Marketing & Media 05 Jun 2007 05:16 pm
How PR surpassed advertising in business marketing
We found out 18 months ago that most people have no concrete understanding of PR.
They think because they sponsor something, or advertise somewhere, they are entitled to “free space” or the placement of their news release.
In the continuing drive to educate people about what PR offers—and its 27 products as detailed on www.eilerpr.com, I offer this analysis of Why PR has Surpassed Advertising as the most credible way to build awareness of your business and products.
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 run some ads so 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:
- The third party credibility provided by truthful PR far outweighs the credibility ads and their claims. Readers know the advertiser has purchased the space or time and controls the message, so they are far more likely to believe reporters, editors, news people and product users who give independent comments on issues, products or companies. PR enhances credibility because it gets the attention of key influencers in your industry and allows them to put the message out there, which, especially for new or little-known business, is far more effective than speaking for yourself.
- 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. In 2005, that total rose to $8.4 million. That gave a return on investment of 24 times—that is the cost of the news space had it been purchased at normal ad rates. This result also include more than 2,200 clips in just the print media, exclusive of radio or TV news coverage. We just measured a product introduction for another client that spent about $1,400 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. In another recent example, a client’s ROI was 47 percent on dealings with a host of economic development issues.<.li>
- PR is focused on strategic moves, its “ready, aim fire,” not the “ready, fire, aim” approach of advertising. Advertising can reach everyone. It’s get an ad ready and fire. So what? Is everyone a typical customer? Aim comes more from PR where messages and audiences can be more precisely targeted. 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 how to make your business known.
larry [at] eilerpr.com 734 761-3399
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