Hostetler Public Relations

How much does a website cost?

January 20, 2020 By Rae Hostetler

Websites are critical to an organization’s reputation and image. For some clients, a sound marketing communications strategy is designed to lead customers to a website to learn, engage and buy. We often get the question: What does a website cost?

Company leaders often don’t know what they’re paying for in budgets. That’s a risk. Without sound understanding, there’s a chance of confusion, frustration and risk website budgets could be cut.

If you considering website cost, here’s a short list. Website budgets should include:

Build cost: Website builds for a simple site start at $5,000 and can go up to $30,000 plus depending on size and scope. This cost includes outlining the website framework, writing, photography or photos, programming, testing and going live. Timeframe from start to completion depends on the complexity of the website. Consider are you building custom, going with WordPress or DIYing using Wix?

URL cost: There is a payment due to own a website address. Addresses can be purchased through one of many companies including GoDaddy, BlueHost, WPE Engine and the list continues. A developer might offer to host your site on their server, which is sometimes a good idea. Read on.

Hosting fee: Once a URL is purchased, these companies offer a hosting service. Each company has service offerings based on need: space, number of emails, etc. Where to host and package type to buy depends what the type of company/business and overall website structure. Cheapest isn’t always best.

For example, we have a client company that operates a global service-related business. The business does not sell anything on its website (no credit cards or personal data is ever collected), but due to the global work, the site was hacked. To keep the company site secure, it was moved to a private server, which fixed the hacking issue.

Maintenance: Ongoing updates, additions and maintenance for a website cost money. Whether its programming related or adding a new page for a service line, consider who will do the work. Maintenance should also include updated photography. Will you have a photographer come to your business every year or two to refresh photos or will you buy photos through an online stock photo company?

Consideration for change: Technology is rapidly changing and that includes websites. A good website has a life span of three to five years if a company wants to continue to look modern and current. Something to keep this in mind during annual budgeting.

If you’re thinking about building or rebuilding a website, contact us now. We’re happy to listen and help guide you through the process.

Why we love email marketing and communications

September 10, 2019 By Rae Hostetler

email marketing I was thinking about writing this blog and then (moments ago) I received an email from a client with the subject line, “Phones are going NUTS!!!!!” (yes, caps and five exclamation points). So I thought, well now is the time to write this and share it.

I love email newsletters as a communications tool. They’re relatively easy to set up, add/maintain contacts, brand and use to communicate. Most of our clients have email communications in their strategic plans. They all have various reasons why that ties to a goal.

Here are uses and results.

The client noted above with their phone going NUTS right now runs a local, family operated heating, cooling and plumbing business. Their brand is personal and customer driven. We email information to educate customers and remind them of services. Today’s email was simple… don’t forget to call us to schedule your fall furnace tune up. The people who received the message subscribe to a maintenance agreement program and have paid for the service already. So wow… one email made the phones ring, schedule fill and get trucks on the road. Trucks on the road means more branding because you’ll see the Howald Heating, Air Conditioning and Plumbing logo around Indianapolis.
We work with the Stutz Artists Association. The group is a non-profit that’s a members association. During our planning assessment, we were given access to their email newsletter, which was set up already. We quickly noted that there were not a lot of member email communications being sent via their newsletter system. There were emails that were forwards from personal email addresses with bits and pieces of information. Over 90 days, we’ve started a consistent emails campaign for membership and they’re seeing the impact. The last email open rate was over 80% among members. The benefit: the more in-the-know members, the better engagement for association events.
Another client, Cargo Services, uses email communications to support their sales team. The company is a freight forwarder, think importing and exporting (and yes, tariffs). Each member of the team has an email list of clients and prospects segmented in the system. Emails are sent from a customer’s sales rep (meaning the email has the sales rep’s name on it). Their communications program is “thought leadership” driven. That means the client has articles on industry topics to support their brand: Customer Driven, Creative Solutions, Community Focused. Topics range from their community program supporting foster youth in Indiana to articles with tariff updates, industry changes, regions of the world for manufacturing and more. A day or so after an email is sent, we give sales reps the information about who has opened the email and clicked to the full article on their website. We’re seeing more email opt ins (about 20 in August alone) and more website traffic. In turn, that is driving client conversations and sales.

If you’re interested in creating a strategic communications program that includes email marketing, contact us to start the conversation.

Public relations jargon defined

October 9, 2018 By Rae Hostetler

Business sectors have jargon. Public relations practitioners use words and phrases that set us apart. Here’s a list with definitions to help guide your next conversation with your PR team.

Advertorial: It is a paid ad that looks like a news article.

Analytics: The data generated via your public relations tools. Google analytics should be programmed into websites to show visitor traffic, page hits and more, for example.

Angle: Reporters want to know the hook behind a story idea. That’s the angle. What makes your story interesting?

Audience: Who do you need to talk to? Our clients often have multiple audiences and need tailored messages for each of them: employees, vendors, clients, prospects, for example.

Boilerplate: This is the last paragraph of a news release. It explains what the business publishing the news release is and does.

Corporate ID: Every organization should have a corporate ID. This is a document outlining the colors of your logo, how a logo can/cannot be used. It also should include the organization’s message.

Dashboard: Monthly dashboards show our clients key analytics including social media, email open rates, news articles published and more.

Editorial Calendar: While daily newspapers and television stations do not have editorial calendars, business journals and trade publications often post their editorial calendars online or in their media kit. It outlines what topics will be addressed and when providing an opportunity to pitch a story.

Exclusive: Sometimes a public relations professional will offer just one reporter your story. The strategy is used to get maximum visibility so other media will follow.

Lead time: The amount of time required to pitch a story, execute a project, create a strategy and more. Public relations professionals like a large amount of lead time.

Link structure: When a company is creating a website, a public relations professional will create a wire frame (think blueprint) with a link structure for your important information.

Media Directory: Public relations firms subscribe to media directory services to research reporters. Most online media directory tools allow public relations teams to issue news releases too.

Indianapolis PR Company Media pitch: Public relations teams are not literally pitching something at a reporter. We’re offering (or pitching) ideas based on editorial calendars and reporter beats.

Message: This is also called the company story. Is everyone on your team talking about your business the same way? This is your company message.

PRSA: Public Relations Society of America is the trade association for public relations professionals.

Social media channels: These aren’t actually channels, such as a TV. The channels are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on.

Style Guide: Whether it’s Associated Press or Chicago Style (or a company variation), public relations professionals working on a team write using the same system. Business leaders should know what style their team uses to write to ensure how titles are capitalized, how company products are written and more.

Do your monthly reviews include public relations dashboards?

September 17, 2018 By Rae Hostetler

Public relations and communications plans take focus and consistency. Many business leaders work in companies with in-house marketing/communications professionals or own companies with outsourced marketing communications teams in place. Each month, these leaders review spreadsheets, P&Ls, balance sheets and other reports to be sure the business is financially healthy. Do those reports include marketing/communications dashboards? After all, isn’t it the marketing/communications that’s driving branding, new business, consumer purchases–your cash flow?

Some say public relations is intangible. With the advent of Google Analytics, email newsletters and social media, I disagree. And even before these tools were available, communications could be measured via qualitative and quantitative surveys, if not bumps in sales. A well planned and consistent strategy includes goals. And those goals should align to regular monthly marketing/communications dashboards. Before starting a dashboard consider these questions:

1) Do we have a public relations or marketing/communications plan?
Without a plan, it’s hard to determine what you’re measuring. A strategic plan has goals with tactics that align to what your team is trying to achieve. That drives your measurements. Maybe you want to lower your cost per click in your pay per click campaign while driving more consumer calls/emails. Tracking starting with a baseline and then reviewing monthly reports allows you to see if the campaign works.

2) How many people participate in your plan/tactics and who’s the lead?
We have clients with robust advertising, social media, and Internet presence. Our team acts as the conduit to not only plan the public relations and communications, we oversee the overall message, strategy and goals. Each month, we pull together a dashboard to tell the client how each tactic is performing. That means we’re reporting items such as: are campaign landing pages tracking new consumers, are those consumers using coupons, do consumers from pay per click campaigns produce calls/clicks. We’re also watching Google analytics. If we ask customers to write blogs or create content, we know that’s their time. We want to be sure it’s well invested. Is anyone reading the content? When emails are sent on behalf of a sales team, are they opened and read?

3) What happens if a tactic is not working?
Public relations and marketing/communications professionals know if a tactic isn’t producing then it shouldn’t be repeated. Sending out news releases and no one is picking them up? Spending time loading social media posts and no one is engaging? Ask why and analyze whether or not to continue.

4) What happens if something is working?
Pat yourself on the back. Then consider doing more of it and investing more time/budget.

Finally remember tracking public relations and marketing/communications work to creating dashboards isn’t a tool to bring someone to task for poor performance. It’s a tool to see results and re calibrate as needed to ensure dollars are invested well for ROI now and in the future. That’s why you measure twice and continue cutting and adding to find the perfect plan for your business.

Reporters value public relations professionals

May 17, 2018 By Rae Hostetler

Just like bell bottom jeans, public relations and communications trends tend to come and go. One thread remains consistent quality communications planning and execution.

I’ve been working in the communications field for about 30 years. When I worked as a journalist reporting the news, I relied on the AP wire, good information from sources, well-written and informative news releases and background information to bring the news to our listeners and viewers.

Over the decades working in public relations, I’ve seen the advent of the Intranet, blogs, websites, social media, texting, emails and more for communications tools. A recent study impresses on me that regardless of the communications tool, it’s the message and quality information that continues to be appreciated by journalists.

According to a 2018 Cision study: 78 percent of American journalists surveyed say that ensuring content is 100 percent accurate is the most important element to their stories in 2018.

Some say there’s a benefit to the fake news phenomenon.

21 percent saying that’s increasing the importance of journalistic standards.
9 percent said that it’s improving the popularity of trusted and established media brands.

When everything else in the media industry is being disrupted, journalists continue to trust press releases for high quality, authentic and relative information. And reports say relationships with public relations professionals are more valuable now than ever before with:

63 percent saying news announcements and press releases are what they want from PR contacts.
44 percent saying press releases are the most trustworthy source of brand-related information.

To read the full study, click here.