Five Tips for Delivering Great PR for Less Money

Vocus White Paper
Five Tips for Delivering Great PR for Less MoneyVocus White Paper 1Five Tips for Delivering Great PR for Less Money
Five Tips for Delivering Great PR for Less Money
IntroductionBailouts, budgets and buyouts are all over the news. Every dollar counts in this turbulent economy, and doing more with less is on everyone's mind. With tightening budgets, professionals are tasked with finding ways to cut back spending without sacrificing results. As PR has become a tool to not only reach journalists but to directly reach your prospects and gain a competitive advantage, the estimated value of PR is on the rise.
Spending analysis of the 2001-2002 post-dot.com bubble showed "In a sluggish economy, maintaining companies which continued investing in public relations were better a strong, positive image can positioned when markets recovered than those that cut back. Most differentiate your company (or experts now agree that PR is one of the most cost-effective ways to client) from competitors and send promote your company. Fortunately, the latest technology can help a strong message that you are not PR professionals accelerate the impact of their initiatives while being only weathering the storm, but also budget conscious. Using the five key cost-cutting measures outlined below, you can accomplish your Public Relations objectives in a performing in spite of obstacles."tough economy, out-maneuver your competitors and position your - As published in PRWeek Op-Ed by Shannon organization for the inevitable economic rebound. Troughton at WellPoint, October 11, 2008
Five Tips for Economizing PR While Maintaining Impact Combining the latest tools, solid measurement and basic PR savvy means you don't have to sacrifice results when cutting your PR spending.
1) Automate Manual Tasks to Reduce 3rd party Fees Many companies use agencies and clipping services to research and build media lists, monitor news and create custom reports showing the results of their PR initiatives. While agencies can be a critical strategic element to a successful PR program, many companies are not focusing their agencies appropriately to take advantage of the strategic value they offer. By automating manual tasks such as building media lists, you can focus the money you spend on agencies and PR consultants to help create innovative strategies which help set your organizations apart from the competition. Using automated, integrated PR solutions, you can eliminate the time agencies spend on administrative tasks and allow them to focus on their areas of expertise.
. Researching & Building Media lists- One of the staples of your programs and one of the most time consuming. An up-to-date, accurate list of journalists that write about your company or your industry is a valuable commodity, but building and maintaining targeted lists to reach your key media is a task in itself. Building these lists from disparate sources, including hard copy list books and websites requires hours of your time and with the rapid changes in the media, your list can be out-of-date before you even finish. Today's tools not only provide the information and resources to easily build a targeted media list but automate the updating process as well.
. News Monitoring- Monitoring the news and current headlines keeps your company in-tune with the industry, big players and current trends. With a 24/7 news cycle and a growing list of outlets to track, monitoring the news can be a daunting (and expensive) task. PR management systems provide much needed relief. Enabling you to automatically search on your keywords, many of these solutions search print, online and broadcasts outlets worldwide to bring you the news that is important to you. Clips can also be collected and archived within the PR system for future reference and for measurement and reporting. PR Management systems, also give you full control of which search terms you use at anytime and some have virtually no limit to the number of competitors, products or message search terms you can monitor. Instead of hours being spent each morning building a clip book, online news monitoring services these systems help you provide a timely and accurate assessment of your coverage in just a few minutes.
. Measurement and Reporting- Today's tools can create professional-looking reports in seconds, including executive briefing documents that highlight your results... [download for more]