Are you wasting your money on PR? – You won’t believe these stats pt. 2
from www.marketingsherpa.com
This is the second part in a series of posts that will convince you that the world is moving its marketing not just online, but into online social media.
Read Part 1 here
The data in this post was pulled from a report by an excellent resource for marketing insight – Marketing Sherpa. Thanks to all their hard work it is possible for me to share this data with you as well as tell you what it means for you and the music biz. Marketing Sherpa, please don’t crucify me for sharing two charts!
This first chart here is saying that 80% of companies and marketing firms surveyed believe that Social Media is changing the way they communicate.
That right there should blow your mind because at the end of the day, you’re in the marketing game just like these people surveyed and if they change the marketing game, your marketing game is getting changed as well, like it or not.
If you were in charge of marketing for one of these companies and this was your belief, wouldn’t you do something about where you put your marketing, PR and ad dollars?
Yep, and that is exactly what is happening. Check this out:
from marketingsherpa.com
The big money in advertising is cutting back spending on traditional sources and increasing their spend on online ads and Social Media marketing. Look at the hit Radio and TV ads is taking!! 83% cut?! and a 60% cut on print. Only 4% of the companies and marketing pros that were surveyed are going to increase their spend on print ads. I’m not sure if that includes PR that focuses on print but one can infer.
Ok, so that may answer the question posed by this article, but not so fast. I bet that if you have tried social media marketing or you are about to try it out….it’s no silver bullet skip to the header “I’m convinced” below.
If you’re saying, but wait? If big marketing companies change the marketing game, how does that affect my marketing?
Convince me more:
If you are not convinced that you might want to reconsider spending your efforts on print and radio read this first:
If you are still spending money on full page ads in mags, in the hopes of getting a magazine review…you should survey your audience and make sure they are still reading that mag. Are you now getting that fix online?
Have you started listening to music on Pandora? If you are hoping for college or mainstream radio to have an impact on sales you should survey your audience to see if people are still listening to that station or if they’re all now just playing whatever they want on demand via their iPhone’s You Tube software. Or listening to Pandora, or blip.fm or last.fm or..or ….or
Even if you or your audience is still listening to the radio and reading mags, what do you think about this idea?
The fun follows the money. If advertisers want to spend money somewhere, then creative people can produce content for that somewhere making it more fun to be at that somewhere meaning that somewhere is where the people go. Sorry for the abstraction – but to put it plain and simple:
When advertisers stop spending money on radio and print, those companies lay off their writers, animators and the people who made TV, Radio and Print cool. Those people then get jobs working projects that now will live on the internet and will be part of social media sites like facebook, blogs etc.
More garbage will flow to the internet sure, but also more of the quality ideas and content that used to draw people to watching the TV or reading a mag is now going to be found online. Like the video or hate it, I saw Dick in the Box on Youtube, not on TV. What about you?
College radio is not ad supported, but the format of radio in general will take a hit as more people go online and discover they like other options better than any radio, college or mainstream.
I’m convinced so now what?
Before you become the next “social media is all that matters” regurgitator spouting off this data, here is a reality check:
If more people are spending more time online, that means they are also spending more time on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, email, Google and so forth. See Part 1 for that data. If they are online, your cost of reaching them can be far less than paying for a full page ad in Urb because you can just friend them, @reply to them, let the stream your album instantly online and even close the sale.
Of course you have to put in the time to make this happen, but time is usually easier to come by than hard dollars to spend.
To be sure, it would be faster to put an ad up and get 5 thousand actual impressions (meaning people actually read your ad, not just glanced over it). But that could cost you $5,000 bucks or more if the magazine has good circulation. I pull that number slightly out of the air, as I remember several years ago that was the going rate for a one-off ad in Urb magazine.
To put that in perspective and to also show you social media is good, but no magic bullet, consider this:
Let’s say that you have 500 followers on Twitter — not bad for most people but pretty small for a successful band. But these are Awesome fans that you got one at a time so 100 retweet.
500 impressions to start off with.
Let’s say that of the 100 re-tweeters 20 of their followers actually see the retweet, so you get 2,000 more impressions – now your total is 2,500 views – but at least 100 of them were really good views as they shared your content.
Ok, so of the 2,000 people 5% or 100 people decide they’ll retweet it too: 100 more people see it – now we’ve got 2,600 total views.
Now it’s getting old, so maybe only 5 or 10 more people retweet and so on until nobody retweets anymore.
Long story short you could get a couple of thousand impressions done for no hard cost BUT I think getting even 1/3 or 1/5 the amount of impressions online are better than offline. Because online people can act on the impulse to share, to listen, or to buy.
Off line, they have to put down the mag and then fire up the computer or get to the store (probably just fire up the compu though).
The catch-22:
Reaching people online is going to be harder because people are also on Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs and so on. We’ve all got shorter attention spans these days. Maybe you can share a chart for this one, but intuitively we all know that in many cases you’ll only spend a few minutes on a website then “channel surf” your browser to something else.
So you can’t just have more money and get the awareness. You have to be better at engaging your fans than the next band in your scene. You also have to be better at engaging your fans than their other friend’s updates. You have to be better than catnipped out cats batting their paws at the TV videos on Youtube.
The Upside:
But that’s the upside. Talent matters more than money. Develop the talent of engaging your fans online and your band can make money from your fans. Or hire on a friend, or a PR company (or me shameless plug) to do it for you or to coach you (better option) so you are self sufficient.
Hey, if things don’t work out 100% with your band but you master the art of connecting with people using email, tweets, Facebook pokes, blog posts and so forth you are going to be really valuable to some company out there who is struggling to learn how to right click.
The wrap up:
If you are spending a lot of money on hiring PR that only focuses on getting you written up in print, see “Convince me more” above. You’d better double check that spend dollar spent on traditional PR if you have limited means. If you don’t hell yes get onto college radio and get written up in mags. It will only help you. But if you’re on a tight budget you may want to consider focusing your strategy of directly engaging people online.
Call me out! Did I just insult you or your favorite PR firm? Let me know or make me eat my shoe. Leave a comment or re-tweet. Thanks!
