Opposites attract in the modern media landscape, as PR moves onto ad land’s turf.
Welcome to Part 1 our essential business guide to PESO – helping you effectively reach new and existing customers via Paid media, Earned media Shared/Social media and Owned media. This section focuses on paid media.
THE EASIEST way to get media exposure is to pay for it. That’s not something you will normally hear from a public relations agency.
When you pay to play in the media it is usually via advertising, whether in print, online or on TV and radio broadcasts, or in billboards and the backs of buses. That is traditionally the remit of your advertising agency – the polar opposites of what PR people do.
But times are changing. The smartest PR agencies have never doubted that what is beyond doubt is that advertising works and has a proven track record stretching back a century and more.
Think about it. Virtually every major brand you’ve ever bought – from your training shoes to your household bleach to the petrol in your car and the food in your fridge – has been built on advertising.
But there are some pretty significant catches, caveats and downsides – so let our expert team explain some of the pitfalls.
SUCCESS IS DIFFICULT TO MEASURE
Trying to capture the magic which makes advertising successful is like trying to bottle lightning.
No-one – not even the advertising professionals – can say with certainty what will work and capture the public imagination and what will quickly disappear into obscurity.
The most famous quote about advertising is attributed to American department store mogul John Wanamaker who is credited with saying: “I know half of my advertising works – I just don’t know which half.”
ADVERTISING IS EXPENSIVE
The biggest brands with the most money still spend enormous sums of money on TV advertising and other costly promotions, involving the kind of budgets that are beyond most businesses.
Even getting a slot on your local TV or radio station will set you back a hefty chunk of change, while magazine and newspapers also remain costly.
Even more so if you want to cover multiple options – like wrapping a fleet of taxis in your business messages, or taking out ads on billboards and bus stops.
Tying all of that together is a complicated business. Which brings you straight back to perennial problem number one – how can you tell which parts are working?
UH OH, HERE COMES THE INTERNET
But hallelujah! Online advertising promised to solve such problems – making advertising both affordable and totally measurable.
Google’s massive success is built on the ads which accompany search results. They are always linked to the term being searched for, meaning a user is far more likely to find those ads useful or relevant and so to click on them.
That allowed Google to pioneer pay per click (PPC) advertising, where the advertiser only pays for those ads which are clicked. That makes it far more likely that a business is reaching exactly the right people with exactly the right ads.
The perfect solution, right? Er, nope.
ONLINE ADVERTISING IS A WORSE MINEFIELD
Much of the online ad business is ineffectual – but worse yet, it is also rife with fraud and corruption on a truly epic scale. How bad? Well, actually, this bad:
- As a starting point, your display ads are likely to have a click through rate of 0.1%. That’s one tenth of one percent. Bad enough, but on mobile the majority of those clicks are accidental.
- Users hate ads so much that the use of ad blocking apps and software on both PCs and mobile devices is growing exponentially.
- More than half of online ads are never seen by humans. A study by comScore found that 54% of display ads never appearedin front of a real person.
- Those ads which maybe do get in front of a real person are considered ‘seen’ when they appear partially for just one second (see this Wikipedia explanation of ‘viewable impressions’)
- Businesses are paying billions for ads that are clicked by an army of fraud ‘bots’ –at a cost somewhere between $6.3 billion and $11.6 billion
- Google’s ads are the most trustworthy. Yet even Google has to employs 1000 people to root out “bad ads” – and they caught 780 million of them in 2015.
WHY IT’S NOT ALL DOOM AND GLOOM
Knowing the pitfalls is half the battle in avoiding them. Armed with the right knowledge businesses can be more selective about the advertising choices open to them – and there are some fantastic opportunities.
Indeed, there is a new strand of advertising in particular which savvy businesses can grab a share of, particularly when it is part of a wider communications strategy – social media advertising.
Gone are the days when your latest business Facebook post would reach most of your followers. Many businesses invested huge time and effort in cultivating a large Facebook following. Now they will struggle to reach just 10% of that audience.
Facebook has deliberately throttled organic reach so that businesses have to pay to reach the same number of people. Yep – what you thought of as a ‘social network’ is now little more than a huge advertising platform. Other social media platforms including Twitter and LinkedIn offer similar advertising services.
The good news is that Facebook provides a wealth of tools to help you reach the most relevant people, while the ads are still incredibly affordable and cost-effective. This means you can get directly into the Facebook feed or Twitter stream then you have the chance of reaching them with your amazing content. And right there is the key – amazing content.
Remember this isn’t your guide to advertising, it is your guide to PESO and achieving the ideal mix of Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media. When you have amazing content, such as an informative blog post, positive coverage in a big name news outlet or a Facebook post you want to share with the world, that is when clever use of social advertising comes in.
Ad success is all about making sure your message is put in front of the right people. Why promote female friendly products if it’s mostly men who see the ads? What good is an advert for plumbing services if it’s mostly seen by people in council homes, with no need for private plumbing services?
Here are at Holyrood is help to navigate such intricacies of social media advertising to make sure you are getting the best possible, highly measurable results, while working in harmony with your blog, website content and PR successes.
This is Part 1 of our Essential Business Guide to Harnessing PESO. Demonstrating how businesses can harness the power of PESO to maximise business success. Read the rest of our guide.
PART 2 – Find out how to unlock the power of EARNED Media
PART 3 – It’s good to share – why SHARED media is a winner
PART 4 – Own it baby! Learn the secrets of OWNED media success
Work with an award-winning PR agency to help you cover all your communication needs.
We’d love the chance to work with your business on a developing a strategy to make the most of your Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media – delivering success across a 360 degree campaign.
To find out more, phone us on 0131 561 2244 or fill in the simple form below and we’ll get straight back to you.
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