Best 15+ Public Relations Agencies in Brussels

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.

To help you choose the right PR agency for your business, you can follow these steps:

• Before researching potential PR agencies that fit your needs, list your key goals and expectations that you want the agency to help you achieve. Detail specific goals such as the markets you want to reach, the key messages you want to convey, and the number of media engagements that need to be achieved. When you present these goals to the PR agency during your interviews, they will explain how they will help you.

• List companies you have the potential to work with through a website where you can view the PR agencies available to you, such as the PR Agency Network.

• Ask to speak with past and current customers when you meet with the companies you have listed and learn more about the services they offer. This allows you to understand their strengths and weaknesses and helps you learn firsthand how well they work with other clients.

• After doing research and comparing the prices of different companies, decide which one is the best fit for your budget. If you find that an agency you like is way out of your price range, see if there's room in your budget to adjust their prices. In case there are some companies that you have a hard time choosing between, choose the one that fits your budget while continuing to provide quality service.

As in every organization, there are many specialists with different abilities and job descriptions working in PR agencies. The teams of PR agencies are generally as follows:

Strategy Team: This team usually monitors the work, when a new client comes to the agency, this team examines the structure of the client company and creates appropriate strategies accordingly, and shares them with the relevant teams. They form a kind of roadmap.

Editorial Team: This team, which is responsible for the creation of texts to be used in relations with the press, has a good command of the rules of journalism. They produce the best texts by working meticulously on the reflectance of the brand language of the messages, their compliance with the language of journalism, spelling mistakes and expression disorders.

Media and Press Relations Team: This team, whose most important task is to establish strong relations with the press, ensures that the press releases from the editorial team are published in the right channels and reach the widest media organs it can reach. It is also the responsibility of this team to organize press lists and make updates when necessary.

Creative Team: This team, which manages the design part of the business, takes on creative roles such as supporting the projects with visuals. It is the duty of this team to make the designs to be shared with the press the most creative and interesting.

Customer Relations Team: It is the team that manages the relations of the agency with the companies and individuals it cooperates with, prepares studies taking into account the feedback received from the customers, and shares these studies with the relevant people.

Reporting Team: As every agency does, PR agencies present the results of their work to their clients through reports. The work of the reporting team guides the development of new strategies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

PR agencies help their clients in many ways and provide expert service. These are as listed below.

Reputation management: One of the main services offered by PR agencies, this tactic may include email newsletters, social media management, responding to comments and engaging with followers.

Crisis Management: Most of today's companies may encounter some corporate crises at certain times. Therefore, asking a PR agency to prepare a crisis communication plan has become very common in collaboration with PR agencies.

Media Relations: The media is undoubtedly the best way for companies to build their reputation and make their name heard. PR agencies are firms that specialize in properly managing the relationship between media and companies. Tactics that PR agencies employ include writing offers to journalists and influencers to get more coverage in industry news and media.

Social Media: Social media platforms are the most important place where companies can communicate with their target audiences and play a critical role in brand reputation management. Expert PR agencies also offer the best service to companies in the correct use of social media.

Speech Writing: PR agencies are the best place to get help when companies need to speak at press conferences and events. All speeches made on behalf of the company should represent your brand as a whole. If anyone from your company needs to give a speech, you may want to consider hiring a PR agency to take over the strategic messaging.

Press Releases: PR agencies also take an active role in press releases that companies need to write to announce their new products, launches, campaigns or movements. A hashtag to launch on social media about a new product etc. PR agencies can share with you the most useful ideas for the movement.

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.

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.