One of the perennial discussion topics about advertising and public relations is their seemingly antagonistic perspectives about each other. Ad folks say PR is unpredictable, and PR folks say advertising is too expensive and performs as poorly or worse. Rather than approach the topic as an either/or, a helpful change of perspective is to look at how and when they work together.
Understanding how 'trending' news impacts PR and advertising
In a recent post, we shared a way to look at real-time marketing and PR using inflection points to understand when something is going to get a lot of attention.A topic typically gains ground, explodes in a mass of attention, and then eventually settles down. In an advertising-only perspective of the world, this tends to happen: You spot a hot topic and immediately begin bidding on it, trying to take advantage of the topic to drive traffic to your digital properties. However, once the topic gets really hot, bid prices for related terms and keywords climb with the attention, and unless you have the deepest of pockets, at a certain point your campaign runs out of money or it becomes unprofitable to run advertising at the same rate.In a PR-only perspective of the world, this tends to happen: PR helps you to capitalize on the topic's attention, but then after the big surge of attention comes and goes, PR's effectiveness tends to wane for that given topic.
How to use advertising and PR in tandem
Logically, wouldn't it make sense to capitalize on the strengths of each channel? Pay money for advertising when interest is lower and bid prices are lower, pay money for public relations when a topic hits its inflection point and races ahead of the crowd and its ad budget. Once the news cycle has run its course and the news doesn't want to cover a topic that's no longer new, return to advertising to capture the remnant interest and sustain attention. Here's what the ideal scenario might look like:The choice of "advertising or PR" is a false choice. Each has its strengths and each has its deficiencies. Blending the two intelligently to leverage the strengths of each and mitigate each others' weaknesses, using paid/earned/owned smartly, is the best choice for any brand looking to make its mark on the world.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
