As organizations continue to experience budget constraints due to the existing economic conditions, you may be tasked with re-evaluating your PR team as you plan for 2010. One of the most daunting questions you may encounter is whether to go with an in-house PR team, an external PR agency or a combination of the two. As you embark on making a decision about the type of PR team your company should employ, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of each approach before making a final decision.

Pros of an In-House Approach
One of the biggest advantages of having an in-house PR professional is that it can be more cost-effective. It’s very likely your company could hire a talented PR person for far less than the cost of paying an outside PR agency. Some of the other benefits include:

An in-house PR professional can wear multiple hats; perhaps handle marketing responsibilities in addition to PR.
An in-house PR professional can forge a close working relationship with employees within the organizations. Say you work for a high-profile company that receives a large volume of requests from the media. Because of the close relationship they’ve developed, in-house PR professionals know which experts to approach for each particular information request, making it easy for them to quickly respond to reporters’ questions.

Advantages of an Outside PR Agency
While hiring an internal PR person is critical in some cases, one of the major advantages of working with an outside PR agency is the bank of knowledge it allows you to tap into. For example:

With a PR agency, you don’t just get an individual; you get an entire team which collectively brings years of experience working on multiple accounts and a variety of media.
An agency team has the ability to brainstorm creative ideas, collectively address problems, and review each other’s materials, all of which help to ensure that your company strategically utilizes PR as effectively as possible.

The Hybrid Approach
While both the in-house and out-of-house approaches have their advantages, we believe that, if your organization can afford it, a hybrid approach – in which a company has an internal PR staff that works together with an outside agency – is the best solution for the following reasons:

A partnership between an internal PR team and an external PR agency helps to push PR efforts forward more seamlessly.
An internal staff that really understands PR enables organizations to manage their external PR agency more effectively.
Companies can accomplish their business objectives more quickly and nimbly than with either of the other two approaches.

Whether your organization hires an internal PR professional, a PR agency or uses a hybrid approach will depend largely on the size of your PR budget, the needs of your company and the degree of media interest in your organization. To learn more about how and what to evaluate when choosing a PR team, look for the next book excerpt blog post, which will provide more insight on what you should consider when evaluating prospective PR teams.

Excerpt from “Strategic Public Relations,” written by Jennifer Gehrt & Colleen Moffitt with Andrea Carlos