While not an avid watcher, last Sunday’s Dragon’s Den had me gripped. During its business pitch to the Dragons a pair of sauce entrepreneurs revealed that they already had a PR agency on board and had been working with them to raise the profile of the company and its product. Deborah Meaden turned down the opportunity to invest £50K in the company as she believes the amount they spend on PR isn’t enough to generate the level of interest they need to get the sauce into the minds of the consumer.
She told the pair: “If you spend less than £3,000 a month on PR, you might as well not spend any money at all.” It turns out that they were spending significantly less.
As a B2B PR agency working with many small businesses, typically, our client’s PR budgets range from considerably less than £3,000 to considerably more. What we find is, it’s not so much about how much they have to spend but that the budget integrates within the wider business strategy for growth. Yes, it’s not worth turning on PR and then turning it off just as quickly when the funds run out, but a consistent effort that helps to increase consciousness and awareness as part of a wider campaign can and does reap rewards.
Typically bigger budgets are required for consumer products and services – there’s simply a bigger audience to reach so Deborah Meaden’s comments are valid to a certain extent. But in the B2B PR world, we’d never dismiss clients with smaller budgets as we work with them to make the most of that budget.
What we do know is that companies with smaller budgets are much more adept at spending it to meet goals and objectives. And that’s where we come in: no expensive stunts, just skouting for stories within the business to support the company’s PR objectives.
