According to statistics, the brand value of an organisation mostly depends on its brand image. When the reputation of a company breaks down, public relations agency helps an organisation to regain itsstatus and increase the brand value. There are many benefits and disadvantages of availing the service of public relations.

Advantages of public relations agency

While availing the service of a PR agency, there some benefits which one can receive and these are:

• Credibility:

Public relations agency will provide more credibility. People show trust more to the messages from a trusted third party than the content of an advertisement.

• Reach:

PR will help to reach decent public relations plans to attract various news outlets, to expose content to a larger section of the target audience.

• Cost-effectiveness:

Public relations agency providesa more cost-effective method than paid promotion to reach a larger part of the target audience.

Disadvantages of PR agency

Apart from benefits, there are a few drawbacks as well of PR agencies and these are:

• No direct control:

A PR agency cannot control a distributed content like paid media through earned media. This is one of the most significant risks while investing in public relations

• Difficulty in measuring success:

It is tough for a PR agency to measure the progress and effectiveness

• No guaranteed outcome:

There is no guarantee of publishing press release as a brand does not pay for it. It is only published by a media outlet when it feels that it will attract the target audience.

Types of public relations

As per the functions of public relations agencies, it can be segregated into seven different types, and these are

Media relations:

It helps to build a good relationship with the media organisation and acting as their source of content.

Investor relations:

Investor relations handle events, regulatory filings, analysts, media queries and complaints

Government relations:

It represents a brand to the government as per the fulfilment policies like employee protection, decent competition, the responsibility of corporate social, customer protection, etc.

Community relations:

It helps to handle the social aspects of a brand. The aim is to build a positive reputation in the society like education, protection of the environment, etc.

Internal relations:

It helps in counselling of workers of a company as per the course of action, policies and the responsibility of an organisation. It also cooperates with the employee during any event.

Customer relations:

It helps to deal with the relationship with lead consumers and target market. Customer relations help to conduct market research to know more about priorities, attitudes and interest of the consumer and designs strategies to affect the same using earned media

Marketing communications:

Such type of public relations supports marketing efforts associating to launch a product, brand awareness, brand image, special campaigning.

These are different types of public relations with separate functions and objectives. Apart from these,there are a few benefits and drawbacks of public relations agency mentioned above.

Overall to gain the brand value and brand image of an organisation, it is advisable to opt for public relations rather than going for a paid promotion or another related promotional scheme.