What’s the difference?

We see ads everywhere we look, constantly. From the moment we check our phones for the first time each day we have targeted, paid content staring us in the face. Head out of the door and we’re swamped with ads everywhere from the side of the local bus, digital billboards on the high street, at the start of our favourite podcasts and on every train carriage.

According to stats from 75media, it’s estimated that we see anything from 50 to 400 ads per day. That’s a lot of info to take in, so a lot of the time, we just don’t. In fact, we’re so used to seeing ads in our daily lives now, that we’re more likely to let our eyes and ears skim over them than we are to pay attention.

When our client placed an ad in a national newspaper, they didn’t see a single lead, despite the ad coming at a high cost.

Are we just too swamped with ad content to care? It seems as though that might be true. But what about when we change that content to carefully crafted messages which come from reputable sources? Aka, PR. Our job is not to just get brands seen, but to actively engage audiences for them too.

Let’s take that expensive ad in the national paper. When the same company came to us for PR, we placed a piece of earned PR in the same newspaper – a review of one of their products. The result? The brand sold out online. When it comes to quality content, it seems ads just can’t compete.

A lot of developing brands will find themselves in a position where they are suddenly targeted with sales conversations for ad space when they hit particular milestones in their business. These conversations often come with stats about the number of people engaging with the publication the ad space is being sold from, but engagement with a publication does not mean engagement with ads.

If this is you, and you want an honest, no-pressure conversation about your marketing options, we’d be happy to talk you through what might be best for you. Get in touch here.

Consider the last time you read anything in a newspaper, magazine or trade publication – online or in print. What did you spend longer on, the ads, or the articles?

Articles naturally engage us. They grab our attention with a headline that tells us whether we’re interested or not, and if we identify ourselves as the appropriate audience (and you likely will if you broadly already belong to the publication’s audience), we commit to reading for a few minutes.

So, how do you get your brand into these articles? That’s where PR comes in.

By working with a PR specialist, your newsworthy stories will be identified and written up into articles and pitched to the media relevant to your business. The job of a PR specialist is to build up a personal database of press contacts for reliable coverage in publications that are trusted by your audience, meaning your media coverage is always on-target.

But what about combining both paid and earned media?

Some ads are more sophisticated than others. Take social media, for example. Completely driven by user data, social ads are not just targeted, but incredibly specific. If you have a strong, clear message and fantastic imagery, social ads can really complement a PR strategy.

Why not use social ads alone?

Let’s jump back to the start where we looked at attention spans. Put an ad in front of someone and it could be perfect for them, but we can’t guarantee they’ll actively engage with it for long. What we do believe social ads can do is provide a reminder to audiences already engaged with the brand’s story. If you see a social ad for a product or service alone, it might grab your attention but not your motivation. If you see the same ad after reading a news article mentioning the glowing reputation of that brand, you’ll probably click the ad the next time you see it.

So paid and earned media can work well together. They strengthen each other in turn, but when looked at separately, PR still holds its own.

With the right PR strategy in place (and your PR specialist will curate a bespoke one suitable for your business), brands can build great brand awareness and organic visibility, letting them reduce their social ad spend and focus the budget on growing the brand in other ways.

The takeaway?

Brands need to think carefully before spending big on advertising and accept the return on investment could be low. Any ad needs to be able to deliver a lot before it stands a chance of working at all, and getting professionals to create the ads themselves is an additional cost.

Comparatively, PR fees are more cost effective and can deliver a great ROI.

Still wondering what might be best for your business? Chat to us today and we’ll help you understand where your budget could be best spent.