Advertising vs Public Relations.
1.Credibility of Advertising vs PR
One of the biggest differences when comparing advertising with PR is the credibility and believability of the two promotional avenues. The credibility that a piece of media coverage brings far outweighs that of an advertisement, for a number of reasons.Advertisement is paid media, public relations is earned media. In other words, an advert expresses that “we offer the best service in the market”, whereas PR is a third party endorsement informing the audience that “they offer the best services.”
2.Difference in Cost
The cost difference of the two disciplines is dependent on numerous factors, but typically, advertising costs dwarf those of PR campaigns. Advertisements are essentially paid media that span a specific time period in order to achieve the business’ pre-planned objectives. For instance a Facebook Ad campaign with an allocated budget designed to send traffic to a web page would cease once the budget has been spent, while purchasing a full page spread in a magazine would cost a lot, with the cost needing to cover the space, duration of coverage as well as creative designs. Typically, most advertisements need to be shown to their intended audience several times before the consumer takes notice and is influenced by the content.
3.Paid vs. free
Advertising: you pay for an advertisement to be placed in the media.
PR: your PR agency develops strategies for you to gain publicity in the media. PR professionals develop a range of tactics to gain positive media attention for your brand, which is very effective at increasing your target audience’s brand awareness.
4.Message control
Advertising: you have control over the content of your advertisement including where and when it will be seen in the media.
PR: you have less control of your coverage in the media. Once you send a story idea to a journalist they have control over it. They can choose to change your story idea or not even publish it at all. However, your PR agency should offer you media training so you know how to control an interview and make the most of any media opportunities they create for you.
5.Credibility/believability
Advertising: Advertisements have less credibility than the coverage gained by PR. When your target audience see’s an advertisement they know it has been bought by a company trying to sell them something.
PR: PR provides information and newsworthy stories to a journalist so they can write an article about your product or business, if they chose to. An article written by a journalist will be presented in an unbiased manner and contains the journalist’s third-party endorsement. This means your target audience may view the article with more credibility than an advertisement because it is not blatantly selling them something. PR can be a very powerful tool because it can help shape public opinion.
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