In the Marketing Mix, PR Rises to the Top

Once the darling of the marketing mix, advertising has taken a back seat to public relations in the marketing programs of a growing number of technology companies.  Having worked in the field of technology public relations over the past 15 years, I can remember the days when my clients spent incredible amounts of money, and invested a majority of their marketing budgets, in strategically placed advertisements. This was back in the day, back in the early 2000s, when having brand visibility in print publications was the ultimate goal of the marketing program.  The bigger, brighter and more creative the advertisements, the better.  A number of my clients regularly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each month on print advertisements.

And then publications went digital.

As companies stopped spending on print advertisements, some technology publications successfully maintained their loyal readers by transitioning from periodicals to live digital portals that drastically shortened the news cycle from days, weeks or months to mere minutes.  However, other publications, many of which were very successful and influential print publications gradually shrunk and ultimately disappeared.  I saw my clients’ advertising budgets cut markedly because they didn’t consider online media as valuable or impactful as print advertising, so they continued to advertise through banner ads and other online advertising opportunities on key websites in hopes that simply keeping their brands visible would drive brand awareness and product adoption.  During this period of transition, my clients still utilized public relations, but we took a secondary role and continued to capture a small portion of the shrinking marketing budgets.

And then social media hit the mainstream.

With the emergence of social media, individuals now had the ability to become powerful brand advocates capable of significantly impacting the success, or failure, of a company’s products.  Our clients realized that people trust the opinions and recommendations of people they know and those people were sharing published information or original content with their friends and families.  Realizing that not only was it more cost-effective than advertising to use public relations strategies and tactics to generate coverage about their products and services, our clients realized that the coverage was more effective in driving readers to answer a call to action.  While advertising is by no means a dying art, the emergence of digital and social media has forever changed the balance of the marketing mix, balancing out the roles of advertising and public relations, and clearly defining the importance of both in building brand awareness and driving demand for a company’s products and services.