Notes

Seven Ways to Reduce 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 public relations presence while adding to the bottom line. Listed below are seven easy ways to do this.

1. OPT FOR a Virtual Agency

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

A lot of the hourly rate or retainer would go to spending money on high fixed costs such as 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. On average, a virtual PR firm may be able to shave off as much as 50% from the average retainer for an organization. If your monthly retainer is about $10,000, that is clearly a savings of $5,000 monthly.

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

2. Use a Different Wire Service for Different Needs

Previously, there weren't many choices for wire service distribution. Again, technology has spurred a new crop of news wire services which can distribute your news 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 example, more generic press releases like a new hiring or promotion, new office expansions or other low impact releases may not need a full distribution on PR Newswire. In the event that you just want to obtain it live, a minimal 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 upwards of $600 per release.

For important releases such as product launches, new corporate initiatives and earnings releases, you may continue to use top wire services. But using a low end wire service for other releases can end up saving you lots of money over the course of time. Using 12 pr announcements per 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 higher end service for each and every release. Utilizing a hybrid mixed model would be ($600 X 6 = $3,600) + ($80 X 6 = $480) = $4,080. That is clearly a savings of $3,120 per year.

Savings: $3,120 per year

3. Rethink Tradeshows

When times are tough, just about the most attractive areas to cut are tradeshows. Honestly, most executives have a love-hate relationship with tradeshows (more hate than love). And do not even ask the indegent employees who have to create, stand around for 12 hours and tear down. Tradeshows seem a required evil a lot more than anything; your competitors and the press will undoubtedly be there, and that means you feel forced to have a booth presence aswell.

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

The savings of forgoing a normal booth are significant: the specific booth and graphics, shipment, insurance, electricity, wiring, accessories, hiring union personnel to create it up or modify, the expense of the space itself, in addition to travel and accommodations for personnel. Choosing a private suite and a targeted pre-show outreach program can put less stress on your marketing budget as well as 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 can 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 quality of the press releases delivered. Is it really necessary 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 each day, most of them either completely unrelated to their coverage area or just not newsworthy. In the event that you spam press releases to the media and they deem them to be not newsworthy, you will quickly find yourself in their blacklist where you might never emerge.

Instead of spamming press releases, you will want to look at other opportunity for 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? How about conducting a survey and releasing the results to the prospective media of your choice? By just cutting the number of press releases in half every year, it is possible to save on enough time to write them plus the wire service distribution fees for a total of roughly $6,500 per year.

Savings: $6,500 per year

5. Scrutinize Overbilling by PR Agencies

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

When the previous president was release and a new president earned, 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 nobody 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 do the proper thing." Don't over-promise and under-deliver. And definitely don't over-bill and under-deliver.

Savings: $60,000 per year

6. Outsource Rather than Hiring Internally

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

There exists a definite economic benefit to outsourcing pr and marketing to an agency. Besides 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 on top of the actual salary. Hiring an agency rids yourself of both the added costs and the time associated with administration and management. Choosing a company also provides greater flexibility to sever ties versus firing or laying off a worker.

Savings: $27,000 each year

7. Get Rid of Media Monitoring Services Such as Luce

In the past, the only way to monitor media coverage was through clipping services such as Luce. This was due mainly to the fact that most media coverage that mattered was through traditional outlets such as television, radio or newspaper. Today, the media landscape is a lot more fragmented with much 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 to promote revenue. Other online venues such as for example blogs, social media marketing sites and online review sites also matter more.

This means that unless you are going for a large scale media blitz on national television, the majority of your coverage will eventually end up online somew here . An excellent free tool to monitor your company name online is Google Alerts. Simply set up a Google account, go to Alerts and put your organization name in quotation marks. Now any time your company name shows up online, you will receive an email with the website.

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

Savings: $5,000 per year

Potential Annual Savings: $161,620

Contact Firecracker PR to understand how to achieve your pr goals that fit your allowance. Check us out at http://www.FirecrackerPR.com for more information.
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