ShoutingInDigital

PR – an effective advertising method for retailers

Posted by James | Filed under branding

Online PR tactics may be more effective than online advertising, according to a new study by ARAnet.

The study which was run earlier this year compared the use of online marketing methods against brand mentions in online articles with the result of being ’somewhat likely’ or ‘very likely’ to take action after viewing. The online marketing methods that were compared were e-mail offers, sponsored search engine listings, banner ads and pop-up ads.

It comes as no surprise that pop-ups (13%) and banner ads (25%) were featured at the bottom, what is surprising is the trust put into online articles (51%)

The ARAnet report also detailed how the response to advertising might vary depending on certain demographics. While gender was not a significant factor, age and race were.

It seems the younger an internet user is (18 being the youngest in the study) the more likely he or she is to take action. Race also showed that African-Americans and Hispanics were more open to any of the online advertising forms than someone with white skin.

What does this mean for retailers? According to Scott Severson, president of ARAnet, “More than two-thirds of the respondents between 18 and 34 said they conduct internet searches for products or services they read about in online articles either very frequently or somewhat frequently.”

PR, if done right, has a very low financial barrier to entry as discovered by Naked Pizza who have been using Twitter as an online PR tool for their New Orleans pizza company. Since rapidly gaining local followers and changing their billboard to include their Twitter handle, the company have been featured in a number of newspapers and publication including AdAge.com and TechCrunch.

Of course, for those companies who are too afraid to experiment with PR there is also the option to send e-mail offers which, with 47%, receives almost as much response as online articles. The only problem is you need a way of getting the list of subscribers first.

Tags: pr