What should I ask about a PR agency’s media monitoring tools?

Begin by asking for a list of every monitoring service in use, and the contract or plan behind each. Some are billed to the agency, some to a client and a few to a staff member’s own card. Ask about renewal dates and whether a change of owner affects the plan.

Next, look at what the tools produce. Ask for a recent report sent to a client and see how much of it is generated automatically and how much is written by a person. If clients pay for analysis, check that the analysis exists.

Ask who is trained on the tools. If one consultant understands the searches and alerts, the knowledge may leave with them. Request the saved search terms and alert settings, since they hold years of tuning. Finally, ask how the agency would manage if a tool vanished or doubled in price. A sensible answer names alternatives or manual methods, and shows the agency is not locked into one provider. Ask also whether clients see the raw alerts or a cleaned summary, and who writes the summary. If the monitoring behind a report is thin, the reporting a client trusts may be thinner than it looks. Jot down what you learn as you go, and take it to your adviser before deciding.

Key takeaways

• List every tool, who pays and whose name each account uses.
• Compare a recent client report with what the tool produced.
• Ask who understands the saved searches and alerts.