Public Relations Adding to Businesses' Bottom Line

Abstract

Businesses are realizing public relations services cost less than advertising and marketing services combined. The challenge for today's public relations practitioners is to show businesses how public relations services add to, rather than subtract from, the bottom line. This article discusses how public relations activities add to a company's prosperity and offers a “calculus” for calculating the dollars saved by using these services.

KEYWORDS:

• advertising
• economic value
• income flows
• organizational effectiveness
• public relations effectiveness
• public relations expense
• Pre- and Post-calculus model
• Public Relations Return Value (PRRV)
• return-on-investment (ROI)
• strategic planning

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express her deepest appreciation to Professor Phillip Kitchen who alerted her to his work in measuring the value of marketing programs and provided a guide and spreadsheet for her research.