As a mortgage and finance business leader, you need to make sure your customers are happy. Your staff are happy. Your service is exceptional. Maybe you need more brokers on your books or to enhance your reputation within the industry.
Your business has goals and targets to grow and you only have a set budget to achieve everything you need to. Every pound has to work hard and every investment has to justify itself.
It’s one hell of a balancing act.
But what if cutting PR spend, or not investing in PR at all, is actually costing you money?
Cutting off your pipeline despite your face – as the old saying goes
The cost: What you do today affects tomorrow.
On paper, cutting your PR and communications budget can look like an easy saving. But what will business look like six months from now?
People can’t buy from businesses they’ve never heard of.
PR builds awareness before people need you, it builds trust before they speak to you and it keeps your business front of mind when they’re ready to buy.
Plus 85.5% of AI recommendations come from earned media according to Muckrack research. Your thought leadership content, comments and interviews published by journalists will improve your credibility today as well as appearing in your customers’ AI recommendations tomorrow.
When people know who you are, commercial results often follow. We’ve seen businesses increase income by more than 1,000% in a year during sustained PR campaigns. Another exceeded its broker recruitment target by 17% while reducing recruitment costs by 90% because more of the right people already knew the business and wanted to work with it.
The spend: Cutting PR reduces spend but also coverage, future opportunities, future conversations and future customers.
Walking up a down escalator
The cost: Businesses rarely cut PR because everything is going brilliantly; it’s usually when markets become uncertain. Ironically, that’s when staying visible matters most.
Customers need reassurance too and when confidence returns, the businesses that kept communicating have a head start. Those that went quiet have to rebuild relationships, recognition and authority before they can start growing again.
The spend: Rebuilding always costs more than maintaining momentum.
Do you trust me?
The cost: Customers, brokers, partners, journalists and AI all look for the same trust signals.
Who understands the market?
Who’s being quoted?
Who’s sharing useful insight?
Who’s showing up consistently as an authority?
You might have decades of experience, brilliant technology and exceptional people but if nobody hears your story, someone else’s becomes the one people remember.
One mortgage business appeared in more than 600 publications and websites over a year and during that same period, it grew by 38%. Visibility in the right places, the right way, to the right people meant customers trusted them when it mattered.
The spend: Your sales team are putting in hard graft, working to find people and convince them that you’re the right company to use. PR gives them a leg up so they begin with recognition and trust and can focus on converting.
This isn’t an argument that every PR budget should be protected at all costs. Good PR should always prove its value and be bespoke to your company’s goals and objectives. But reputation is an asset, not an expense.
Sometimes the biggest long-term cost saving is investing in yourself, building your pipeline and avoiding the much greater cost of having to rebuild your reputation and your authority later.
PR creates opportunities for the right people to find you, trust you and choose you, when they’re ready.
Read our next blog on: Have reactive comments lost their value?