USA.

• Ketchum

Ketchum; is a global public relations firm that provides marketing, branding and corporate communications services in the corporate, healthcare, food & beverage and technology industries. Ketchum, which is on the list of the five largest PR agencies in the world with its revenue of $ 550 million in 2021, was founded by George Ketchum in 1923 as a Pittsburgh-based advertising company. Its headquarters are now located in New York.

If you want to work in the field of public relations, here are the items that will help you start your career.

A college degree doesn't matter much to work in PR agencies, but most job postings will ask for a bachelor's degree. Most people who work in PR agencies develop a strong grasp of language, style, and both oral and written communication skills by earning a bachelor's degree in fields similar to journalism and communications.

As in most areas, one of the most critical roles in the PR industry is the connections you have. Because the nature of the job is to engage with audiences and manage their brand identity and reputation, PR firms look for people who are already on social media and are good at networking. Being active on social media and participating in industry-related pieces of training, events, and conferences, meeting people in the industry, and developing your network will be very logical steps for those who want to get a job in PR agencies.

When you're ready to apply for a job at PR agency, make sure your resume showcases your social and creative skills. Use your cover letter to showcase not only your achievements and experience but also your personality. When creating your resume, you can pretend you're writing a press release or blog post that aims to promote your brand in a positive way.

The way to understand the difference between PR agencies and advertising agencies is to make the right distinction between the concepts of PR and advertising.

While PR serves the purpose of increasing the prestige, image and recognition of an institution or person, advertising aims to increase the sales of a good or service or to spread an idea. Therefore, these two concepts are separated from each other in terms of basic purposes.

Another important point that distinguishes the concepts of PR and advertising is the target audience. In PR, the target audience of the institution is the public, but in advertising, the target audience includes a limited audience in line with the area of ​​​​the goods or services to be sold.

The third difference between PR and advertising is their working time. Since there is a long-term image work or communication of an institution in PR, the studies are continuous and uninterrupted because creating the perception always requires a long process. On the contrary, in advertising, the work is intermittent and periodic due to certain periods when products or services come to the fore.

One of the jobs that today's agencies spend the most time on is trying to gain new customers. PR agencies also need to constantly seek out new clients and explore new ways to grow their agencies. Below are the steps to be taken to achieve these goals:

Website: Creating a website that will make a good impression as your most important marketing tool is critical. If you want to get your website visitors excited about taking the next step and contacting you, a website that will highlight your agency, your team, your industry expertise, and clients you've worked with before and instill confidence in your visitors should be the first step in your marketing strategy. Don't overlook the importance of optimizing your site for SEO best practices to attract potential PR customers to your website. An optimized website increases your chances of attracting organic traffic and helps you build a stronger online network.

Content: Create content that will position your agency as an expert in your field and industry. When creating this content, remember that instead of writing generic content pieces, you should offer unique content and tailor it to your target PR clients when creating content that reveals your agency's expertise. By producing content in this way, you can benefit from content generation methods from company blogs, e-mail newsletters, LinkedIn posts, webinars, podcasts, YouTube, and other social media platforms to stand out as a thought leader in your industry.

Case Studies: Be sure to include case studies on your agency's website to showcase your past achievements and expertise. These studies will act as a kind of social proof and play an important role in attracting more PR clients to your agency. These case studies are very helpful for your clients to see what you can do.

Quality Presentation: You are one of the many PR agencies on the list for your potential clients who want to have a meeting with you and present to them. The only way to stand out is to craft a persuasive business presentation and PR proposal, customized to the client's needs. At this stage, you need to fully understand the client's business, past business, trouble spots, and competitors. Once you understand these, create an interesting presentation and try to attract all the attention of the customers during the presentation.

There are different types of PR agencies, depending on the services they offer and the audiences they serve. While PR agencies provide general services, there are also PR agencies working in specific areas specialized in their fields. We have listed the types of PR agencies below for you.

1. General Communication

PR agencies that offer general services are there for companies in all matters related to their public relations strategy. They provide you with every support in building your reputation and brand awareness using many tactics including social media, media relations, internal communication, and more. For businesses that need help with more than one public relations, it would make more sense to get services from a general PR agency.

1. Press communication

PR agencies that focus on media access, writing sales pitches, being actively involved in the media, and interviewing journalists or influencers specialize in press communications. If the PR service that companies need is to improve their media coverage, it would be wise to get services from a PR agency specialized in this field.

1. Crisis Communication

PR agencies, which provide support to their customers in the field of crisis management, stand by them by preparing appropriate plans in times of crisis.

1. Internal communication

PR agencies specialized in the field of internal communication provide services foe institutions to inform their employees and make employee communication very easy.

1. Community Communication

PR agencies, which help companies maintain healthy communication with their customer communities, are experts in areas such as social media communication.

As ‘PR Agency Network’, we conduct various kinds of research so that you can find the best PR agencies for you. You can explore the profile pages of the PR agencies we have listed for you through our website. In addition, you can see the closest agencies on our website.

PR agencies make money by charging their clients for the services they provide. Some may charge an annual fee as a registrar, a monthly fee as a service fee, or a per-project fee. Usually, a deal contract is signed between a business PR agency before the business starts.

The amount companies have to pay to cooperate with PR agencies will vary from agency to agency, depending on the services requested and the size of the agencies. To say an average price, we can say that it is around 1,000-15,000 dollars per month.

A reputable PR agency cannot guarantee that your brand will be featured by media outlets. Because this is a situation that is beyond the control of the PR agency. Even a PR agency with the strongest media connections cannot guarantee that the brands it works with will be featured in the media because it ultimately depends on the editorial team. Since meddling in the business of journalists and broadcasters will damage the relations of PR agencies with the media, agencies often prefer not to resort to this path and do not allow an interview, program, etc. to be filmed. It is left to the media organization to decide whether it will be published or not.

While PR is part of marketing, PR agencies are not responsible for sales. The responsibility of PR agencies is to increase brand awareness and highlight their clients as experts in the industry. Therefore, although PR agencies can convey to their customers how many readers or listeners are for a broadcast or podcast through their KPIs (key performance indicators), they cannot inform their customers about how many sales are made as a result of these efforts.