By Barbara Bates, Principal

I mentioned in my last post that Eastwick was started during a recession. We celebrated our 10th anniversary during the last downturn and we’ve learned some things from both of those experiences. We, like Sequoia Capital, we believe that in a down economy the worst thing a company can do is go dark.

As self-serving as this may sound, it’s true.

Companies need to continue to promote themselves to customers, investors, employees, prospects, etc. and PR is hands-down the most cost-effective way to keep a company in the public eye. And big impact doesn’t necessarily mean big budget, if a few simple rules are applied:

• Follow the 20/80 Rule: Take the time to understand what 20 percent of your influencers really matter - the ones who influence the other 80 percent - and focus most of your outreach on them.
• Focus: Pick a few things and do them well.  Decide which will have the biggest impact on your customers - business press, trade press, bloggers, awards, event speaking - and invest in one or two areas.
• Make Sure You Have a Good Story: We pride ourselves on really good relationships with journalists but those relationships don’t help much if we don’t have a good story to tell them.  That’s why we are laser focused on making sure our clients have a good story to tell.
• Leverage the Power of Online: Most companies don’t realize the importance of leveraging PR (and that means social media) for SEO and SEM. You’ll get bigger bang for your buck if you focus most of your efforts around online media and leveraging the virality of online communications.
• Save Your Budget For Doing PR: Not reporting, not meetings, not things that won’t help get coverage. For any size budget, big or small, minimize activities that don’t directly impact business goals and coverage. In some cases, there needs to be compromises.  Cut down on admin, support, reporting and things that don’t directly result in coverage and handle that stuff internally.
• Go For Experience: An agency partner with related market experience will get results quicker and won’t be learning on your dime.

If you want to see some examples of how this approach has worked for other companies give me a call at +1 (650) 480-4050 or email me.