So you’ve been an entrepreneur for a while now, or have been making moves as a corporate leader. You have people following your brand and visiting your website, but you’re still need helping boosting your brand and nothing seems to consistently work. Now you’re at the point where you are thinking about hiring a publicist to help you with your goals but you're not sure if you should make the investment or not.

Hiring a publicist is a move that should be made with intention.

It’s not cheap to work with a PR team, and there are things that you need to have in place before you do so. Because we know making this type of decision for your brand isn’t easy, we talked to Maleeka T. Hollaway, who is the founder and CEO of The Official Maleeka Group (also known as The OMG). The OMG is a Premier Agency in Creative Brand Communications & Public Relations that has worked with various companies, universities, and nonprofit organizations in the areas of brand development, content creation, and public relations.

If you’re a founder or a corporate boss and you’re trying to figure out if you should invest in hiring a publicist, Maleeka shares some of the benefits of hiring a publicist and the things you should know about working with one.

Why should an entrepreneur hire a publicist?

I always say there are five tell-tale signs when an entrepreneur needs to hire a publicist or a PR team.

(1) When you have plateaued with your current audience and need to reach a new audience

(2) When you have big news to share that others care about

(3) When you need to build your professional credibility

(4) When you need a fresh perspective in telling your brand story

(5) When revenue is no longer a concern.

Also bonus, when you run out of time to build relationships yourself to grow your brand, you should hire yourself a 'me.' You could just be starting out or be a veteran in your industry, but there is always a story to tell.

There are always multiple ways to launch or revive your brand.

What are the benefits of working with a PR team?

A good publicist (like me) is your hidden hand who leverages relationships on your behalf to push your brand forward and to make sure your brand is publicly positioned in the best light.

We aren’t magicians who microwave a result. We are strategists.

We think short and long term and we work best with those who want to have us as collaborative partners for the current and future success of their brand. You get to benefit from leveraging our insight to brand building and storytelling.

What has been some of the wins that your clients have achieved from hiring a publicist?

Besides getting clients full feature interviews in Forbes and Business Insider to mentions on the Today Show, CNBC, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Entrepreneur (online and print) to name a few, one of our clients generated almost 200k in new revenue from leveraging all the press we earned for her.

In addition, our clients end up on multiple podcasts and speak on many stages.

How can a publicist help someone amplify their brand voice?

A large part of public relations work has to do with creating brand awareness.

Brand awareness is the thing that makes one brand stand out from another. It’s what helps the public distinguish one company from the next. We help create stories or amplify stories to get more eyes watching and anticipating a brand's next move. We do this through media relations, event publicity, digital marketing and sometimes guerrilla marketing.

Our goal is to help the brand be seen and heard.

How can a publicist help someone increase their revenue?

Here is the thing.

As a PR professional, my overall goal is to get you seen. A

s a marketing professional, my goal is to get you paid.

Since public relations and publicity fall under the marketing umbrella, many think it all point back to revenue and in some way this is true.

I am able to see multiple ways for my clients to capitalize off their publicity. It’s customized as each circumstance is different also not everyone hires a publicist to make money. You have to have a working back office that is set up to capture and nurture leads and to close deals as they come.

Without a working system in place, the key performance indicators to measure the success of a PR campaign may be impacted.

For more tips, follow Maleeka on all social platforms @officialmaleeka or check out her site at www.theomg.biz.