How do you know it works?

1. One thing that needs to be clear from the start is measurement. It may be impressive to be able to hand over a bulging book of press cuttings to your managing director, but anyone who thinks that great media coverage equals a loyal and devoted customer base is traveling blind. Business to business trade press coverage can be a fickle thing and is unlikely to give a clear vision of just what customers think. Tracking results in the trade press and key issues will help to give an idea of trends, but you are going to have to assess customer perception really to have a clear idea of what they actually think. Tracking like this also helps to define your public relations goals. If you find out what they like and don’t like you can then set about correcting false impressions and measure more accurately the results of your labours. It also ensures better targeting of your resources at exactly the issues which need addressing most of all.

2. Remember that Rome took longer than 24 hours to build. If big radical changes are planned look for key stages where various target measures can be set to assess the speed of change and just these as appropriate. It can become demoralized by a sudden succession of poor stories and very negative coverage. At times like those you need a sense of perspective and balance.