Notes

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

1. OPT FOR a Virtual Agency

THE WEB, collaboration tools, screen sharing, instant messaging and web conferencing tools have finally managed to get more possible than ever before to conduct business from anywhere all over the world. Such adoption of technology has given rise to a new crop of businesses which run virtually, which virtual public relations 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 many regards, this makes a great deal of sense for the customer.

A lot of the hourly rate or retainer goes to paying for high fixed costs such as expensive office lease, furniture, equipment and utilities. By bypassing these high fixed costs, virtual PR firms have the ability to reduce their rate and save customers money. Normally, a virtual PR firm might be able to shave off around 50% from the average retainer for a company. If your monthly retainer is approximately $10,000, that is clearly a savings of $5,000 per month.

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

2. Use a Different Wire Service for Different Needs

Before, there weren't many selections for wire service distribution. Again, technology has spurred a fresh crop of news wire services that may distribute your press release. In most cases, the cheaper the wire service fee, the worse the distribution. But in some instances, a low end wire service may do just fine. For instance, more generic pr announcements like 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 perform the trick for $80 per release. Compare that to national distribution on PR Newswire or Marketwire which could cost upwards of $600 per release.

For important releases such as product launches, new corporate initiatives and earnings releases, you may continue steadily to use top wire services. But using a low end wire service for other releases can find yourself saving you a lot of money during the period of time. Using 12 press releases each year as a guideline (one per month), six might use PR Newswire while the other 6 use PR Web. $600 X 12 = $7,200 if you used a high end service for each and every release. Using a hybrid mixed model will be ($600 X 6 = $3,600) + ($80 X 6 = $480) = $4,080. That is clearly a savings of $3,120 each year.

Savings: $3,120 per year

3. Rethink Tradeshows

When times are tough, probably 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 don't even ask the indegent employees who have to create, stand around for 12 hours and tear down. Tradeshows seem a necessary evil a lot more than anything; your competition and the press will be there, so you feel forced to truly have a booth presence aswell.

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 floor traffic that booths do, consider how many quality leads are actually generated by that expensive booth?

The savings of forgoing a normal booth are significant: the actual booth and graphics, shipment, insurance, electricity, wiring, accessories, hiring union personnel to set it up or modify, the price of the space itself, and 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 are categorized as marketing events, so we've not included it in the ultimate tally of savings. But it still could be a significant amount.

Savings: $80,000 each year

4. Quality, Not Quantity for PR ANNOUNCEMENTS

Speaking of press releases, 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 from? Is that customer win truly important enough for a news release?

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

Instead of spamming press releases, why not look at other chance of news coverage? These can include writing opinion articles and getting placed in prominent magazines or website s. 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 results to the target media of one's choice? By just cutting the number of press releases in half every year, it is possible to save on the time to write them as well as the wire service distribution fees for a total of roughly $6,500 a year.

Savings: $6,500 each year

5. Scrutinize Overbilling by PR Agencies

Among our customers had a typical horror story about PR agencies that I hear all too often. This agency had them on a retainer for $10,000 a month, which is pretty standard for more mid-sized companies. What wasn't standard was the task they were receiving. For ten grand a month, they were only getting about one press release a month and some light industry pitching. Fortunately for this PR agency, the president who hired them pretty much forgot about them and let them do their very own thing. Thus this agency flew under the radar for a long time, pocketing the $10,000 per month for relatively little work.

Once the previous president was let go and a new president brought in, he was aghast at the waste of the previous agency. 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 you would hope, and gives the entire PR industry a bad name.

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

Savings: $60,000 per year

6. Outsource Instead of Hiring Internally

The recent recession has also forced companies to possess to make hard decisions regarding headcount. Since 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 was an outsourcing boom from the 90's for customer support and technical personnel, there is a trend towards finding methods to outsource other internal functions.

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

Savings: $27,000 each year

7. Eliminate Media Monitoring Services Such as Luce

In the past, the only way to monitor media coverage was through clipping services such as for example Luce. This was mainly due to the truth 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 much emphasis on the web. TV and radio still do matter, nonetheless it is no longer a necessity. Many newspapers and magazines now heavily depend on their online presence for advertising revenue. Other online venues such as for example blogs, social media marketing sites and online review sites also matter more.

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

get more info may be an adequate substitute over more costly media clipping services. You can't beat free.

Savings: $5,000 per year

Potential Annual Savings: $161,620

Contact Firecracker PR to learn how to achieve your pr goals that fit your budget. Check us out at http://www.FirecrackerPR.com to find out more.
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