PR Rescue

To maintain profitability through the current economic crunch, most technology companies are reducing costs wherever they can. These cost-cutting measures often include reduced PR budget and staff, stretching resources beyond the ability of PR programs to maintain peak performance levels.

Budget and staff reductions make predictable gaps in PR programs. We've created a task force to spot those gaps, identify the ones that are most damaging, and fix them.

To help companies meet their most critical PR needs in this uncertain market we've adapted our practice in several key areas. Because we're small, flexible, and fast-to-respond, we've been able to make changes that really count. Our goal is to help strained PR programs compete and thrive in the technology marketplace over the next 2-4 quarters. Here's what we've done:

Strengthened our emphasis on revenue-generating PR activities.

• Business Development Focus - less corporate branding activity, more focus on supporting sales
• Publicity Focus - less high-level strategy, more work in the trenches with editors, reporters and industry analysts to generate more ink
• Opportunity Prioritization - less reaching for hidden opportunities, more focus on available, high-value, low-investment opportunities
• ROI Accountability - meaningful ROI measurement standards included for every project and in every client status report
• Customer Endorsement - our Customer Success Program™ focuses on two high-value PR objectives: better ink and stronger customer relationships
  

Revised our pricing.

• Lower Fees - reduced our billing rates by 25%
• Project Scope - now accept "one-off" projects at the same hourly rate as our retainer clients
• Budget Control - client can control budget as conditions change week-by-week. We ramp up or down as PR opportunities and client budgets change

Adapted our flexible hub-and-spoke team structure to "cover" for reduced client staff.

• Staffing Flexibility - now offer anything from a full team to a single media expert, writer, researcher, or speakers bureau manager to "fill in" for lost staff
• Response Time - developed a process to put a full team to work for any client within days

Read below to see how Stephenson Group's re-alignment has worked for one of our clients.

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Case Study

Goal:
Our client, a one-year old company with only $2 million in funding, desired media/analyst coverage to support their launch, provide entrée for cold-calling, generate sales leads, and shorten the sales cycle.

Challenge/Opportunity:
Most of our client's first year was spent fine-tuning their offering and building a sales force. When they began working with Stephenson Group (SG) they had no customers, no media coverage, no analyst coverage, no advertising budget and their competitors were gaining market share fast. Our client had a strongly differentiated product for its space, but was unknown among its target audiences.

In addition to the challenges posed by budget limitations and uncertainty about future funding in the fragile economy, our client faced a huge opportunity cost. Their core business, Employee Internet Monitoring, was beginning to generate news interest due to terrorist activities and economic conditions that focused attention on employee productivity. At a minimum, it would be a shame to miss this opportunity due to a limited PR budget. Worse than that, any competitors who seized that opportunity would likely grab industry positioning and market share that would be difficult - and expensive - to overcome.

Solution:
With a joint mandate to act quickly and focus priorities for maximum efficiency and ROI, SG designed a customized PR launch plan during the contract approval process, including estimated hours for every task. A team of professionals was assembled who began initial research and hit the ground running as soon as the ink was dry.

SG prioritized media targets, geographic regions, audience demographics, conferences, analysts, bylined article opportunities and more to ensure optimum use of our time and our client's time and budget.

PR activities were selected with a priority on supporting sales and generating revenue. This meant a focus on in-the-trenches media relations, drawing on our established media contacts to generate the maximum amount of ink. The team began pitching editors and producers within days. Our media management expertise, solid media contacts and a tightly targeted list of journalists (print, electronic and broadcast) ensured the best opportunities for coverage, with less time spent.

Each week, our client received a detailed report of where time was spent, results-to-date, ROI estimates and plans for the coming week. This gave our client an opportunity to discuss new opportunities, review priorities, and make changes to the plan-with SG flexibility to shift "gears" on demand.

Flexibility in our pricing, a commitment to contributing overtime effort, and the strong management skills of our account team enabled us to achieve 60-day goals within the first month.

Results:
Our client credits Stephenson Group's results for generating numerous product trials with Fortune 500 companies, more than 200 customer inquiries, customer contracts signed, and increased web site traffic, all during the first 75 days of our relationship. SG results included:

• Three Top Tier media interviews: Business Week, Business 2.0, CIO
• 18 Trade and Technology interviews, including: ZDNet, EWeek, CNet, Workforce, ComputerWorld, Information Security, Line 56, InternetWeek
• Two consumer dailies § Four television feature segments dedicated to our client
• 13 major market radio feature segments
• Three targeted analyst briefings

TOTAL: 40 interview sessions, resulting in 35 published/broadcast features - 93% placement rate. Analyst briefings resulted in agreement to serve as referenceable resource for media: 100% endorsement rate.

The client's costs for this program were under $35,000.

For more information contact:
Chris Pillsbury at 800-474-5025
cpillsbury@stephensongroup.com