A quick recap on PR

Press & Public Relations activities, or PR for short, can play a key role in developing and enhancing the reputation of a business. 

Almost every enterprise that markets products and services to other businesses and end users can reach potential decision makers and influencers through the press, journals and web sites.  Carefully placed editorial material complements other marketing activities by providing a variety of positive stories and statements about the business, in a way that has the authority of apparently independent editorial comment.  In the long term, regular editorial will help raise awareness of the business, create a positive attitude towards the company and its products and generate enquiries. 

Advertising reaches a mass audience effectively, but works best when conveying a simple proposition designed to gain attention quickly and with maximum impact. PR can expand this message by use of news items, third party endorsement, or by longer articles that reinforce the message through explanation and applications of products and services. News can embrace product launches, important contract wins, personnel appointments, new technology developments, events and company results. Unlike a short-term advertising campaign, PR offers a long-term marketing tool that is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its public. 

When things go wrong, as they sometimes do, the public will be more tolerant of a 'well thought of’ business that communicates with them and is seen to put the problem right. The PR plan can seek to follow a theme that builds a particular view of the business, but is also flexible to react to tactical developments or unexpected events which can be handled quickly and positively at any time, and far more effectively and rapidly than with other promotional activities. 

In today’s quick consumption, time poor working environment, industry and company web sites and social media offer an alternative news delivery channel to traditional print. News headlines can be e-mailed to interested readers offering the opportunity to click a link to read more of stories that attract their attention or just tweeted. 

News is also one of the main reasons for return visits to a web site and a news publishing and archive system such as Technical Marketing Ltd’s Virtual News Office™ can be integrated with the web site. 

Advertising - what is it all about?

Aerial advertising

The term advertising is often confused with the whole marketing process itself. 

Our use of the word is confined to ‘paid for’ media space. In business-to-business communication this is mainly the trade press and portal web sites, but advertising media also embraces radio, cinema, television, bus sides and bill boards. 

Advertising has been described as the persuasive force that utilises mass communications to make changes in customer attitudes, behaviour and actions towards products and services in a direction favourable to the advertiser. 

Advertising is cost effective in reaching large groups of customers and potential customers with a shared defined profile, hence the proliferation of special interest and industry specific magazines that can deliver an audience relevant to the needs of the advertiser. Media selection must therefore seek to match your target audience and readership profiles. 

Advertising’s key aims are to progress the target audience through a series of stages by first turning possible unawareness of the product, into awareness, a comprehension of the proposition, a conviction that the product is both relevant and of benefit and finally a ‘call to action’ to convert the prospect into a potential customer. 

As individuals we are subjected to hundreds of advertising messages each day, so to arrest attention the advertisement has to stand out from the others. This may be by use of compelling images, headlines or a combination of both, that stops the browser just long enough to take in the proposition. The fly fishing analogy has been used to explain the process of first being seen and attracting attention, then swiftly driving the point home. Once ‘hooked’ a few telling words must explain the benefits of the proposition succinctly, then offer a ‘call to action’ where the prospect can find more detail. Today typically a web site, but the ‘call to action’ could be incentivised by the promise of a useful or attractive offer to enhance response rates. 

Advertising is a key marketing tool, to raise awareness, build brand recognition and communicate a simple or top-level message, but needs repetition to ensure that message is seen and acted upon. Other communication means such as PR and direct marketing will be called into play for a fully integrated campaign. 

How creative can mobile advertising be?

As the viewing platform preference  moves from desk top to mobile device, the concern of the new media owners is nobody clicks on the advertisements.

So who is expressing this concern? Well, according to the Technology section of the Daily Telegraph, "alongside Facebook and Intel now even Google, which runs the Android operating system driving the very growth of mobile phones said the difficulties of making money off advertising from smaller screens is a huge challenge." Despite this week's announcement of a £23 billion merger of Publicis and Omnicom to overtake WPP capitalised at £14.8 billion to create the world's biggest advertising agency, Google at £192 billion and Facebook at £54.7 billion still dominate.

Research meanwhile casts doubt on the effectiveness of search engine marketing advertising anyway and talks about it being "an ineffective marketing channel."  And it gets worse with experiments indicating a negative ROI  on much Internet advertising.

So why don't people click on the advertisements? Perhaps the simple answer is the lack of creativity - most are text only or text with an image - any old image for some - they are just not attracting attention. Advertising creatives working in traditional media know that you have to grab attention in an instant. Whether it is on a Google search result where most people know which are paid for and which are organic results, or the weird ads served on Facebook the thing is they all look much the same. They don't stand out from the crowd; they blend in. On mobile devices they just get smaller and less significant.

In traditional print media more familiar to b-2-b marketers, some advertisement positions are better than others in the book and space size an important factor, but to succeed all must have some compelling image or headline that grabs attention long enough for the reader to notice. It is the old fishing analogy - the brightly coloured fly is designed to attract attention, but then comes the hook. Having gained attention the advertisement should be crafted to rapidly progress the reader through the 5 stages from unawareness, awareness, comprehension and conviction to action. The 'call to action' is the response that 'hooks' the prospect. Its not what you get on Facebook and Google and the smaller the screen, the less impact, so is it much of a surprise prospects are manly not clicking on the advertisements?