Valerie Simon

One of the most frequent concerns I hear from clients is, “How can I keep costs down, without sacrificing service?” In an economic environment characterized by lower consumer spending, rising unemployment, tightening credit, and inflation pressures that hit both businesses and customers, this question has never been more important. While keeping costs down is essential to maintaining a healthy business, demonstrating PR effectiveness is equally vital.

I urge clients to take some time to evaluate and share their goals, before we step back and attempt to audit their current process. The reason: Business needs change, and the manner in which you service these needs must change as well. BurrellesLuce has been around for over 120 years, and one of my biggest challenges is educating clients who’ve been loyal and happy customers for decades to take advantage of some of the new, more cost effective solutions we offer for monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of their media coverage.

Here are a few simple tips for getting the most out of your media monitoring in 2009:

1. Stop wasting your time counting or sorting through clips! We now provide basic analysis of your coverage FREE on our portal, BurrellesLuce 2.0. Admittedly, this is nothing fancy – just some simple excel spreadsheets, charts and graphs to help you get a better understanding of the effectiveness of your campaign over time. Our online searching and clip book creation is ideal for quickly compiling the coverage you would like to review and is also available at no additional charge to all clients who are receiving their content online.
2. Consider how to allocate your media monitoring budget. Don’t waste your time or money searching through erroneous clips. We have editors who carefully sift through large and complex searches, assuring that you are only charged for those stories you actually need. On the other hand, if you have a narrow search, a self-search option may be the more cost effective route. Our new iMonitor service is an extremely economical way to perform ad hoc searches or track competitive information you may not otherwise be able to afford to monitor. Your sales rep can help you identify the best type or combination of services.
3. Get rewarded for your loyalty. In an effort to thank and support our longtime clients, we are now offering a discount with an annual contract. We still offer month-to-month options. (I personally take a lot of pride in the fact that we never attempt to “lock” clients into a long-term contract. It is both humbling and exciting to know that our clients continue to choose us each month). However, this is a great opportunity for us to thank those clients who are true long term partners.
4. If you are not already doing so, get your clips online. We understand that you still want to see the articles as they appear in the hard copy sources, but a scanned PDF will allow you to see the article as it appeared in print while managing the information and distribution in a more efficient manner.