Pushing PR in a nervous economy

I bumped into an old friend the other day and while we were catching up over a cup of coffee he said something along the lines of “Isn’t this a bad time to be trying to get people to buy PR? Businesses are cutting back at the moment, not looking to spend more.”  And he’s right, up to a point.

With the credit crunch being felt in all areas of business the amount of money a company has to throw around is becoming less and less, but that just means that they need to work smarter with what they have. And smarter can sometimes mean cutting back on one thing to pay for another, in this case, some PR.

Whether you call it a credit crunch, a recession or a market adjustment, the simple fact of the matter is that some companies are going to go out of business before things return to the boom days that we’ve rather got used to. You know that, I know that and your potential clients know that. That means that hiring a contractor, or specialist, or consultant or whatever becomes just that little bit more risky.  No longer does the client have to balance cost and quality, but they also have to figure in the chances of that contractor/specialist/consultant going bust before the end of the job and leaving them with a half finished project. No-one likes to take unnecessary risks, and in this situation it is on natural for the tendency to ‘buy IBM’* to assert itself.

So what’s a smaller company to do? You’ve done everything that you can to make sure that you can weather the storm, you’ve looked at where you are vulnerable and you’ve taken the steps necessary to lessen the risk. You know you can get the job finished without the risk of going under – as long, that is, as you get the job in the first place.

And this is where some well thought out PR can reap dividends. Get a couple of positive stories into the press and not only do you remind your potential customers that you exist, but that you are thriving in the current climate. Make yourself journalist-friendly and they will start to come to you when they need a comment on a story, rather than waiting for you to come to them. Post news from the business on your own site (or blog) regularly so people can see how you are doing and become the voice of authority in the area of business that you work in, or in just one tiny bit (smaller niches are easier to dominate, after all).

All of these things contribute to creating a picture in your clients mind that you are a company that knows what they are doing, and one that can be relied on to last the distance. It’s not about building egos , it’s about building trust – and that’s as true now it ever was.

*as in that oft repeated phrase “no-one ever got fired for buying IBM” – I’m not suggesting that they’d be any good for the safe demolition of a cooling tower.