Geoff Dillon - Marketing, PR, Strategy Blog

Convincing or Conversing?

Look at your marketing and PR efforts and ask yourself - do you spend most of your time trying to convince people that they need what you are selling, or do you spend your time conversing with people who already know they need the type of product/service you offer and positioning yours as the best choice. 

The former is a lot harder and much more expensive to pull off. 

Of the many things I like about Seth Godin's views on marketing, one of the most relevant for marketers and PR folks is the concept of a "worldview". Everyone has a view of the world. It's really, really hard to change it through marketing and PR (not impossible - just hard). You are far better off trying to market your product to these people whose view of the world is favourable to your offer in the market.  

Some people believe having a smartphone is a time saver that makes your day better through it's variety of apps and functions. Others believe the cost of these types of phones is way too high and that anyone foolish enough to buy one is just falling prey to the latest fad in gadgetry. 

The most fertile ground is in the first group. Sure, some of the doubters in the second group will come around eventually, but only after they get sick of hearing from people in the first group about how cool their latest app is. 

This is fairly intuitive, and yet everyday you see ads that have that "did you know" flavour to them, where the advertiser tries to educate and convince the prospect that:

1 - a problem/need exists

2 - the prospect might have that problem/need

3 - the advertiser has a solution to that problem/need

Wouldn't your marketing be much more effective if you could just skip the first two steps and talk to people who "get it"? And if there aren't very many people who "get it", what are you selling, and why?

 

Measuring Publicity

For years, the debate has raged on concerning how to measure the value of positive publicity for your company.

 

 
The “rule of thumb” often applied is taking the cost of equivalent ad space and multiplying it by a factor of 10 (or another number like 5 or 7 depending on your view).

 

It doesn’t work.

 

Getting a full page of good publicity is nothing at all like buying 10 full pages of advertising. It’s like buying 1 full page of advertising that was viewed as highly credible by the target audience. 

 

Multiplying it by 10 assumes we measure value in advertising and PR the same way, and one is 10 times better than the other on that scale.

 

I would argue they are measured on different scales, with advertising leaning towards awareness, and PR leaning towards credibility. You can’t necessarily multiply one to get the other.

 

Bottom line, you can’t replace advertising with PR, or vice versa. They need to work together to deliver your brand message to your target audience, ideally with PR serving to make your advertising messages more credible.