Notes

Seven Ways to LESSEN YOUR PR Budget by $161,620 This Year (While Still Showing Results)
When times are tough, every dollar counts. With some savvy planning it is possible to still find methods to retain a strong pr presence while adding to the bottom line. Here are seven easy methods to do this.

1. Go With a Virtual Agency

The Internet, collaboration tools, screen sharing, instant messaging and web conferencing tools have finally made it more possible than ever to conduct business from anywhere around the world. Such adoption of technology has given rise to a new crop of businesses which run virtually, which virtual pr firms are a section of as well. Employees work remotely from your client site or from your home rather than a fixed office location. In lots of regards, this makes a lot of sense for the client.

A lot of the hourly rate or retainer goes to spending money on high fixed costs such as for example expensive office lease, furniture, equipment and utilities. By bypassing these high fixed costs, virtual PR firms will be able to reduce their rate and save customers money. Typically, a virtual PR firm may be able to shave off up to 50% from the average retainer for a company. If your monthly retainer is approximately $10,000, that is clearly a savings of $5,000 monthly.

Savings: $60,000 per year ($5,000/month)

2. Use a Different Wire Service for Different Needs

During the past, there weren't many choices for wire service distribution. Again, technology has spurred a new crop of news wire services that may distribute your press release. Generally speaking, the cheaper the wire service fee, the worse the distribution. However in some instances, a low end wire service can do just fine. For instance, more generic press releases for instance a new hiring or promotion, new office expansions or other low impact releases might not require a full distribution on PR Newswire. In the event that you just want to obtain it live, a low end service such as for example PR Web can do the trick for $80 per release. Compare that to national distribution on PR Newswire or Marketwire which could cost up to $600 per release.

For important releases such as product launches, new corporate initiatives and earnings releases, you might continue to use top wire services. But utilizing a low end wire service for other releases can end up saving you big money over the course of time. Using 12 pr announcements each year as a guideline (one monthly), six might use PR Newswire while the other 6 use PR Web. $600 X 12 = $7,200 in the event that you used a higher end service for each release. Utilizing a hybrid mixed model will be ($600 X 6 = $3,600) + ($80 X 6 = $480) = $4,080. That's a savings of $3,120 each year.

Savings: $3,120 each year

3. Rethink Tradeshows

When times are tough, just about the most attractive areas to cut are tradeshows. Truth be told, most executives have a love-hate relationship with tradeshows (more hate than love). And do not even ask the poor employees who have to set up, stand around for 12 hours and tear down. Tradeshows seem a necessary evil a lot more than anything; your competitors and the press will be there, which means you feel forced to truly have a booth presence as well.

The recent recession has spurred new means of looking at tradeshows. Besides some vendors who completely pulled out of major shows such as the GADGETS Show in NEVADA, some major companies significantly scaled back their floor presence and chosen smaller suites. Although some may argue suites don't generate the ground traffic that booths do, consider how many quality leads are actually generated by that expensive booth?

The savings of forgoing a traditional booth are significant: the actual booth and graphics, shipment, insurance, electricity, wiring, accessories, hiring union personnel to create it up or modify, the expense of the space itself, together with travel and accommodations for personnel. Choosing an exclusive suite and a targeted pre-show outreach program can put less stress on your own marketing budget and your employees/co-workers.

Tradeshows generally fall under marketing events, so we've not included it in the ultimate tally of savings. Nonetheless it still could be a significant amount.

Savings: $80,000 per year

4. Quality, Not Quantity for Press Releases

Speaking of pr announcements, maybe it's time to review the standard of the press releases sent out. Is it really essential to announce each promotion? Are product launches newsworthy enough to put an individual release out on? Is that customer win truly important enough for a news release?

Editors and reporters get bombarded with hundreds of press releases a day, a lot of them either completely unrelated with their coverage area or just not newsworthy. In the event that you spam pr announcements to the media and they deem them to be not newsworthy, you will quickly find yourself within their blacklist where you may never emerge.

Instead of spamming pr announcements, you will want to look at other chance of news coverage? These can include writing opinion articles and getting put into prominent magazines or websites. Or how about establishing a question and answer with the editor of a magazine in your industry? Think about conducting a survey and releasing the outcomes to the mark media of your choice? By just cutting the number of press releases in half every year, it is possible to save on the time to write them and also the wire service distribution fees for a total of roughly $6,500 a year.

Savings: $6,500 per year

5. Scrutinize Overbilling by PR Agencies

One of our customers had an average horror story about PR agencies that I hear frequently. This agency had them on a retainer for $10,000 a month, that is pretty standard for more mid-sized companies. What wasn't standard was the work these were receiving. For ten grand a month, these were only getting about one press release a month and some light industry pitching. Fortunately because of this PR agency, the president who hired them virtually forgot about them and let them do their own thing. Thus this agency flew under the radar for quite some time, pocketing the $10,000 a month for relatively little work.

When the previous president was release and a new president brought in, he was aghast at the waste of the prior agency. A lot more than the waste of money was the dishonestly in overbilling and hoping no one would notice. While shocking, this sort of blatant overbilling isn't quite as rare as one would hope, and provides the entire PR industry a bad name.

Someone once said, "it's never wrong to accomplish the right thing." Don't over-promise and under-deliver. And do not over-bill and under-deliver.

Savings: $60,000 each year

6. Outsource Rather than Hiring Internally

The recent recession has also forced companies to possess to create hard decisions regarding headcount. While there is a definite human element involved, companies need to make these decisions using the bottom line... particularly when top-line growth is stagnant. In the same way there is an outsourcing boom beginning in the 90's for customer support and technical personnel, you will find a trend towards finding methods to outsource other internal functions.

There is a definite economic benefit to outsourcing pr and marketing to a company. Aside from the salary of an employee, other costs such as for example health benefits, administrative costs, taxes, training and management add up to about 25% gross along with the specific salary. Hiring an agency rids yourself of both the added costs and the time associated with administration and management. Choosing an agency also provides greater flexibility to sever ties versus firing or laying off an employee.

Savings: $27,000 per year

7. Remove Rapha Core Winter Jacket Review as for example Luce

In the past, the only method to monitor media coverage was through clipping services such as for example Luce. This was due mainly to the fact that most media coverage that mattered was through traditional outlets such as for example television, radio or newspaper. Today, the media landscape is a lot more fragmented with a heavy emphasis on the Internet. TV and radio still do matter, but it is no longer a necessity. Many newspapers and magazines now heavily rely on their online presence for advertising revenue. Other online venues such as for example blogs, social media sites and online review sites also matter more.

This means that if you don't are going for a big scale media blitz on national television, most of your coverage will eventually end up online somewhere. A great free tool to monitor your organization name online is Google Alerts. Simply create a Google account, head to Alerts and put your organization name in quotation marks. Now any time your company name turns up online, you'll receive an email with the website.

This may be a sufficient substitute over more expensive media clipping services. You can't beat free.

Savings: $5,000 each year

Potential Annual Savings: $161,620

Contact Firecracker PR to learn how to reach your public relations goals that fit your allowance. Check us out at http://www.FirecrackerPR.com for more information.
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