DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

We work with businesses of all sizes. Over the last 22 years. I've noticed the main difference between the smaller and the larger business is that many small to medium businesses don't think they have a marketing budget, but they always turn out to have spent a fair amount: they just aren't tracking it effectively. Some will flatly deny having a sales or PR budget.

If you're one of them, try adding up all the money and the time you spent in the last 12 months on any of these, you have the makings of your time/money budget:

• the website,
• taking a 'special deal' in a directory or an advertising feature,
• your membership subs & meeting fees plus time for attending networking events, the online directory listings and forums, plus social networking sites,
• writing sales proposals,
• PowerPoint presentations,
• responding to sales enquiries
• encouraging referrals from customers or complementary businesses
• signage for a building and/or vehicle
• maybe some Pay Per Click experiments?
• or a promo item?
• marketing materials - folders, leaflets, brochures?
• a mailing list?
• email fliers
• a newsletter?
• a blog?
• photos,
• videos or pod casts
• local sponsorship in kind?
• stalls at trade fairs
• other sales, marketing, PR promotional activity?

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. Use that as the baseline, and think how you could improve that spend of time and money in the next financial year.

One of the most valuable things you can do to further your business is to think about how you can find out more about your customers and how they found you, so you can concentrate resources on the things that are proven to work. It's much better to record feedback rather than rely on memory because we often remember more about encounters with emotional content.

Years ago, local shopkeepers in my high street said they had mainly elderly customers and were worried about their reliance on a dying breed of customer. But when they were asked to tick age groups of customers and record comments, it turned out there were at least as many busy mums, who actually spent more, but they hadn't talked as much so they failed to make much impression and weren't remembered.

Labels: budgeting for PR, marketing, on and offline PR, PR, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy, sales