Using PR can help the third sector cut costs without cutting corners says Olly Kendall

OK, so you'd expect me to say this as someone who develops strategic PR campaigns at a communications agency, but as budgets get squeezed our experience anecdotally is that organisations, particularly in the third sector, are changing their advertising/PR mix.

The challenge for many organisations is to maintain branding and PR profile at the same time as cost-cutting. It seems that charities and not-for-profit bodies in particular are exploring the merits of increased PR spend as they weigh up 2009/10 marketing budgets. Whether this is because the third sector is ahead of the curve or because they often operate on the tightest margins clearly depends on who you speak to!

We all know that marketing budgets in the third sector are being hit badly by the downturn. Recent polling by the Charity Commission found that over half of the UK's charities are suffering as donors cancel direct debits and fundraising revenues prove ever harder to come by. But as the larger charities with significant ad spend review their marketing priorities our sense is that some are already starting to evaluate whether they get value from their ad budget and are considering where a targeted PR strategy would be suitable in delivering results at a fraction of the cost, while complementing remaining ad spend.

We can speculate on the metrics of all this: of how much more value there is to securing news coverage or third-party endorsement over advertising. The orthodoxy says that editorial coverage carries three times the ‘value' of advertising and certainly comes at a vastly cheaper cost. In the last three months alone at Insight we have been approached by six not -for-profit organisations who are for the first time dipping their toe in the PR waters.

So what practically can be done, whether you're in-house or setting your PR agency objectives, for the coming 12 months?

The first thing is to set ambitious targets for media coverage. One organisation I came across recently set itself such embarrassingly low targets for national media hits that the team who worked there had little incentive to deliver media coverage.

Second, explore cost-effective and proactive PR options to generate coverage. Sponsoring think-tank research or commissioning innovative polling is, when used effectively, a great way to generate coverage with minimal expense.

Think-tank research that we recently PR'd for a rheumatoid arthritis charity secured hits across national TV and radio as well as half page coverage in two key, highcirculation national print media at something like one fifteenth the cost of securing equivalent ad space.

Thirdly, use social media to best-effect. Assuming the objective here is to generate brand awareness and solidify campaign messaging, then when you're sending out press releases on a daily basis it's virtually no extra marginal effort for your chief executive to be sending out a truncated text on Twitter and blog posts. It's not uncommon for us to receive calls from the main TV and radio networks requesting interviews with clients for whom we have secured high-profile online coverage, which has been picked up subsequently by a broadcast producer.

Fourth, demonstrating the value of corporate sponsorship is increasingly necessary. Although corporate social responsibility support for the sector is never taken as read, as UK Plc cuts back on support for the sector it's ever more important to be able to prove that corporate margins can benefit from charitable support. An extreme example perhaps, but J Sainsbury recently posted its best quarterly sales growth for two and a half years during the recession. It put some of this down to its partnership with Comic Relief which helped to drive its biggest sales week outside of Christmas. Such opportunities will also inevitably deliver positive PR opportunities for both sponsor and charity - which must be leveraged to increase message and brand awareness.

Fifth, as an integrated PR and PA agency many of our PR clients require specifically issue-based PR. One thing we've noticed is that inevitably organisations who seek to criticise the government are getting much greater traction than ever before. Inevitably, 12 years into a Labour government the parliamentary lobby have a growing fatigue with the current administration, and more importantly, report to editors who are clamouring for ‘anti-government' stories. This might be a crude analysis - we'd certainly never counsel criticism for its own sake - but challenging policy in a constructive and meaningful way through the pages of the national press can often complement a public affairs strategy rather than hinder it.

So, making better use of the print and broadcast media through strategic PR campaigns is an incredibly effective way to help cut costs without cutting corners, while maintaining national media coverage.

Olly Kendall is head of PR at Insight Public Affairs