How do you let people know you are out there?
What is the best way to find customers who would be interested in your product? How do you get them to know it exists? In the age where there are fifty gagillion websites, how do you find the people who would want to know about you?
Products don't get much more unusual then mine- artistic baseballs for the baseball fan, or collector of all things unusual!(unforgettaballs.com) But if no one ever sees them, it doesn't matter how cool they are!
There a two main ways I work to get my baseballs seen: PR and Advertising. Lately I have been debating which I think is a more effective way to reach people.
Advertising is great b/c once you pay a specific amount, and then know you are going to get something out there for the public to see.
PR on the other hand, Is much more of a risk. It can cost much more, and at the end of the day you don't know for sure if anything will be written on your product or not. From a money standpoint, it almost seems to make more sense to just pay to have the advertisement, b/c it is a guarantee that people will see something. Unfortunately, you can not deny that it is always more humble to have someone else write about how great your product is then to have you do it!
Small business advice for the day:
Decide how much you would like to spend per year on getting everyone to know what you do. Then take this number and divide it between PR and Advertising. Track for your self which helped more. (Use analytics on your website through google, etc. to track-if you don't know how to do this- get a web master to do it for you.) Don't put your whole budget in just one of these- it is just to risky.
www.unforgettaballs.com
Products don't get much more unusual then mine- artistic baseballs for the baseball fan, or collector of all things unusual!(unforgettaballs.com) But if no one ever sees them, it doesn't matter how cool they are!
There a two main ways I work to get my baseballs seen: PR and Advertising. Lately I have been debating which I think is a more effective way to reach people.
Advertising is great b/c once you pay a specific amount, and then know you are going to get something out there for the public to see.
PR on the other hand, Is much more of a risk. It can cost much more, and at the end of the day you don't know for sure if anything will be written on your product or not. From a money standpoint, it almost seems to make more sense to just pay to have the advertisement, b/c it is a guarantee that people will see something. Unfortunately, you can not deny that it is always more humble to have someone else write about how great your product is then to have you do it!
Small business advice for the day:
Decide how much you would like to spend per year on getting everyone to know what you do. Then take this number and divide it between PR and Advertising. Track for your self which helped more. (Use analytics on your website through google, etc. to track-if you don't know how to do this- get a web master to do it for you.) Don't put your whole budget in just one of these- it is just to risky.
www.unforgettaballs.com
posted by Unforgettablogger at
11:00 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting thoughts, yet I have to disagree. Advertising is simply just one sided. Whenever I see an advertisement, I know it was put on by the company. PR has more merit and is much more extensive then simply media relations. For example with the influx of online PR, blogs, social media, podcasts and forums, this is a way of creating dialogues about your product -- which is ultimately the goal for any business, to be talked about. Marketing seems pushy, and while convenient because it is so easy, is becoming more of a risk. For example, look at all the print advertisers that are going bankrupt. Ad space prices are rising, and in today's economy it is money wasted.
IMO, the best true function is PR working less on media relations and more on consumer relations.
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