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The Difference Between Advertising and Publicity
An old adage says: "Advertising you pay for, publicity you pray for". That's because publicity has at least ten times the credibility of advertising.
Some experts, like Al Reis, author of the classic
marketing book, "Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind", believe that most
companies shouldn't waste their money on advertising until they have established name
recognition and credibility with PR. Others say both advertising and PR are necessary.
Every expert agrees that you can't just put up your web site, open your store or
manufacture your product and do nothing to attract customers.
Advertising is a content you pay to present.
Publicity refers to free content about you that appears in the media - what
others say about you. Publicity can result when an article you write is published, or when
information you give to an editor convinces him/her to feature a story about you. Over
time, these stories help create a favorable impression of your product or services.
The average person has no real idea of how the
media find their stories, but the prevailing view seems to be that reporters go out and
find all of their news. Idealistic? Yes. Realistic? No way! There aren't enough
reporters on the planet to find every bit of news worth covering. So if you can present
your information convincingly, you have a chance to gain media interest. How do you do
that? Read on.
The Internet has its own rules about
commercialism, and woe to those who break them. If your press releases, postings or
articles are blatant self-promotion or a sales pitch instead of truly useful information
they won't be used. Worse, you risk the negative publicity of being flamed. Before
you put out a public message, play "Who Cares?" and ask yourself "Why would
other people be interested in what I have to say? Can they benefit in any way from this
information?" If you haven't got good answers to these questions, keep working
on your message until you do.
Ways of promoting your site If you go the advertising route, you can pay
to sponsor or run ads in online media. You can pay to have a banner about your company or product
come up every time certain keywords are searched or you can pay for clicks per view or clicks per
thousand. To have real impact, your advertising and your publicity need to be repeated many times.
You'd better have a huge ad budget if you want people to see your ads enough times to remember them.
And publicity has to appear on a regular enough basis so people start to say to themselves
"I just read about this last week!"
Here are some ways publicity for your site stacks up against advertising in comparable situations:
Online Conferences Advertising - You could pay to sponsor the same conference. People would notice your name, if only peripherally, but they'd be there for the expert's information, not the sponsor's message. Of course if you could afford to sponsor nine out of ten online conferences, your name might stick. News Releases
Advertising - You'd easily spend 10 times as much to run the same information as an ad, and people would rush by your message - unless it was really revolutionary - to get the information they came for. Online mailing lists and discussion groups Advertising - if you posted a message that was essentially an ad in a mailing list or discussion group it would be eliminated by the moderator, ignored, or possibly flamed by subscribers. However, if your message is clever and factual, over time people are likely to think of you when they need to service you provide. Submitting articles to other sites Ask permission before sending your article to the list moderator, editor or webmaster, each of whom will identify you as the author and tell visitors how to reach you. Advertising - Sponsor online newsletters and advertise in other online media. This is expensive but effective with frequent and long-term repetition. E-mail signatures Advertising - Put a blatant ad in your signature and risk having it left out of your message. A blatantly commercial e-mail signature message such as "Earn a million dollars online in your spare time. Call NOW!" is not acceptable to the online community. However it would be acceptable to say in your signature, "We provide affordable marketing services to help online enterprises increase traffic to their sites," or "We create revenue-building opportunities for online storefronts." Be sure to include your name and the name of your business, your site's URL, e-mail address, phone number and fax in the signature, which should not exceed four or five short lines. Surveys Advertising - Sponsoring regular surveys on heavily visited sites will be costly but may produce name recognition. The most important rule of advertising is that your message must be repeated many times to be noticed, and many more to produce consumer action. The most important part of publicizing your site is to do it steadily over a long period of time. Publicity is an ongoing process with a cumulative result. When people start saying "I just read an article about them last week," or "That guy said something very interesting in an online conference," you'll be developing credibility that no amount of advertising can buy.
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