Discussing budgets with your prospective clients.

For the short time I have been in Advertising and PR, one question continues to perplex me and that is how do I approach the topic of budget with prospective clients? When to ask, how to ask, and how not to sound greedy while asking?

Many colleagues have told me that you should never approach budget within the first few meetings. Asking too early about an assigned budget is almost guaranteed to make you look money hungry and only interested in your bottom line. But, as someone who is trying to start off small, I don’t have a lot of man hours to put into researching and developing a proposal for a business that has not allocated sufficient monies towards their marketing campaign.

According to Lilian Nganda an Account Director at Silver Bullet PR, Proper understanding of your scope of work will give you an edge to justify the costs confidently to client. One must also be flexible to reduce costs during cost justification meetings especially if client is ready to close a deal instantly.

Some say that we need to educate our prospective clients on what they “should” be spending on their marketing campaign. While I am all for education, this way of doing things seems a bit backwards to me. I mean would you ever call a lawyer and ask them how much you should be paying them to get you out of your legal debacle?

“It’s really hard to quantify a service like PR and what most companies evaluate is the time the task will take to be realized. The most important thing when putting together costs is to understand the scope of work involved to achieve the deliverables. One also needs to consider the team involved and resources like transport, communication”. Supposed Miss Nganda.

Once the potential client becomes an actual client, the issues with budgets do not always go away. Recently I was nearly reprimanded for having the audacity to ask the client if they had decided on a budget for the second phase of a huge community relations campaign they hired us to execute.

While many of us love what we do, the reality is that we walk a fine line between being deemed greedy and maintaining a profitable business.

Our services and the various elements of our proposed strategies cost money. As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money!” As marketers (yes am a marketer I market stories to the media), we know this to be true. But the age old question remains… how do we get potential clients to understand that having a discussion about budget early on is less about being greedy and more about being smart?

Trappng the Kenyan consumer

Today I have decided to visit the advertising world and after hobnobbing with one of the youngest Creative Director in Kenya, we have come up with the twelve commandments of locking in the Kenyan consumer

Security-We all have a need to feel secure. We buy a home for security. We put money into a savings account, contribute to pension funds and buy insurance for security.

Possessions-Kenyans like to buy and own things. Some people might consider possessions as a measure of personal worth regardless of the means of acquisition.

Copy cats and Me too’s.-We buy many things just because we see others buying them. We don’t like to be different – it’s one of the strongest appeals.

Good health-We spend alot of money on products and services to satisfy a desire for good health.

Sexual and romantic drives-Many personal grooming products, how-to books and services are sold with these appeals in mind.

Curiosity-We’re attracted to new products and unusual imagery. “New!” is a frequent appeal in advertisements. We are naturally interested in things outside the ordinary. This motivator may not necessarily sell something, but it does get attention.

Love of beauty-Tastes in “beauty” may vary between cultures and generations, but a desire for beauty – in music, art, literature, personal appearance, etc. – burns deep in us all.

Play and relaxation-.We take trips, buy toys, join clubs and much more in order to satisfy this desire.
Feel important-People will often buy all sorts of products and services because ownership makes them feel important.

Physical pleasure and comfort.-We like comfortable beds, warm homes, bubble bath, lounge chairs; personal products and such that give us pleasure and make us comfortable.

Love of others-We buy many products for the people and pets we love.

Avoid discomforts-Often we spend a lot of money to avoid both real and imagined discomforts and inconveniences: e.g., insect repellants, service agreements, and household products.

Up to you now… what will make an ad tick for you?

Pictures can do more in PR

“Can you guys do something that is more than just having dummy cheque for pictorials”? Yesterday I had a candid conversation with my client and that’s how the story of using photography in PR came up.

It has been proven that human beings process visuals 66,000* times faster than text, this underlines the need for the public relations industry to bolster its already strong written and verbal skill with more visual communication techniques and ‘visual thinking’.

Together with the explosion of social media (and an ever-growing selection of visual channels, as well as the greater accessibility to technology that helps capture, create and share images (plus measure their success), the prospects for visual communication are greater than ever.

Without realizing it, visual communication and visual thinking is ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives.

And we don’t seem to give it much thought in the local PR scene instead we have adopted a dummy cheque and handshake presentation that is always plasted in our dailies on Mondays.

Traditionally, in PR and communications the trusted form of written communication has dominated, reports, press releases and presentations to name but a few. Yet studies show that 65 per cent of us are visual learners. Additionally, when words, images and colour are used together correctly, they can be a very persuasive mix.

Research indicates that:

• Pictures interact with text to produce levels of comprehension and memory that can exceed what is produced by text alone
• using visual aids during a presentation was found to be 43 per cent more persuasive than not using visual aids
• Besides improving readership by 40 per cent, colour also accelerates learning from 55 to 78 percent and comprehension by 73 per cent. Which leads me redefine visual thinking for PR practitioners

According to Robert Ng'ang'a one of the most in-depth creatives I have met, visual thinking is the innate ability to use our eyes and our mind’s eye to discover, develop and share ideas . From a communication perspective, visual thinking is the process of using pictures to help you solve problems (read clients), think about complex issues and communicate effectively.

So do you think PR practitioners need to embrace visual thinking?