Why PR Surpassed Advertising in Business Marketing
PR is a common term, but who knows what it is?
Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different replies. "Free advertising" "Always saying only the good of a business – never the bad." "A lot of pap to make corporate business people feel important."
People with new companies feel they must "get the name out there." They must become known? But they often will not take this to the real step of investing in PR. Rather, they take an easy course and runs some ads where they can see copy and design first. They pay a lot more than PR would cost to do the same thing – in terms of the actual space or time and production costs, that is.
But PR is in fact the best way to credibly communicate your messages directly to target audiences in meaningful ways in the media. How do we know this?
In the past several years, PR has far surpassed more costly and less-credible advertising as the primary technique to build awareness, credibility and believability among your business customers.
How has this happened?
Here are the reasons.
1. The third party credibility provided by truthful PR far outweighs in credibility ads and their claims. In fact, that believability factors is the main reasons advertisers use quotes from users of their product – third party attesting to their claims.
2. However, PR is achieved through third parties, reporters, editors, news people, giving their independent comments on issues, products, companies. This third-party position makes news stories all the more credible.
3. PR is inexpensive for a client’s return on investment. We have one client that in 2004 had $5.4 million worth of media coverage in business, trade, special interest and general consumer media. That gave a return on investment of 14 times – that is the cost of the news space had it been purchased at normal ad rates. This result also include more than 1,200 clips in just the print media – and exclusive of radio or TV news coverage.
4. We just measured a product introduction for another client that spent about $1400 in PR fees to generate news coverage in just six target-audience magazines. The result: $17,950 worth of space if it were purchased as ads. An ROI of 12.8 percent … and greater credibility.
5. How PR is different than advertising. Credibility. Third party endorsement implied by articles in news media holds a massive edge in believability over purchased ads where readers know the advertiser has purchased the space or time, controls the message.
6. The "Ready Fire Aim" theory of reaching customers. Advertising can reach everyone. So what? Is everyone a typical customer? PR reaches those people in a specific target audience – a buyer or influencer that must be reached in the buy-decision process. PR means get ready, aim carefully by targeting audiences and messages, and fire. Not just get it ready and fire, hoping you will hit the market. A bit of analysis before going out with a PR campaign is always the best route.
Talk to me about your issues. larry@eilerpr.com 734 761-3399
