5 Reasons to Hire an Independent

Here are five reasons that hundreds of organizations in our region – and across the country – hire and recommend IPRA members to serve their public relations needs, rather than hiring a PR firm:

RESULTS. Time after time, IPRA clients say that independent practitioners provide excellent results without the unnecessary expense of adding more office space or hiring extra staff. See testimonials on this site.

EXPERIENCE & DEPTH: IPRA members offer expert counsel in a wide variety of subject areas and have backgrounds in industries that agencies might not provide. Combined, we provide more than 60 different types of services. The top 5 are:

Media relations 74%
Writing/editing 61%
Strategic planning 35%
Collateral materials development 35%
Strategic messaging 26%

SERVICE. Independent PR professionals often deliver a much higher degree of personalized service than do the large agencies. When you work with an IPRA member, the person you hire is the person you work with – no handing off clients to junior PR people or having to train new account executives constantly as account executives are promoted or move on to other organizations.

COMMITMENT. IPRA members are committed to their businesses.

68% have owned/operated their practice for 3 or more years.
57% voluntarily left full-time jobs to start their own practices
91% plan to remain independent for their entire careers

FLEXIBILITY: IPRA members offer maximum flexibility:

On service, senior-level professionals with proven experience across 36 different sectors and industries personally handle every client project, from start to finish. Whatever the service need or industry expertise, there’s an IPRA member with the right credentials.
Independent practitioners, who have considerable professional experience, but lower overhead than PR agencies, pass those saving on to clients making their services very cost-effective.