Boutique PR agency shows us how they stay effective

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Their mantra is to stand out from the crowd. Impact PR is a small public relations agency located in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest and busiest city. We took a more in-depth look into what it takes to establish and run a successful PR agency in New Zealand.

Effectivity all the way

Impact PR is an incredibly busy public relations and social media agency, having to make the most out of every minute of the day just to keep up with the work.

The agency’s director Mark Devlin explains: “Like many small businesses, we don’t have the luxury of having many staff. So it’s a matter of maintaining a high level of efficiency in order for our staff to concentrate on the work they are good at.”

They usually achieve this by identifying the most time consuming tasks and outsourcing them—usually to a specialist freelancer—but they look into it on a case by case basis.

“Each day we begin by planning our work requirements and identifying any sub tasks we can delegate.” Mark adds.

Mark Devlin, Director at Impact PR

Mark Devlin, Director at Impact PR

 

The agency’s director Mark Devlin explains: “Like many small businesses, we don’t have the luxury of having many staff. So it’s a matter of maintaining a high level of efficiency in order for our staff to concentrate on the work they are good at.”

They usually achieve this by identifying the most time consuming tasks and outsourcing them—usually to a specialist freelancer—but they look into it on a case by case basis.

“Each day we begin by planning our work requirements and identifying any sub tasks we can delegate.” Mark adds.

Outsourcing’s the key for us

Impact PR has really been giving outsourcing a go and it has been working a treat for them. They are now at a stage, where they are outsourcing tasks almost on a daily basis. But how do they recognize when to and what to outsource?

Mark explains more on this: “Some tasks are very small and some are larger in size. When we allocate a task we are generally looking for external team members who give us a balance of cost effective efficiency and expertise in a particular area we have a need for. Where possible, we try to reuse the same freelancers. This reduces the need to brief them in detail and they quickly begin to learn our requirements.”

Of course they need to decide what tasks they can get their freelancers to do. This happens on so called ‘Work in progress’ meeting. It’s about an hour long and they set objectives and goals for the day. Prioritizing the tasks is another step they discuss and then they allocate tasks to internal staff or freelancers.

Freelancers get a fair chance

Freelancers have gotten extremely popular with companies all over the world. Many people have also considered it as their career choice due to large flexibility. They don’t need to be tied to one office either. Just laptop and a good WiFi signal and that is all a freelancer needs to work.

Mark explains: “We have freelancers based as close to home as across town in Auckland and as far away as in London.”

This gives Impact PR a very international feel and gives them the opportunity to gather many ideas and points of view from their external staff.

Why do they like using freelancers so much I hear you asking?

Once again Mark gives us a detailed explanation:

“Our business model is based around the concept that specialists are more efficient than generalists. We have found that like ourselves, specialists know their field so well the overall quality of service is much higher. It means we can offer our clients a broader range of services and utilizing staff in different time zones we can get work completed faster. In addition a freelance model becomes more cost efficient as we only need to pay for staff when their services are needed. These savings allow us to be more competitive.”

Running on a cloud

Impact PR's office building in Auckland

Impact PR’s office building in Auckland

They can look forward to finding their inboxes full of completed work first thing in the morning. This is efficient for them and it works well.

“The key to making this work is in having a clear brief, and building a long term relationship with the service provider.” Mark explains.

They also do a lot of their work throughout cloud and mobile technology.

He continues on: “This means that twenty minutes between meetings will not be a waste of time. Our team members get our virtual attention throughout the day.”

It’s all happening

Impact PR has made an impact on us. What about you? We are impressed by the way these people make the most of new technologies such as the cloud. Another major positive is that they are not afraid to work with people all over the world. Such a step brings them a whole lot of new ideas and points of view as well as alternative & interesting ways of solving problems. Check out their website on impactpr.co.nz for more exciting info.

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