Recently, there was an interesting article posted on Ad Age on the general differences between advertising and PR. To expand a bit on some of these topics, we’d like to give some additional perspective on the role of the medium in delivery and measurement methodologies.

The Medium and the Message

Advertising is what you say about yourself. It is 100% in your control – input to output – because you paid for it to be. However, your audience often takes the message with a grain of salt for simply that reason. After all, you are 100% vested in your success, and your corporate and professional ethics determine where the ends justify the means with your advertising messages.

Conversely, PR is what others say about you. While you may control the messages you deliver to an editor, analyst, blogger or other community/social network influencer, you do not control the final output. However, most readers will consider that final output to be verified, balanced and truthful because of the role of the filtering medium.

Spend-to-Results and Measurement

Advertising is directly measureable for spend-to-result for the duration of a campaign. You paid X amount for the advertisement for a given period of time that has X circulation/viewers/page views, and that ad placement is then measured through built-in, sales-tracking tools, such as click-through, special codes, etc. leading to direct measurement of the ad campaign into sales for that given period of time – very clean and easy to report the spend-to-result measurement.

PR, on the other hand is different in almost every way – from how results and spend should be viewed to how it is measured. PR results (positive articles, broadcast and webcasts opportunities, secured speaking opportunities, etc.), are earned through providing provocative ideas; engaging and ongoing, relationship-building with editors and other influencers; and positioning your company/products as a market, technology and/or thought leader.

Given the time constraints and skepticism of many editors, analysts, conference managers and others, it can take awhile for a continuous stream of high quality results to occur. It could take months (or even years) of PR spend securing trade and vertical articles to get to that big Forbes or Wall Street Journal article win or the opening keynote at the tradeshow of the season. This is important when considering how you view your PR spend – what you’ve spent does not just provide value for those initial results, but rather that previous spend continues to deliver value to your PR program and future spend over time because PR builds presence, momentum and leadership on itself to continually bring in more high-profile opportunities and results.

To put it another way, think of PR spend as an investment in a leadership positioning bank. Over time, creating a leadership position and increasing your profile results in editors proactively contacting your company for commentary, more conference managers requesting your executives for higher-quality speaking opportunities, and bloggers and social media mavens reposting your commentary regularly. Ultimately, this leadership positioning results in increased sales of your products or services because they are widely recognized as the best available as reported through reliable media sources; companies approaching you to secure partnerships; the best and brightest talent sending their resumes; and a higher valuation for that next round of VC funding or liquidation event.

Now that we’ve explored how to view PR results and spend, it’s important to also compare and contrast PR measurement. Like advertising, PR reach is reported through circulation/audience numbers. But, that’s where the similarity ends. PR is also evaluated on qualitative factors. Did the messages in the final article accurately reflect those communicated to the editors? Which ones got through and which ones didn’t? Did a blogger position your company accurately against your competitors? Did the VCs in the audience leave your presentation with a positive impression? Did your sales pipeline explode after that new product launch? These are real results that show your PR program is effectively getting your messages out there and increasing your leadership profile.

Mix and Integrate

Net-net, PR is a long-term, ongoing marketing communications strategy and investment to continually build awareness, momentum and leadership, not a short-term direct ‘spend-to-sales’ advertising program. While there are vast differences between PR and Advertising in audience perception, spend consideration, and results measurement, they are both important components of the marketing communications mix. Furthermore, they should be integrated to increase consistency of your message (and therefore, overall resonance with your audiences), and to maximize your budget spend.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 3:09 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.