If you think that a marketing strategy is enough for your business, then you need to sit back and think again. No matter how small the business, a public relations strategy is as important to your business as is a marketing one. Let’s first set things straight with the difference between the two. Marketing is where you promote your products, whereas PR is how you maintain goodwill and great communication with your clients and customers. Do you see why it is important? Because businesses are built through people and if you are good at maintaining relations with them, you have won half the battle!
Featured as the Cover Story of The Enterprise World’s issue of The Highly Recommended PR Agencies for 2021 is NRPR, a company that is committed to publicity!
The Company- NRPR Group
NRPR Group is an award-winning, exclusive PR firm and communications machine that works with some of the most prominent and disruptive companies around the world! Based in the heart of Beverly Hills, California, its team is made up of skilled writers, communicators, and thinkers who understand the value of building strong client relationships and continue to build long-lasting ties between clients, brands, the media, and influencers.
Led by founder and CEO, Nicole Rodrigues, NRPR team members are storytellers at their core and have cracked the code on using PR, digital marketing, and marketing communications to elevate their clients as authorities in their industries. Their clients and media are passionate about their respective missions and NRPR supports them by creating lasting relationships with members of each of these constituencies to produce ongoing buzz and recognition. From startups to Fortune 500 companies within consumer tech, fintech, healthtech, enterprise, mobile, digital entertainment, lifestyle, sports, and consumer products industries, NRPR services the best-of-the best clients with a very high-touch, results-oriented approach that positively impacts its clients’ bottom lines even during difficult times.
Cutting through the Complexities-
Any organization thrives on the effort and teamwork contributed by everyone. Without a 100% effort, it gets difficult to find the right path to success. It takes hard work to reach the point that triggers the growth of the company, and throughout the period, the hunger to do better continues to grow as well!
For NRPR, this trigger was when founder Nicole Rodrigues launched the company. As soon as that happened, she knew that the company was on the right path and would grow and be successful.
Nicole built her reputation and expertise as a public relations professional over 14 years prior to starting the agency and had clients lined up who were ready to work with the agency when the agency was functioning. When setting up the agency, she turned to her sports background and knowledge that most sports coaches have a playbook that provides detailed procedures on how to play the game wisely.
One of the first things she did at NRPR Group was to create a playbook with systems in place so that employees could be trained on efficient and effective processes that would help to bring individual and collective success. Once the systems were in place, she knew that she would be prepared for agency growth and was ready to staff the agency. As she hired team members, she looked for those with the appropriate skills, energy, and mindsets to have a fulfilling career that would spur agency growth. Nicole’s vision has come to fruition and every year, the agency has experienced year-over-year growth.
NRPR Group has experienced growth every year since the agency’s formation in 2014. From year 1 to year 2, the company experienced almost tenfold revenue growth. From year 2 to 3, revenues doubled and then as the agency grew and stabilized, revenues have grown 30-to-50 percent each year.
In 2020, the pandemic will have some impact on business, but even so NRPR Group continues to grow.
They have been adding clients and staff and are expanding their service portfolio. While 50 percent of small businesses do not survive to reach the five-year mark, NRPR Group continues to remain strong having reached its sixth anniversary in June 2020.
The Products and Services-
NRPR services are different from those of other agencies because NRPR Group offers its clients an integrated communications strategy in which PR, social media marketing, digital marketing, and video marketing all work together for brands to maximize their marketing potential. With clear planning and cohesive messaging, NRPR deliberately leads clients, helping them to hit identified business goals. The team conducts ongoing due diligence of client differentiators and understands the overall markets they serve. Unlike other agencies that take shortcuts, NRPR team members are experts in building media relationships and focus on helping media build stories that will meet audience needs.
NRPR Group evaluates the market and trends and looks for tools and services that will help clients to achieve success. If it makes business sense to add a service, the agency will do so, if it will help clients and the agency to meet objectives. Going forward, the agency will grow and offer new services to help clients meet their business goals. In 2020, NRPR Group opened its newest division, NRPR Productions, to increase the agency’s capabilities to include branded content, commercials, corporate videos and YouTube series creation.
In December 2020, NRPR announced the launch of its newest division, NRPR Business Pro. Business Pro will take start-ups though the process of setting up a business, incorporating, and everything involved in a launch. It can be overwhelming to register a business, set up bank accounts, design a website and handle all the necessary tasks as a company moves from zero to start-up and prepares to launch. No other Public Relations agency does all this for clients.
Nicole Rodrigues- Leading the Way
An entrepreneur has the responsibility to move forward with the calling the entrepreneur hears and the vision they have of how they can help the world. An entrepreneur has the responsibility to take the dream inside them and turn that into a business to help customers achieve their goals and to help staff to be happy and grow in their roles in the organization. An entrepreneur also has a responsibility to help other entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs to develop necessary leadership and life skills.
As a woman, Nicole is especially committed to helping women entrepreneurs succeed and overcome stereotypes. She never hesitates to offer advice on how to be taken seriously, and how to create a work/life balance to move beyond the obstacles that are standing in the way of the entrepreneurial journey.
Nicole’s first professional job was at an enterprise software company, though she began working in odd jobs as a teen. While she loved that job, she decided to leave tech to pursue her dream job of working with the Oakland (now Las Vegas) Raiders. She began as an intern and moved into a paid position as Player Development Coordinator, training the players, coaches and staff on how to speak with the media and writing for the game day magazine and for the website. She also cheered for the team as a Raiderette. From there, she worked in a few other in-house and agency roles, including an in-house PR manager role at MOBITV, and senior PR manager at Voce Communications until recruited by Demand Media as a director of consumer marketing.
She also served as VP of digital entertainment at Bender/Helper. Throughout her PR tenure, she has advised clients including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Dialpad, Dolby, Yahoo!, MOBITV, Paige, Heal, Sony PlayStation, Plantronics, Hulu, YouTube, and M-GO.
And in 2014 when the time was right, she left Bender/Helper to start NRPR Group. One of NRPR Group’s clients is MOBITV, which is recognition of the relationship Nicole built with them as a competent, trusted advisor and employee.
In addition to her work as CEO of NRPR Group, she is one of eight hand-selected board members for The Organization of American Women in Public Relations (Women in PR USA), and is also a member of Athletes Touch.
With a celebrated journey as Nicole’s, there have been many points of which she is proud ofand for each milestone there has been a tremendous amount of effort and hard work. When asked about the key achievements of her journey, she said,
“There are many things I have accomplished of which I am proud. My mother always told me that I could do or have anything I wanted if I was willing to work for it. I was the first in the family to graduate college and worked hard in high school to earn scholarships. I held three jobs during college to pay for my education. Once I discovered Public Relations as a career, I knew that I wanted to own an agency, but only when I was ready so I worked hard for 14 years to be prepared to be the leader I wanted to be. I was one of the world’s first mobile entertainment PR professionals at MOBITV, which is still a point of pride for me and they are now an NRPR Group client.
Every time I walk into the office and see NRPR Group on the door, I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment along with a push to continue to grow the company. In addition to starting NRPR Group. I am also the founder of the Young Dreamers Foundation, which helps kids to set life goals. In 2019, while leading NRPR Group to continuous growth, I launched a YouTube channel, Beverly Hills Boss, and became the author of Beverly Hills Boss, the book.”
The Work Culture- NRPR Group
NRPR Group has a positive culture. Every team member supports one another. Nicole say, “We all support and encourage one another. As the leader and CEO, my actions set the tone for how my staff should behave. It has been my vision right from the beginning to grow NRPR Group as an agency by having both satisfied clients and employees.”
We are a team, and I am the coach and mentor for my staff and partner and counselor for clients.
Nicole continues,
“When I head into the office either in-person or the current virtual office, it’s important for me to do everything I can to motivate and help the team to accomplish tasks that will result in increased client visibility. I keep my own energy positive and at a high level. I also praise my staff and give shoutouts to those who are achieving success in front of other employees so they can have a moment of pride.
I encourage and appreciate hard work and remind myself and my team that nothing truly valuable comes easy. I encourage my team members to ask questions for a better understanding of their daily tasks so that they can do their best. Overall, the agency has a high employee retention rate as team members grow in their roles and remain positive about the ongoing success of the agency.”
Nicole’s Take on the Competition-
While there are many PR agencies in the world, NRPR Group is not like any other. Nicole explains, “we are well-known for being an Agency of the Future, delivering extraordinary results through passionate execution of the right messaging for the right opportunity, close client partnerships, and exceptional service. We concentrate our efforts on creating relationships and building friendships with media that result in wins for the client and media. To facilitate relationship building with media professionals, I set in motion a “No Blast” oath for pitching and outreach to media outlets. Since day-one, every email pitch sent by NRPR has been tailored with a personal touch and reviewed by an in-house editor.”
“By taking this extra step, we demonstrate to the media their time is respected, and we genuinely care about working with them on stories that make sense. We aim for feature coverage not merely press release reposts. I am a huge advocate of proactive pitching for clients. I believe no client should wait for a press release announcement to gain media attention and my team and I create opportunities for potential coverage. As a result, in the entire duration of NRPR Group’s history, there has never been a month where a client has not received coverage.”
“Within the agency, we have more of a sense of cooperation than competition. One of our agency slogans is “Teamwork makes the dream work.” We have each other’s backs and will always help someone overcome challenges. We are colleagues, yes, but we are also friends. We want to see each other succeed and appreciate one another. When a team member achieves success, we all celebrate the accomplishment together and are genuinely happy for one another.”
