brumdaisy

A few queries you might be able to shed some light on... basically I have started a new job and their existing budget is heavily weighted towards advertising and virtually non on PR (funnily enough it was written by a bloke who stands to get a nice commission from the advertising).

I am trying to find information on how companies split their marketing budgets in terms of spend on advertising and on PR. Done google - millions of pages to wade thru and not making much progress.

Also trying to find some reliable analysis on PR versus advertising.

Finally some evidence on most effective ways to reach ethnic communities - by that I mean more 'traditional' communities who tend to stay away from mainstream media.

I have my own views on the above, based on years of experience but at the same time Im the new kid on the block so I need hard facts to back me up and I need them fast else I end up delivering a ****ty waste of time waste of money mktg strategy for the next two years....

And no, I dont have any budget to buy or commission my own research!

Any help would be hugely and I mean HUGELY appreciated

MadGrip

We have a PR, design & marketing company . Give my other half a call tomorrow, ask to speak to Jenny and tell her I told you to get in touch (Phil), I'm sure she'll be able to help you out with anything you need to know

our company was called "point2PR but we have now become a partnership with a design company. Our web address is http://www.point2partnership.com but because the partnership is reletively new , the website is'nt fully built yet

cheers

Phil

Steve Whitehorn

iTrader: (13)

Depends on the product. Is it something that requires much brand awareness (such as money being pushed into advertising) (ega simple consumer related product hairgell)

Is it some thing that requires more information to sell it and requires a more complex sell (money perhaps pushed into PR advertorials) (eg a business to business sell - Industrial shelving)

Personaly I would split up the sales process and tailor the marketing to compliment-enhance it

1.How does your company gain leads - In order to gain more we need to do x
marketing
2. How does your compnay sell - In order to convert more sales in these channels we need to y marketing
3. In order to retain customers - we need to do Z marketing

Oh and as an umberella campaign - In this particular instance we need some budget for brand awareness especialy to these market segments.


Hope you can see where I am coming from.. Tailor it directly to sales and profit. The dircetors - especialy the ones with the purse strings love that.

Just my thoughts
Steve

brumdaisy

cheers for that. was away from pc all day but will get in touch Monday... where are you based by the way.... might be an opportunity to pitch !

brumdaisy

Cheers Steve,

useful comments, certainly in terms of pitching to the bosses bu what Im still struggling with is analysis of effectiveness of PR v's advertising. For example I have a 100% track record in getting targetted media to run my releases and I tend to generate 300% return on spend (cost against media value). You just dont get that with advertising IMO.

He has proposed that 40% of the mktg budget is spent on advertising in 3 media (2 print 1 online) all of which are owned by the company he works for. I reckon I usually spend 3-5% of mktg budget on advertising, which equates to around 10% of the comms budget.

I'd love to get an idea of how the 'average' organisation spilts its budget....

MadGrip

The office is based in Holmfirth just outside Huddersfield , west yorkshire, but we have clients throughout the country which include Ideal standard ( we wright and edit they're online & trade mags) and Lightwater valley which is a big theme park in north yorkshire. I cant do the percentages thing like the posts above this ,as I dont have much to do with the company, thats my other halfs proffession

Spoon

Brummers, There's a clue on the front and only page of the website.

You're going to struggle with percentages.

brumdaisy

spoon havent had chance to get on the website so go be funny on someone elses thread

Spoon

I'm supposed to believe that? A click is what, all of a second?

Oh, and it was serious.

Hoppy

BD, you have told us next to nothing about your business or budget, yet expect a complete lesson in the black art of marketing from ScoobyNet. That's a big ask

All I will say (and this is all that anyone can say on what we know so far) is that marketing is a complex science that will take you a lifetime to learn because society, products and media etc are constantly changing. It is also prone to vigorous argument as the effects of almost all marketing expenditure are extremely hard to quantify.

There are no fixed splits on marketing expenditure. One might be 100% PR, another might be 100% radio, or 50% magazines and 50% posters. The permutations are endless.

I hope this doesn't sound patronising, but you need to get the basics sorted first If you can get your head around this, and apply it to your business, at least you will be starting from a sound platform.

Objective: to escape.
Strategy: get drunk.
Tactic: drink beer.

Best regards,

Richard.

brumdaisy

LOL I dont recall ever being sited as a sign of great offence?!

mightyyid

BD - very hard question to answer and there is no right or wrong answer. Basically, spend on advertising is always going to cost more - you design and then place the ad. More you place, more it costs.

PR does not have to cost at all if you do it well, but it has a limited lifespan, depends on what the PR programme is, how well it is implemented etc. And of course, what the idea is... then the usual variables with slow v high news days etc - all makes a big deal of difference.

Advertising is controllable. PR is (generally) not. Advertising you know what you get as in you have tangible evidence of where money went - PR you do not.

I am MD of one office of a global PR and sports marketing company. I've been asked the question a few times, and we'd give different answers to an ad agency (although we are owned by one of the largest communications groups in the world). I see the role of advertising of course, but effective PR hits somewhere advertising rarely can.

If you want a rough guess, people spend way more on advertising than PR, because with their **** on the line, they can justify the expedniture. How effective was it - tone of voice etc, is far harder to measure, and PR can allow you to get closer to your audience.

I've jumped around a lot, but I would ask how much money you have. As you are new, I guess limited so I would do limited advertising as PR could be more effective. Unless you think you can do it yourself - then you'll probably get nothing as everyone thinks they can a) write b) write a media release c) it's bound to be printed because we're great and d) it's going to be of interest.

No simple answer - maybe this has helped....

Andy

GaryCat

I hope you proof read them better than you do your Scoobynet posts

MadGrip

Damn, I wish I was as clever as you If you read the post you'll see that it clearly says that I have nothing to do with the day to day running, its my other halfs baby. I have my own proffession

Anyway, hadnt you better be leaving for work now? you've got burgers to flip

brumdaisy

Richard,

I was requesting info / signposting to info on three areas of marketing, not 'a complete lesson in the black art of marketing from ScoobyNet'.

You will find there is an enormous amount of statistics and analysis out there on exactly these subjects. Unfortunately I no longer have a team that has this information at its finger tips.

Your comment that “It is also prone to vigorous argument as the effects of almost all marketing expenditure are extremely hard to quantify” intrigues me. Have you never considered making your objectives measurable?

And you think I need to master the basics

By the way, I’d love to hear about the company that spent 100% of its marketing budget on PR or radio or any other channel for that matter….

Best regards

BD

brumdaisy

mightyyid

cheers for your thoughts. Just what I was looking for

kernow

No idea sorry daisy!

Hoppy

OK, a real life example from when I worked in magazine publishing, MCN (Motor Cycle News in particular) and leading up to the British Moto GP you are running full-page ads in three of your sister monthly magazines, backed up by an editorial feature promoting the event. At preceding rounds of British Superbikes, you have promo girls giving away 20,000 free preview supplements offering discounts for advance ticket sales plus a win a superbike competition. You also give away 150,000 preview supplements in the preceding week's paper. Meanwhile, your editor is doing interviews on both local radio and TV, promoting local or British interest in the race, and promoting MCN of course. Ditto press releases to all local press media. Ditto on the MCN website. In the days running up to the event, you also run half-page ads in National tabloid press at very substantial cost. Etc, etc, etc.

How can you quantify the effect of all that individual yet simulataneous activity across a whole raft of media and a complex tactical mix? Then what if it rains? What if the hot Brit hope has a bad day? Or a very good day? Or the Championship favourite gets badly injured at the preceding round and may not race? Or there is a clash with another big event also calling for the attention of your customers, like the World Cup, Wimbledon, or DTM Touring Cars? BTW, most of this actually happened this weekend.

This is the real world of marketing. It's rarely not just a question of a few magazine ads or a mail shot, although some marketing can actually be that simple. FMCG will often spend 90% of their budget on TV. I know, because it is a heck of a job to get them to spend even a fraction of their huge budgets on magazine advertising

The only way I have been able to get a remote fix on the effect of all this to track back several years, look at the activity and circumstances, the expenditure, and then subsequent sales uplift, and basically try to make an educated guess. But it's still a guess. Any marketeer that attempts to put hard numbers against activity 'x' and expenditure 'y' is basically putting a gun to their heads.

Good luck

Richard.

brumdaisy

Nooooo not remotely patronising. FLMAO

The campaign you refer to sounds pretty standard to me, I have no idea what you're getting so excited about?


I'd hardly call carrying out analysis on like for like guess work

I'd call it having the ***** (and know how) to be accountable..... Dear boss please give me 150k to blow on a campaign that I have no way of measuring the impact of so I wont bother trying

Im off to bed but if you really want the lowdown on the basics I'd be happy to give it to you

brumdaisy

kernow where have u been? Thanks for the input

kernow

exam revision an ****

anyway your welcome!

Hoppy

I said that I didn't mean to sound patronising though I accept my post might be taken that way. Apologies - only trying to help.

Good luck,

Richard.

Hoppy

Stumbled across your thread again and thought I'd mention 'Viral Marketing'. I have found it to be very cost-effective and sometimes the best way to reach an audience that is hard to target with more conventional marketing.

Best regards,

Richard.

RMA26

I work as an Analyst, which over the past few years has covered commercial analysis - should you need anything, please shout!

RMA26

Not too far from me then!

If you ever need a good Company Analyst..........

mightyyid

Yes and no - the simple truth as I have seen it is that people want to invest in as much as they can to make it happen, rather then assessing how effective it was. The more you spend, the more you have the opportunity to do this, as nobody really wants to spend money on assessing something when that money could be spent on greater impact in the first place. Thus, the lower the budget, the less assessment there is (if any) because of this.

Therefore, it seems like many people wish their plan to work, and will use simple, and often nonsensical arguments to justify how it works. That's why advertising is the easy option. June 2005 we sold 5,000 units. Ran advertising for first 2 weeks of June - June sales 2006 were 8,000 therefore advertising works. And it probably is that simple.

PR can measure column inches and therefore give different values depending on your ratio (1" if ad spend = anywhere from 2.1 to 4 times for PR) - so a column inch in a paper costs me £500 in advertising, one column inch of PR is worth between £1050 and £2000 in value. But then you get into the nitty gritty - who wrote it, what section of the paper was it in, what page, was in tucked away in a corner, what was the tone of voice.... and on it goes.

£150k on a campaign all depends on where it is being spent - easy to spend that in one magazine, versus lots of little local papers etc - all depends on the audience demographics, type of product.

I'm rambling now, so I'll drop it. I might not have a scooby about the inside of an engine (although I'd love to know how it works) but I'd like to think I have a grasp on marketing and PR, otherwise I should be fired. Let me know if I can help in any other way...

Andy

RMA26

PR is also about a hell of a lot of Market Analysis, via Internet & other company financial statements