Poll: Budget cuts make for leaner, more focused comms efforts

Social media and standard PR outreach increase as communicators are forced to do more with less

Whenever we talk about communications department budgets, there’s always some good news and some bad news.

This time is no different.

A recent poll of 281 corporate communicators conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream revealed that 59 percent of companies hadn’t laid off communications staffers last year.

That’s the good news.

But the bad news is another 55 percent said their companies' communications budgets will not increase this year. And, further, 28 percent of those polled said their budgets will be cut.

But, fortunately, communicators aren’t getting discouraged. Instead, they’re making sure that every dime is being spent wisely. They’re weeding out costly and unnecessary programs and spending more time on social media and standard PR channels. They’re hopeful that communications budgets have already bottomed out and will soon begin to be on the rise.

“Even if financially the worst isn’t over, I think we’re getting better at what we’re doing, both social media-wise and message-wise. And, in the next couple years, I think things are going to change again,” says Michelle Hinson, director of development for Institute for Public Relations.

It should come as no surprise that 67 percent of the communicators ranked social media as the biggest growth area in their companies this year.

Let’s look at a few examples of how companies are stretching their communication budgets.

Trimming costs and programs

Rather than viewing a down economy and budget as a hindrance, Hinson sees it as ripe with opportunity. The Institute for PR has three employees, and one handles communications. This year, donations to the nonprofit are down. There isn’t any room to cut employees, so the budget has decreased as a result.

“It makes you look at all your systems to see what’s really working and what could use a change,” Hinson says.

The nonprofit looked closer at its e-mail blast system. It had been using the same system for a few years, but after some research Hinson found that Constant Contact—which advertizes e-mail marketing plans for as low as $15 per month—was cheaper, easier to use and created a nicer final product. The Institute's monthly cost went from $200 to $60.

Dana Weeks, a communicator at automation technology company Pilz, experienced a 70 percent budget cut in her department last year. Weeks’ staff of one full-time and one part-time employee wasn’t cut. Like Hinson, she looked for new ways to trim her budget.

First to go were printed sales brochures. Weeks now gives salespeople USB drives which have been loaded with PDFs of all of Pilz’s updated brochures. Instead of routinely mailing sales materials to potential clients, the staff has the option of sending PDF files. This has resulted in significant savings.
 
Focus on standard PR channels

Communicators have started to return to the basics, too. For instance, Weeks has eschewed conferences in favor of reaching customers through standard, and often free, traditional PR channels.

“We usually do 20 trade shows per year,” Weeks says. “This year, we’re doing two. We can spend $30,000 on a trade show, and only get 15 good leads. The two trade shows we’re still doing are with organizations we’re active in and they’re local.”

In lieu of trade shows, communicators can focus on building relationships with journalists to gain media coverage. Because most of Pilz’s clients are other businesses, Weeks’ pool of potential media outlets is confined to trade publications. It’s such a small community that she knows many of the editors and sends personalized pitches.

Last year, after spending about 65 percent of her department’s time on media relations, Weeks calculated about $17 million in advertising value equivalency.

Though arts educator Abrakadoodle actually experienced an increase in its communications budget this year, PR director Karin Machusic says the department is reevaluating its budget. Like Pilz, it has decided to forego some of the big conferences and instead is spending a comparatively meager amount of money on online channels, such as Google AdWords. 

“With limited resources come harder choices,” Machusic says. “People are still dealing with that. People realize there’s a need to invest in reaching out to the most important markets. You get the best bang for your buck.”

Ramping up social media

Despite the fact that 56 percent of poll respondents reported that they would be spending more resources on standard PR channels,67 percent those polled are also turning to social media. Of the companies that don’t have extra resources to reallocate, 79 percent said they’re planning to increase their efforts in social media.

“Social media is very cost effective,” Machusic says. “You have to be aware of the messages you’re sending out and the tone quality, but there’s such a great immediacy about it.”

Abrakadoodle communications staff members spend their time on every social media channel they can handle—Twitter, Facebook, a blog, a website, and e-Newsletters. Although it takes staff time to maintain all of these sites, they effectively showcase the impressive artwork children create in Abrakadoodle classes every day.

Hinson avoids getting stuck online with social media tasks by scheduling just 10 minutes of her day for engaging with social media. She sends out only a few daily updates on Facebook and Twitter.

“We don’t want to just populate the sites with our content,” Hinson says. “The hardest part is finding time to look for all of the content out there. There are people with 5,000 followers—how do you go through all of that content?”

Pilz’s Weeks constantly has Twitter and Facebook up in the background of her computer screen so she can spend a few minutes on it whenever she has time.Sheuses programs like HootSuite and TweetDeck to schedule communications.

“We look at social media almost like we look at our editorial calendar,” Weeks says. “We set updates so they go out when we want them to.”

Toronto-based Pollstream partnered with Ragan to create POLL-arized, a series of polls about corporate communications. PollStream is a leading provider of interactive engagement and community building solutions for Fortune 1000 organizations and government organizations. Its proprietary two-way dialogue solutions engage, educate and inform customers, prospects and employees online. For more information, visit PollStream.